it's odd that you say that without having seen the competitor. This is evidence of belonging to a cult or being afraid of better things. Of course it's possible that the new one is shit, but I think I'll make my own mind up.
It's completely unsurprising to expect the first generation of something like this, even if it was amazing, to have annoying flaws. Unfortunately, it doesn't sound amazing. Car companies have a long track record of disappointing infotainment systems and there's zero reason to expect anything better here. In fact, the problems in this article sound identical to the ones I had with Honda's most basic level infotainment system just a couple years ago. It would freeze and the only fix was turning off the car...a difficult solution on road trips. Asking the dealer about it, they said there was no update process for it--maybe a newer model year wouldn't have that issue?
Back in the days of manual transmissions, this wasn't so hard. I remember having to do this for some odd reason (don't remember) back in the 90s: just clutch in, turn off the ignition, restart the engine, clutch out.
On my most recent car which had an infotainment system, there was some kind of three-button combination you could press to reboot the system without restarting the car.
The car was actually a manual transmission and the thought did occur to me. My worry was something like steering lock or some other issue while trying that while driving down the road would cause a horrible accident.
Also, let’s not pretend it’s not a little weird to have someone build a car in 2023 that doesn’t have CarPlay or Android Auto and isn’t firmly in the budget segment. It’s not only going to feel unusual, but market pressure for improvements on GM will be completely different if you use their custom system than something that is more standardized and used by orders of a magnitude more customers.
That’s not going to be true of the GM thing, since the whole point is that they want to charge subscription fees and sell data their services gather.
Considering that, I have no reason to believe they are even capable of producing a somewhat reliable average UX.
So I’m with the GP on this one.
But I may be wrong.
Imagine GM were a home builder who suddenly said they will no longer sell any homes they build, only rent them out. You are free to sell your house with your 3% mortgage, and go back to renting, to see if you prefer it. But those who choose to continue owning are not in a “cult,” and they’d think you were making a pretty bad decision. And they’d almost certainly be right.
Knowing Google, they'll sunset this project within a few years and these GM EVs will lose support and fall behind on the features Google adds to their own hardware.
2. Don't get it twisted, GM is locking down their system for a reason. And I'll give you one guess as to why - money.
I don't currently use it because I find the native interface superior, but I do want the option.