Carplay seems to be just Apple reinventing the wheel.
To be fair, that's basically Apple's business models. Just add some proprietary standards and some software patents and you are good to go.
Sure, every invention is based on work of others, but Apple has still made huge improvements on multiple areas.
MP3 players were already pretty mainstream when the iPod came around and it didn't really add much. And the iPad was merely an iteration on the iPhone.
But every rule has an exception. I'll grant that Apple definitely redefined what a smartphone was with the iPhone.
That's like saying that cell phones with color screens were already pretty mainstream when the iPhone came around and it didn't really add much.
I think you have forgotten just how different the iPod was.
Let's add the Mac to this party. Do you think that the Mac was just reinventing earlier standards on the market?
> I think you have forgotten just how different the iPod was.
It wasn't very different. Jesus Apple fans talk a lot of shit. The first iPhone couldn't even install apps, stop this ridiculous rose tinted view.
In the world of techies, perhaps, but it hadn't made much of a dent per-iPad in the mainstream consumer market. http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/1695501/ipod-mp3-player-ad...
What the iPod added was fewer features (yes, that's a good thing when you do it right) and usability. It did what people wanted, and in a way that regular people could actually use. For reasons I can't comprehend, a large number of technical people continue to be unable to see the value in that, but it does provide immense value, and that's why the iPod was so popular for so long.
"Gaining widespread adoption" was never an area Apple was very good at. They were always good at creating consumer-focused PCs. The initial line of MacBooks and iMacs are good examples of this — minuscule user base compared to Windows, but built to Apple's standards of what a computer should be. Their initial aim for the iPhone was to capture 1% of the market, they hardly expected the success they received.
And sometimes doing things simply in a "more polished" way is revolutionary.
The early, pre-iPod mp3 players were an absolute mess when it came to navigating your music. That doesn't show up on a spec sheet, but "creating the first mp3 player that lets you actually navigate your music in a simple and enjoyable manner" is pretty freaking revolutionary in my book.
It also has really respectable sound quality and volume, which is not always the case (to put it gently) for teeny tiny electronics.
For instance it seems possible to equip a vehicle with, let's say, the Open Automotive Alliance's in-car Android system that can use Project Mode with Android phones and also implement CarPlay for when iPhones are present. After all, CarPlay appears to be dependent on the phone's OS for all displays and whatnot, with CarPlay just being the protocols to link the in-car system to iOS in the necessary manner.
This is just speculation, we can't know for certain until some of the technical details emerge, but it seems unlikely that car manufacturers would limit their systems interoperability to one platform.
So the thing is usable without a phone: GPS, music, etc. You can answer calls for any bluetooth enabled phone. Advanced functionality like siri would only work with an iPhone.
This is a new market with new use-cases. Starting by making the basics work well is a good starting point.
I think that what iPhone (and Android shortly after) did for phones can be done for a bunch of things, including conventional PCs. Apple is uniquely capable of targeting the high end but they are not the only ones capable here. They'll need to execute very well.