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Comment by jdlyga | Hacker News Reader

Car infotainment systems are terrible. That's the reason why everyone wants CarPlay and Android Auto. It's kind of like going back to flip phones after using smartphones for years.

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Even if the infotainment is good today, GM is basically saying “trust me bro, 10 years from now maps on this decade old hardware are going to be so good you’ll want to pay a subscription for it.” I was thinking an Equinox EV would be my next car, but now I’m looking at gas vehicles and thinking I’ll give EVs a while longer to sort out which manufacturers earn a reputation for EV reliability, longevity, and good software.

It’s a major benefit of CarPlay that you can get new map technology on a new phone. Would Apple Maps of today with its vector data and 3D buildings run on a phone from 2013? Is there any reason to think that whatever system is going into the 2023 Blazer EV won’t be a bad joke by 2033? The maps on my phone will probably be pulling in Apple’s lidar scans for very precise local road data.

remember the iphone came out in 2007 - and I'm certain there was a lag before cars even supported phones.

By the time some GM phone connect system got through the pipes (several years), we might be carrying AR glasses instead of phones.

Possibly I misremember, but I’m pretty sure hands-free phone calls in cars via Bluetooth were a thing before the iPhone existed. (Looking it up... Yeah, around 2001, apparently.)

But the iphone could play music over bluetooth, and that was something cars ignored for quite some time.

Most people didn’t have music on their phones back then. But you could plug your iPod into the headphone jack!

Actually there wasn’t. Cars were supporting the iPod protocol for a couple of years before the iPhone came out - meaning you could see the song that was playing, change to the next track or playlist from the head unit.

The iPhone still supports that protocol. I could navigate through my podcast player (Overcast) from the head unit of my old car

sorry I was thinking of bluetooth - for handsfree and music

The Equinox is an atrociously bad vehicle. Especially when compared to Korean and Japanese competitors.

Other than the Corvette (amazing performance and value), and perhaps it’s trucks, GM is a literally asleep at the wheel.

I’m talking about the Equinox EV which is a different car on a different platform (BEV3 vs D2XX), so I don’t think you can make that comparison until the car actually exists and people can give it a closer inspection and drive it for a while.

I’ll give you the Korean competitors, but what Japanese competitor are you impressed by? The BZ4X/Solterra? MX-30? The Prologue which is a BEV3 car with a Honda sticker on it?

Unfortunately the Niro / Kona suffer from slow charging and the Ioniq 5 / EV6 are in a higher price segment.

I'm 100% in agreement with you (and thanks for the detail, rare here).

Japan is lethargic in terms of EVs despite an obvious tech advantage ...

Ford is the only American car company that impresses me

Alas, the MME is also expensive and difficult to get. Though I appreciate their commitment to continued CarPlay support, presumably including the next-gen dashboardy version.

https://9to5mac.com/2023/04/13/ford-carplay-support-commitme...

In the meantime I'm probably going to wait things out in a Corolla hatchback or something. Equinox EV might've been in the sweet spot, but to spend $30-40k on it to just be squeezed for software subscriptions that probably won't even be good, ugh.

Though on second thought, I wonder if Chevrolet ditching CarPlay in the Blazer necessarily means that the Prologue won't have it. I don't know if they're borrowing the car software and aren't in a position to add that type of feature, but it's also possible someone at Honda wrote CarPlay into their software requirements and GM is still stuck implementing it.

Bigger car than I want though. It's too bad Honda didn't decide to make an Equinox clone instead, the Prologue is 100% better looking than the Blazer.

Even if the infotainment OS was better than my phone’s OS, I’d still prefer to connect my phone.

It’s because I already have all the apps and data there. I don’t want to retype addresses into the car, I want to click them in my email or calendar. And I don’t want to set up my emails in my car’s OS, especially not one that has a lucrative contract with Google.

This is exactly my feeling. It’s great of they think they can produce really great software and if so I may use it for some things. For the rest I want to use the apps I am used to where my data is already stored and my personalized settings are stored. I also is a couple of CarPlay apps that I know GM cannot recreate and it would not have my subscribed feeds anyway

I also trust Carplay and Android Auto security since no data is sent out of the phone.

Are you sure about this? I seem to remember connecting my iPhone to a rental car and realizing that it had transferred my contact list into the car somehow.

My iPhone has asked me before if I want to give my contacts to a car, it’s never done it unless I said yes.

That is a Bluetooth feature.

That's if you connect it over old-school Bluetooth, and it shows a permission prompt asking you if you want to do it or not.

I don't want CarPlay or Android Auto. It's one more thing I have to fiddle with. One more thing to fight while someone beside me or behind me becomes impatient.

Bluetooth is meh. I would rather have an aux cord. From the days when we connected systems by physically connecting systems.

I am in the car to drive, a delightful escape from interacting with a phone.

What will you connect to your car with an aux cord?

Occasionally, a CD player.

1. You don't have to CarPlay or Android Auto if you don't want to. Just don't connect your phone. 2. Have you heard of a USB cable?

The USB cable to the phone pesters me to install/enable Android Auto every time.

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