It doesn't look nice
Are you suggesting that BMW Audi rehaul their interface to look like iOS 7?
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Pioneer Talks CarPlay: Working with Apple, Pricing, and the Future
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It doesn't look nice
Are you suggesting that BMW Audi rehaul their interface to look like iOS 7?
Not at all. But if they want to include CarPlay they should not be allowed to change the look of it. That takes away from a consistent user experience which I believe is very important to the services success.
Not much Apple can do about that. What Apple can do is make it so that you don't want to switch out of CarPlay, so it doesn't matter. Especially with how many units boot into the last input used.
In my case, the only things I lose by doing it that way is FM radio and offline nav. Both of those can be fixed:
- Get TuneIn on the 3rd party app list.
- Get TomTom/Navigon/Garmin (well, GPS apps in general) on the 3rd party app list.
But having the other modes accessible if/when I need them is a fair trade off at this point. For many uses, it is already at a point where you could pretty much never leave CarPlay in cheaper cars that don't integrate their controls/gauges into the head unit (Subaru for example).
And the icons themselves are literally pulled from the iOS home screen. That's where consistency comes in. Spotify has the same icon in both places, as does Music, Podcasts, Maps, etc. Keeping that consistent is what lets people get stuff done without futzing around and figuring out what a particular car reskins icons into.
All BS. The processing is handled by the iPhone itself. There is no reason the AppRadio can't handle it. The only reason they don't want to make it available in lesser priced models is that it would kill sales to the more expensive units. Why would you need to buy a $1000 headunit if you could get the GPS and all the other features from a $300 touchscreen in the dash?
How is the interface different? It seems like a very striped down limited version of ios7. The icons are the same, the home button is replicated on screen, the signal circles are the same. It's clearly the same design language just made to be simpler for quick viewing and more hands free use.
Yeah, theres a few sony ones (I went with mexbt3100u) with a feature called "app remote". This app enables you to control all the functions of the stereo (source/fm/tuning/eq etc.. via the free sony app while it's hidden away in the glovebox.
Imagine getting a rental now without CarPlay and the radio controls are different than you car, the environmental controls are different than your car, the seat controls are different than your car.... oh the humanity.
That Apple doesn't control...
Of course interfaces designed by others look "un-apple like". Apple doesn't dictate what interfaces companies use when they integrate AirPlay support either.
Apple provides one consistent CarPlay interface that looks the same across different cars, and manufacturers provide their own interface for when an iPhone isn't in use. If they are smart, they'd make it visually compatible with Apple's, but since the interface has nothing to do with Apple, Apple doesn't really get a say in the matter.
Why is this discussion even happening?
Buy you aren't getting into that car expecting it to work and look like yours because it's using the same software. If car makers put their own skins on CarPlay it would inevitably confuse users and distract drivers unnecessarily.
Yup plus temperature range tolerance, and on the better units, the ability to cope well with often truly dirty supply voltage.
There's likely a grain of truth to it - most likely for the Siri processing. The biggest issue that Siri-capable hardware has is a lack of internet connection. The in-car hardware has to be able to process more than just the basic voice commands if it has no access to the internet. To do that you need a large amount of storage as well as a fairly meaty CPU. The phone can do some of this, but who wants to store a giant Siri database on their phone?
Siri doesn't work that way.
What is more likely is that the AppRadio doesn't have much in the way of MPEG-4 decoding (it pulls over raw video in HDMI or composite). No hardware assist, and the CPU may be a tad weak to handle it otherwise. It's probably still doable, and I suspect the real reasoning is more:
"The NEX line is our latest, and we are invested in keeping it relevant as long as it is still our current flagship product. Our engineers haven't looked at the AppRadio 3 yet, and we don't know if the cost/benefit is good enough there versus making sure the (unannounced) AppRadio 4 launches on schedule."
No it doesn't. The car antenna is the same, and any extra antenna for BT or wifi will either be internal or a wire that hangs out the back of the unit.
There have been wifi models for a year, now.
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Good points. Although quality AC transformers in home receivers deal with a much wider range of dirty supply voltage, so not sure that one is a difference.
The headunit has to do no processing at all. It has to do nothing other than be a touchscreen. That's it. Everything is done on the iPhone.
Except as pointed out: decode the MPEG-4 coming over USB. That's not free, especially if you lack a dedicated decoder (which I'd be surprised if the AppRadio has, since it was built to pull raw video over HDMI and the like).
CarPlay is done entirely over USB.
ok great - Follow up question, if I use the HDMI+Apple adapters (required for appradio function on 5S) will using that combo error out Carplay? (USB Lightening direct only)