[helmsb]

Regardless of whether you prefer Apple or Google, the benefit of phone projection is that you can get a good experience with relatively low specs from the head unit because the heavy lifting is done by the phone which can be upgraded independently of the car.

Even powered by Google, the infotainment system is going to age like milk since you’ll be locked into hardware that will be midrange at best, several years old by the time it’s released with no upgrade path.

The only group of consumers that it could possibly benefit is people who want an EV but don’t use a smartphone and thus can’t take advantage of AA or CarPlay. I have a feeling that Venn Diagram is just two independent circles.

This is purely so GM can add subscriptions and harvest more data. Heaven forbid they make their money just selling a car.

[croutonwagon]

100% this is true.

Even a decent head unit these days has a HORRID UI.

I put a Kenwood DMX907s into my truck, specifically for the Carplay and/or Andorid Auto experience (being wireless carplay/AA)

Whenever I have to actually use the headunit, its shockingly bad UI. Ford, GM etc have similar. And they charge out the wazoo to do upgrade on poor unsuspecting customers like my in-laws, that rather opt to come visit and let me deal with the quirks (and there are plenty, including what type of USB-A drive you can use to perform an upgrade, nevermind trying an OTA on wifi and allowing the truck to idle for 4 hour in the driveway...)

Given that most cars now rely on in-dash/touchscreen style feature gadgets to attract new buys over things like reliability/serviceability, you would think they would prefer to allow the techy's do the software and UI design in Apple/Google and not vendor lock one or the other. I would guess whatever company opts to go with a seamless carplay/AA experience, possibly with a control app for things like AC controls, would be king in this spacec (NOTE: ive given up asking for 3 knob AC controls, apparently I the only soul this earth that things 3 knobs that doest require visual attention to adjust the climate in a car is perfection.)

[genmud]

I actually got rid of a chevy truck for this precise reason. GMs design choices in their god-awful infotainment system was so annoying I couldn't stand using it. I got rid of that thing within a year and traded it for a F150, which had a significantly better UI and support for apple carplay (even though it required it to be plugged in).

Its like nobody ever used their vehicles before they shipped it.

Some of my favorite anti-patterns (circa 2015):

- No way to remote start the vehicle with the remote (required a subscription and a phone app to remote start the car) - No way to enter navigation destinations in head unit (required subscription and phone app to do any GPS) - If you didn't have a phone, you had to use a phone based service - Bluetooth connections would randomly stop working - Bluetooth controls would only work from head unit requiring you to remove your hand from the wheel - Some faults would require you to turn off the vehicle, open the door and wait 30 seconds for the head unit to reboot

Overall, 0 / 10... would never own another vehicle from them again.

[hedora]

I recently drove a brand new Chevy Bolt. It seemed to have a navigation system, but whenever I tried to activate it, I think it tried to make a phone call to a human(?). Anyway, it doesn't have a keyboard, and doesn't seem to even have onboard voice recognition. Hard pass.

Car play support was decent about 80% of the time. The other 20%, I had to delete the phone pairing and repair to get it to reconnect.

I wasn't particularly impressed, especially given that this car has been in production since 2017, so I'd expect the radio software, etc. to be stable.

[mleo]

I have 2019 Bolt. I don’t use any of the native infotainment UI. The navigation probably required OnStar subscription and why you were getting connected to a person to take credit card. I use the screen with wireless CarPlay adapter. Very few problems, more with the adapter, and never had to pair the phone more than once. The car is fine, though I would replace it. I drive so little I can not justify the cost of new car, even with trade-in.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

A daily infuriation for me is that my wife’s 2016 Chevy Equinox does not have a way for you to adjust the default volume of the radio in the firmware for some inexplicable reason. When you power on the vehicle, it’s set to “10” on some arbitrary radio station. There is no way to start the car with the volume muted - you are forced to always have the radio on or turn off the entire unit.

https://www.terrainforum.net/threads/radio-always-comes-on-w...

[helmsb]

My 2018 F-150 does something similar and it’s very annoying. I’ve figured out a workaround to mostly prevent it though. There are 3 “groups” of presets for SiriusXM (not a subscriber) and I just set them all to the ID station where there is no sound. It will randomly change to the next group inexplicably but 99% of the time it keeps it from switching to the radio—which I never want.

[DANmode]

These in-dash displays should be universal, with a female USB (C?) port nearby for the user to attach their preferred device.

Same with most desks.

[Terretta]

Agree with you on desks!

We build our desks standard with OWC TB4 dock (same OEM part as Brydge or Kensington's TB4s) and a 3 way watch+phone+airpods charger with pivot head for the phone. Indeed the dock has four TB4/USB-C, and 4 USB-A ports as well.

What amazes me (not really, it's par for course) is even the most modern furniture makers are still building 12 watt (2.4amp) USB-A ports into their desks and conference tables instead of 100w - 240w chargers.

Desks should have a fireproof box underneath that can hold GaN chargers such as this one like a cartridge:

https://www.amazon.com/Charger-Station-WOTOBEUS-5-Ports-Char...

With ultra short and heavy duty connector cables to a replaceable plug strip.

As a super easy retrofit though, just plug this underneath a desk or standing desk, and set the flat part on top next to the monitor(s) stand(s):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09SG31NPT/

[olyjohn]

We had din sized standards for years. Every display now is still some sort of rectangle. There's no reason we can't come up with another din-like standard for displays. Put some fucking 10 cents RCA connectors on it so I can hook up some amps and speakers that don't suck. Put a CAN bus interface so that may head unit can read all that data from your car and display it. Then you can buy whatever infortainment system you want and keep your car from becoming a dated turd inside.

