1) Not only are touch screens a very poor interactor in the first place [0], but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls? For operating complex vehicles/apparatus, you just cannot do better than tangible controls. Knobs, switches, sliders can be operated without looking at them while giving rich tactile feedback, they have no modes = 0 risk for confusion, you know where they're going to be located on your dashboard regardless of what you're doing, etc.
2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point. Seriously- then you'll be able to fiddle all you want with your phone, drink, travel while sleepy, arguing your spouse, whatever you want- we'll be saving tens of thousands of lives every year [1], and the secondary social benefits will be fantastic (less cars produced since they don't have to sit on a parking lot 99% of the time, people won't have to spend a year's worth of wages just to buy a car (and then a significant chunk to maintain it), etc.). If society were a game of Civilization, I'd be putting all of my resource points towards the "Self driving cars" achievement.
Of course the insurance companies, car manufacturers, oil companies, etc. don't want that to happen- but seriously, fuck those guys. The benefits on human society at large here are so significant that there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men.
[0] http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
(the views in this post are a bit on the extreme side- but that's how interesting conversations get started :-)
This reduces distraction.
You have to remember to take into account human behavior. In the real world, people get into their vehicle and use their phone's map application, as well as text, phone, and music applications. Not only do they do this, they do it in overwhelming numbers.
This product takes common behavior that people engage in (and will continue to), and makes it safer and less confusing to engage in while driving.
Vehicles have knobs and touch-screens now. This tech doesn't change that dynamic, -it works with the UI elements already present in order to reduce fumbling around with your phone and tiny touch-targets on your mobile device.
>2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point.
That's besides the point. They aren't here yet, and they won't be in the immediate future. Making driving safer in the meantime isn't fluff.
> there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men.
What a terrible, low-value comment to make in this forum.
When you say "This reduces distraction." you mean compared to holding the phone and doing those actions, right?
The way I would account for human behavior is to intelligently disable certain functionality as the car is moving. Compared to someone else's life, how important is that text message? Even dictating a text message takes some cognitive load.
Let's not mix the word "safer" and "distracted driving".
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/distracted_driving/
That out of the way, my VW will duplicate much of what appears on the nav screen into a small display between the speedometer and tachometer. Having used a few heads up displays in cars I am not if I really want to go that route.
Still, when moving the car should be displaying relevant information only. I would much rather have a talking car than one trying to show me
Avionics has been moving away from tangible indicators and controls for some time. Honeywell has already announced that is working on "touchscreen-enabled avionics for the next-generation air transport and business aviation cockpits" [1]. I also believe SpaceX runs a largely virtualised command centre.
>Self-driving cars...every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point
Imagine a bond that pays, into perpetuity, 100% of the profits earned by auto manufacturers worldwide on non-self-driving cars. How much would you be willing to pay for this bond? Likely a non-trivial amount.
Wanting to get to Mars doesn't make a Moon mission "useless fluff". The incremental steps add to our learning and help finance, even if indirectly, more ambitious goals. One could interpret Apple's move as an incremental step towards a future where a car's value is inside the cabin, not under the bonnet.
[1] http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/avd...
And in the air, you have a little more time to look at the instruments without risking crashing into a meeting car or driving off the road. I suspect (hope) that the current trend with touchscreens in cars will be a fad, and that manufacturers will realize that some features (climate control etc) are best implemented with traditional controls.
It's sad when my 10 year old car has a UI on that part that allows me to use it without taking the eyes off the road.
Nothing to improve road safety like elaborate arguments with a speech recognition engine...
So insurance, oil and car companies are filled with stodgy, greedy, old men who we are not to care about, but I guess SV is filled with cool, hip, innovative people?
Get your head out of the sand. I'll take the innovation of Ford and Toyota over Facebook and WhatsApp anyday of the week.
'greedy old white men' should justify dead on its own, but it also completely misses the point.
Not to discuss your other points, but who are you to say the human brain has evolved or not to deal with X or Y ? The human brain is actually very capable of dealing with multiple sensory signals, and the fact that most people can drive cars on motorways without crashing in each other's every 2 seconds suggest that the human brain is perfectly up to the task.
The second thing on the page:
Control with a word. Or a touch. Or a twist.
CarPlay features Siri voice control and is specially designed for driving scenarios. It also works with your car’s controls — knobs, buttons, or touchscreen. And the apps you want to use in the car have been reimagined, so you can use them while your eyes and hands stay where they belong.
It'll work with the knobs/buttons in the cars that have them and integrate them with whatever functionality they have (I have an old boss who had a Porsche Cayenne with a large screen controlled entirely with side buttons and a small scroll thingy, which was super awkward as the device's interface seemed designed with a touch screen in mind), but it seems that the car industry is largely moving towards touch screens in cars, with brands like Tesla leading the movement. I wouldn't be surprised if innovations like these encourage an even faster move towards touch screens in cars- Apple sure loves its touch screens.
I am almost 100% certain that we won't see that kind of thing even within the next few decades, if ever. Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet.
That's because automatic transmission is the worst and invented by the devil.
More seriously, using an automatic transmission results in trade-offs, for instance fuel usage was the historical number 1 sticking point with automatics guzzling up the petrol compared to manuals. Modern engineering has closed that gap but there are still issues related to control - ironically a move to fully autonomous cars would solve most of them (principally in non-autonomous cars drivers in manual transmission cars can use knowledge of future road conditions to make gear selection decisions that an automatic transmission cannot make as they have only a limited input set)
Come on -- self-driving cars are already legal in California --
"Self-driving cars now legal in California" : http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-c...
