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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

What's stopping someone from spending a few hundred bucks at their local custom stereo shop and replacing the head unit with something else that is less user hostile? If everything else in the car is what you need, just replace the part you don't like if it's not available as an option.

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These days the head unit has its tendrils wrapped around many parts of the car besides just infotainment, and wiring harnesses are a lot more proprietary. Does the aftermarket head unit support your car's parking sensors? How about the backup camera? Even the Homelink button that opens your garage door has migrated to the touchscreen in a lot of newer cars, never mind forehead-slapping features like the climate control settings.

The days of single- and double-DIN stereo swapping are slipping away fast. You're pretty much stuck with what you get when you buy the car, so it had better be what you want.

Wish there was rules around interoperability. Having to buy a whole new car to get your apps back is terrible.

This isn't actually true. You just need a module to interface with the car in place of the original head unit. For example the iDatalink Maestro can connect HVAC controls, engine diagnostics, tire pressure, etc to compatible head units. And there are a lot of compatible head units, basically all the worthwhile ones have Maestro support.

That's good to hear, I wasn't familiar with Maestro at all. But it doesn't do anything to address the proliferation in form factors. I can get nice aftermarket head units from a couple of different Chinese vendors for one of my cars, but they had to be specifically designed for that exact application. I ended up adding wireless CarPlay to that car's original head unit with an ugly internal/external adapter solution. It works well enough, but it was a pain to install. Hopefully similar hardware can be made available to GM customers in the future.

For the other car, though... no way, no how. It is stuck with what it has. Its touchscreen is a nonstandard size, seamlessly integrated into the dashboard, and not used by any other cars AFAIK. Fortunately it's also pretty good. It supported wireless CarPlay from day one, and it isn't from a manufacturer that relies on fracking its own customer base for $20/month. Safe to say nobody will be building an aftermarket replacement for it.

You just need a dash kit, which someone probably makes for your specific make/model. If not you could 3d print something. Any good stereo shop can help you out too. Its kind of hard to find a good one though.

I think it drives the instrument cluster too. Maybe instead of a new head unit, what we will need in the future is an open version of Android Automotive OS, like Lineage for our cars.

We use CarPlay with our Mazda. The heads up display on the windshield displays the next turn information from Apple Maps.

Edit: it looks like Lineage has support for Android Automotive: https://lineageos.org/Changelog-30/

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