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iPhone Users Report CarPlay Connectivity Issues With iOS 18.4 Update

I am having these issues with my Pioneer 4500nex head unit. It is so irritating. CarPlay has gotten more buggy over time but the 18.4 update has made it way worse.
 
wanha said:
any individual software quality incident by itself is proof of nothing, but taken together they paint a concerning picture of steadily declining software quality at Apple

what we can debate over is what the cause of all this is:

- Is it an increased focus on revenue and profit? ("the Tim Apple" crowd)
- Is it the result Apple's rapid head count growth and the ensuing complexity of communication and coordination?
- Is it the growing complexity of software over time?
- Is it the lack of a singular focus at the top? ("everything would be different if Steve were alive")

My hypothesis is that it's a combination of all four.

It's also why I am pessimistic about Apple's ability to fix this to any significant degree.
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I think this can all be summed up with the notion that Cook has no idea what it means to maintain a software stack like iOS and macOS. He's gutted maintenance development to the bone in order to concentrate on new useless features that he hops will make him look good at the Keynote. His ignorance is now hurting the Apple brand. He just needs to go.
 
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I had these from the first beta and reported to Apple multiple times. Mine isn’t as bad as this though, the map on the instrument cluster is always shown as a dark map, regardless of the map shown on the main screen. Have to toggle dark mode on and off again to get it to change to the correct mode. 2024 Range Rover Sport.
 
nt5672 said:
I think this can all be summed up with the notion that Cook has no idea what it means to maintain a software stack like iOS and macOS. He's gutted maintenance development to the bone in order to concentrate on new useless features that he hops will make him look good at the Keynote. His ignorance is now hurting the Apple brand. He just needs to go.
Click to expand...

I think that's partly but not entirely true. We can't know what is in Tim Cook's head and heart, which means "he just hopes it will make him look good in a keynote" can neither be proven or disproven.

It's an enticing hypothesis because it's so damn simple, that "it's all one guy's fault".

Man how easy that would be!

I'm wholly convinced the truth is a lot more complicated than that.
 
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I’ve experienced this in my Toyota. Was troubleshooting to see if it was the car USB port, the cable, or my new phone.

My existing in-car cable and also Apple cable do not work. It constantly connects/disconnects for charging when I move the cable.

I picked up a Belkin cable and all is fine. Which makes me think still it’s my phone (16 Pro). Have yet to go to the Apple Store for them to run a hardware test. It’s only in the car though that I’m having these charging/connectivity issues. 🤷‍♂️
 
Apple's updates this week has been some of the most buggy updates I have experienced. Face ID broke on iOS, unread Mail badge missing from macOS. My watchOS no longer receives some notifications and haptic notifications are broken. Honestly all my devices are now missing what has been basic features for years. At this point, what's the point of doing future updates? My devices will only break more.
 
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DesignTime said:
Apple's updates this week has been some of the most buggy updates I have experienced. Face ID broke on iOS, unread Mail badge missing from macOS. My watchOS no longer receives some notifications and haptic notifications are broken. Honestly all my devices are now missing what has been basic features for years. At this point, what's the point of doing future updates? My devices will only break more.
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Excited for the "full redesign of iOS?"
 
xDeadTechx said:
The latest update also moved the text to the upper part of the screen when playing audio.. past versions was centered but now there’s a ton of open space that looks.. off.View attachment 2499012
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I see the difference, but its not very noticible on my Mazda screen.

18.3
IMG_0844.jpeg

18.4
IMG_0845.jpeg
 
Audi A6 2021
Wireless CarPlay has worked pretty much flawlessly since purchasing the car - multiple iPhones and iOS updates.
18.4 has finally broken it for me...
Monday after the update wouldn't connect. Tuesday deleted CarPlay connection from car and phone, added again and it worked ok until today. Same procedure has worked again, hopefully it gets fixed in the next update 🤞🏻
 
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CamiMR said:
Audi A6 2021
Wireless CarPlay has worked pretty much flawlessly since purchasing the car - multiple iPhones and iOS updates.
18.4 has finally broken it for me...
Monday after the update wouldn't connect. Tuesday deleted CarPlay connection from car and phone, added again and it worked ok until today. Same procedure has worked again, hopefully it gets fixed in the next update 🤞🏻
Click to expand...

"Reboot your device" (and similar tactics of unpair/re-pair) used to be the type of joke we'd make at the expense of Windows & Android users.

What a depressing timeline this is.
 
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My only problem is that my car doesn't support CarPlay, but it can still play music cassettes perfectly fine!

Alright, I shall remain positive!

I have a huge upgrade to look forward to whenever I do buy a new car.
 
ifxf said:
And people wonder why some car manufacturers are ditching CarPlay.
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It's the auto makers who suck at implementation, and precisely the reason why they should be deferring to Apple for their infotainment software; instead of refusing to work with them, and forcing that Google trash on us, like GM is doing, that will only serve one purpose: to spy on you and phone home your driving habits so they can sell data about you behind your back with no opt-out.

Anywho, my 2018 vehicle has always had all kinds of weird CarPlay behaviors. Sometimes the microphone doesn't send audio back to CarPlay, so voice prompts can't be responded to. Sometimes it just crashes while driving and needs to reconnect (wired CarPlay, mind you). The most notorious one is that you have to plug your phone in at a specific point when the infotainment system is booting up or CarPlay just won't work. Otherwise, you have to turn off the vehicle and wait 2 minutes for the electronics to fully shut down to try again. There's no wireless CarPlay support, which sucks. But honestly, I'm sure their implementation of that would be so bad that it would probably be unusable.

I bought one of those wireless CarPlay adapters recently at a good price just to try it out, and it runs into a lot of the same challenges plugged into the car. Takes forever to show up in the infotainment system when it does work. Often it just...doesn't and I have to fidget with it unplugging and plugging to try to get it to try again. I didn't realize that iOS 18.4 had these issues. These might actually be what's happening to me with the wireless unit.

So I rented a car last week that had wireless CarPlay and it was flawless. I was overwhelmed with how well it worked. Turned on the car and it came up within 5 seconds every time. Not only that, but it didn't have to pause/mute music to do Siri prompts -- it lowered the audio volume and the Siri responses only came through the driver door speaker. I didn't even know CarPlay could do that. It all worked so well that I never even felt the need to try wired CarPlay.

It all comes down to implementation. Some auto makers are forward-thinking and going to embrace what their customers want, do a good job with the implementation, and that will help their sales. Some auto makers are going to give us the proverbial finger and tell us that they don't care what we want and will force their Google spyware on their customers regardless. I can tell you which vehicles I won't be considering the next time I'm in the market for a car.
 
Works fine for me on 15 Pro. If anything 18.3 was more troublesome for me.
 
HMI said:
My only problem is that my car doesn't support CarPlay, but it can still play music cassettes perfectly fine!

Alright, I shall remain positive!

I have a huge upgrade to look forward to whenever I do buy a new car.
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But it probably supports iPod Connect.
 
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This is not exactly a new issue, but it happens more often now. I've had issues with this since the iPhone 12 Pro. Sometimes it just refuses to show connected. I've had this happen on multiple phones and cars. I'm glad it is getting some attention.
 
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