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by beardedscotsman 1164 days ago
So entirely different experience for me. So 5 years ago I travel to California. Out of all the cars I picked a crappy GM car when there were better cars to pick from the rental lot, why, because I had my iPhone with navigation.

Every time I rented cars since I would always make sure it had apple CarPlay so I could drive any with a familiar experience.

Now today, my car has wireless CarPlay. My experience goes like this, I get in my car, turn it on, my head unit loads apple CarPlay instantly and I have Waze running which I like for speed camera notifications on new roads and my music and playlists instantly accessible.

It’s seamless, instant and I don’t touch my phone it stays in my pocket.

I would never consider a car with out either android auto or CarPlay. It’s mandatory for me and yes I miss out of heads up display of directions, but then I don’t have to pay an additional subscription to traffic info, or pay an update fee for new maps.

2 comments

Same for me. I had gotten rentals with CarPlay before, and I considered it pretty neat but kind of a hassle to have to plug the phone in and find a good place to set it and get the wires situated. Now I own a car with wireless CarPlay and I just never take the phone out of my pocket and it automatically connects and continues the music where it left off and has my google maps ready to go. The car’s infotainment system is passable but not stellar for either maps or music, and I basically never even see it.

I won’t buy another car without wireless CarPlay. Or maybe android auto if it’s also good; I haven’t tried it in years. But I want nothing to do with a car manufacturer’s crappy outdated infotainment systems ever again.

Edit: one fundamental problem with what GM is attempting is that the software embedded in a car is on an extremely slow development cycle and is never upgraded in any significant way. If they want to impress me, they need to keep the CarPlay/Android connection technology and then sell me a super slick GM device that connects to that and is better than my phone. I would gladly buy that, and possibly even pay for some subscription services, but it has to be separate from the vehicle that realistically gets upgraded only when I replace my car every 10 years. A 10 year upgrade cycle for the type of software we are talking about is pathetic.

I am not sure about CarPlay, but Android Auto is able to give directions via HUD.
Depends on the car. For instance some BMWs will offer the hud now, but not all. And for the maps in the dials that’s only Apple Maps and no other nav software. So yeah it’s not perfect at all, but I’ll still take this over a cars standard navigation system