[benhurmarcel]

The huge advantage of having the phone running the infotainment is that you already pay for the phone's data connection. If the car does it you need to pay an additional subscription to get that data connection.

[awill]

THIS!

GM has done this so they can charge monthly fees, and it sucks.

[rektide]

I 90% agree, but also, there's a ton of informational & sensors & systems that need control. With physical knobs/dials/switches/buttons disappearing, the main console now has a lot more obligations than just infotainment like it used to, and it's not clear that letting a phone run the show is really viable with what's afoot, given the scope of systems the display has to control. Wait, sorry. It's not clear how we'd get sufficient data to the phone to let it try. We just don't have clear starting places to let the phone act as a good puppet-master over such an expansive complex multi-screened roving multi-functional device.

This is actually a very interesting ubiquitous & pervasive computing challenge. If we do want to let the phone be the main thing in control, it has to access & orchestrate a lot more systems than it has.

Back in 2012, the BMW/Land Rover/Jaguar folk (I think they were one entity then?) car-maker had started making interesting demos based on an already longstanding very interesting user-first user-sovereign ubicomp project, Webinos (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webinos, still a halcyon model of what connected-computing might have been (but with almost no uptake)), & were making really interesting API-based integrations, over effectively VPN networks directly to their cars. I don't remember whether things like HVAC control or lighting were integrated (I suspect so), but there were definitely a lot of examples of radar/lidar integration, engine information (tach, fuel remaining, battery voltages, et cetera). This >10 year old example is by far the most pro-user most open-possibility system we've ever done, by a country mile. https://www.wired.com/2012/10/bmw-webinos/

One of the most interesting things to me was just a couple short years latter, 2015, with the Jeep hack. The emphasis was that someone could gain access to your car network & do bad things, but this was the first time we'd ever gotten a real peak into a car network & it was fascinating. The often-underlying QNX OS it turns out- even though it is not Linux- runs a bog-standard-ish FreeDesktop DBus service bus, and all car systems are exposed over DBus. ALL car services. So like, one could fully automate & script their own car, via the Jeep hack (which IIRC typically required some physical access to break in via). It would be utterly trivial to script a bunch of nice lighting & sound effects, to roll back the moon-roof & dynamically set a mild thumping VU meter lighting, to dynamically roll the EQ low & high,... the possibilities were so open, over such a common well known easy to control system. The Jeep Hack was the most exciting look at what life could be like, but it was mostly used to sell Fear Uncertainty & Doubt, to insure even less people had access to cars.

Somewhere someplace sometime this trend needs to turn around. Somewhere someplace sometime we need to start figuring out how to pipe relevant systems to the user's agent. Rather than forever letting the car take-over more and more, forever reducing agency, forever shrinking what is possible.

[AdamJacobMuller]

> With physical knobs/dials/switches/buttons disappearing

You have identified the problem.

[rektide]

It does suck that physical interfaces are going away, but I feel like there's still a real & interesting challenge to let people use their own user agent, rather than just become reliant on whatever premade jumble of systems a car happens to cook up for itself.

[rhtgrg]

Yes, removing CarPlay is not a great move, and is rightfully being bashed in this thread -- but these kinds of OEM integrations are far beyond a smartphone subsitute, especially given what's coming down the pipe for auto. As you allude to in your comment already, CarPlay is a "projection", a one-way deal -- whereas most of these integrations make heavy use of data from car sensors, which enables a lot of high fidelity features (including self-driving and advanced HUD indicators) that simply aren't possible with a smartphone, no matter how "independently upgraded" it is.

In the future, perhaps phones can integrate better with cars and enable that kind of experience, but we aren't there today.

[jiggawatts]

You are being down voted in part because you're factually wrong. Apple Carplay is not one-way projection. The phone receives inputs from the car, such as screen touches, the microphone audio from the driver for phone calls, button presses, GPS signals, and even wheel speed information for navigation in tunnels.

The reason this integration is not better is in no shape, way, or form Apple's fault. It is 110% caused by the atrocious hardware and software in cars, which is literally decades behind the rest of the world.

[olyjohn]

I still blame Apple and Google partly. Why do we need 2 proprietary projection methods? How about make one standard for any phone or device to connect to the in car display? They fight to dominate the automotive space, and all we get is more and more lock in.

[rhtgrg]

Unfortunately, I know exactly why I'm being downvoted, and that's not it. It should be rather obvious that "screen touches" are not the category of comms I was talking about.

Perhaps you meant to say "this is why I downvoted you", in which case, I appreciate you taking the time to state your piece.

[Tagbert]

And I don't need that level of integration. The passive CarPlay UI projection is exactly what I want. It's not all about driving to charging stations. That is a rare occurrence.

[hedora]

CarPlay works surprisingly well for driving to charging stations.

You tap add waypoint (or whatever) in Apple Maps, then tap EV charging station, or tap siri, and say "DC fast charger" or whatever. (Tested with a Chevy Bolt).

However the navigation isn't as well integrated with range, etc, as was common on older vehicles.

If this wasn't a blatant "have Google pay us to force our customers to give Google their data" move, I'd be cautiously optimistic that they weren't just trying to shovel crapware into their cars.

[geoelectric]

My Ioniq 5 and (iirc) Teslas charge better if you use the native nav, as it starts preconditioning when a charger is the destination. For mine in particular, I’m not sure there’s another way to fire off preconditioning. May or may not matter but it can make a difference in cold.

[Tagbert]

That only matters in the rare times that I might need to drive long distances to a commercial charging station. 90% of the time I’m charging at home. I don’t want to give up my personalized experience just for the occasional time when I might want to use a different routing app.