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Comment by dhosek | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of an aggravating feature (or really lack thereof) in my new Prius. It has wireless charging, but requires a cable connection for CarPlay.

I hope I never meet a Toyota engineer in person, because it would be hard not to do something criminal to them.

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Wait, iPhones support CarPlay without a cable?

Yes, it's called Wireless CarPlay. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205634

Yeah,both CarPlay and Android Auto have wireless support these days.

You can buy wireless CarPlay/Auto USB dongles for cars that only support cable.

Not all cars support that, though. Due to licensing or tech, some cars (even new ones) only support Apple car with a cable (my case). I bought a wireless adapter on Amazon and it works seamlessly.

A wireless adapter that lets you use wireless carplay on a car that doesn't have it? Could you please post a link?

I bought this one that’s arriving tomorrow. I’ll write up a review of it once I’ve used it a while.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0B8RKXK9R/donhosek

You’re mad that Toyota didn’t include an extra WiFi radio in your car, so that you can be more conveniently distracted by text messages and speed trap warnings, in the same thread where everyone else thinks that electric starters ruined cars forever?

Carplay lets me use the car to control audio with the car controls instead of the phone. That’s a big non-distractor. Your comment tells me that you have never actually used CarPlay (and perhaps that Android Auto is not so good—I wouldn’t know, I always assumed it was roughly equivalent to CarPlay in features and functionality). My phone doesn’t notify me about text messages when I’m driving and with the Prius, if I want navigation, CarPlay is the thing. Having the nav on the big display instead of the little display (which would be well out of the normal peripheral line of sight if it’s sitting on the wireless charger) is again an improvement in safety.

Most people mount their phones someplace in their line of sight. If anything, car play is less distracting than a phone.

That's just the usual features taking a while to come to Toyota.

It’s just a crazy order to add things. Qi charger for a phone that you would want plugged in to properly use.

Keep in my that a manager made that decision, not one of the engineers doing the hands-on work.

That's a cop out. The engineers can say no. Many managers are former engineers anyway.

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