-- and the military are testing self-driving trucks to prevent IUD casualties in hostile areas --
"Army tests self-driving trucks for the next big war: " http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/army-tests-self-drivi...
-- so your doubts are anachronistic to say the least.
> Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet.
Hey -- wake up and smell the Cappuccino. :)
The self-driving car technology is also very viable to use right now. I have seen Google self-driving cars on the freeways driving next to me. It would not surprise me if they were being sold within the next 5 years, commonplace within 20-30 years.
After having a couple of cars with automatic gearboxes (including a 4.4L BMW - so lack of power wasn't the problem) I find that I am much happier with a manual gearbox.
NB I'm not resistant to new technology in cars - my current car has automatic parking and I use it a lot and normally leave the lights on auto as well.
[Note I am in the UK]
> I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic
> transmission yet.
Haha. 1) Driving automatic cars is so boring. 2) it makes your body unbalanced constantly since you use a single foot, therefore your back will ache over long periods of driving. 3) You cannot adjust your speed as fast with an automatic car, we are stuck with binary controls while manual cars provide all the flexibility you need in real, and critical driving situations. All serious cars (like sports cars) are by far usually manual.
I can even see it being a sort of a 'mini-bus service', for example, noting that you and 4 others are doing a pickup in an area and doing a school drop off, offering to split the cost of the journey.
The point is that individual car ownership doesn't really 'work' in a city too well.
Getting to the point where this is socially acceptable shouldn't take too long. The reduction in cost base and the fact you can sit in the car and work/play should make it very attractive.
In many countries in Europe driving a car is considered a pleasure and a skill.
Driving manual vs. automatic is considered the same as playing a guitar vs. playing Guitar Hero.
1. Cars capable of making decisions real-time, on the road, given unpredictable stimuli 2. A network of things, between the cars on the road, to allow optimization and homogeneity of traffic 3. Regulatory environments permissive of autonomous vehicles.
All of this is well under way and I'd say conservatively we'll see robust networks in less than a decade.
Yes. Without question. It's a process that has an exponential adoption curve to it.
The benefits from self-driving cars are so enormous its ridiculous.
Productivity goes up, so for any entrepreneur, a self-driving car will become a necessity (no more wasting an hour of unproductive work to get to the airport, for example). Pollution goes down because self-driving cars have to be electric. Self-driving cars can go recharge themselves at a nearby central charging station instead of requiring expensive charging stations at every company. Parking can be decentralized (somewhat, eventually you have to cope with self-driving cars causing a mini rush hour when they come get their passengers). You don't need "long term" parking anywhere. You can take your bike to work, but call your car in if it rains.
It might not cause the revolution that the Internet has, but it's gonna be damn close.
If anybody cares, here is my theory (at least for Germany, where I am from): Driving lessons are very expensive in Germany and you have to decide if you want to learn automatic or manual transmission. If you learn on automatic transmission, you are only allowed to drive automatic cars. If you learn on a manual, you are allowed to drive both. The prices for the drivers license are the same. So, most people will learn to drive stick. Since they are then only used to driving stick, they are actually more comfortable with than with automatic. I have met quite a few people who I had to explain how to drive an automatic (it's obviously super easy if you already know how to drive a manual). So, I think it's want you learned first that you will stick with.
I wonder if there's been a study that looks at the safety of manual vs. automatic transmission vehicles. This coming from a guy who made it a pre-req that his future wife drive stick...
http://ideas.4brad.com/navias-induct-officially-sale-250-000
There was absolutely zero tactile feedback on all of them, as their were dedicated buttons that had to be cycled through to reach a state....and the only way you could know if you were getting to what you wanted was if you looked at the tiny little digital display.
Want preset radio station #x? Jam the preset button a few times.
Want to warm the passenger side a bit? Jam a button to select that side, then select heat, the turn it up.
That's on a Honda, a Cadillac & a Toyota spanning a decade in years....so I'm guessing you must be referring to pre-1990 vehicles that literally had dial tuners and manual button to control valves...and 5x less options for stuff that could even be adjusted?? Or did you speak too soon?
Here's an example of a car from ca. 2005 that has simple, manual controls for climate control. If the passenger is too warm, there's a separate button for opening the window :)
Some newer cars also have separate dials for heat on each side: http://static.autoexpress.co.uk/sites/autoexpressuk/files/st... ..but of course they still have pushbuttons for fan speed.
The word for what is missing from these interfaces is "affordances": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance
Your pre-1990 estimate is way, way, embarrassingly off, at best.
| but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls
They haven't. Most new planes and retrofits are moving to touchscreens. It allows the pilot to display only the important information on screen at a given time. Like the airport map, for example.
So no I don't think that every new innovation is bad and useless. There will always be auto racing and fast cars. There's nothing else like it.
They are. I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion on HN, but I would like to drive my own car, thank you very much. I don't mind automatic mode on long journeys on the motorway, but other than that, I want to drive myself - and I hope that automatic driving will not be forced upon us during my lifetime.
It's odd though that the number of auto accidents in the US has not increased with the increased use of in-dash touch screens and SmartPhones. Deaths from auto accidents have also been on the decline. It seems like people are doing a pretty good job adapting.
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
13.4 12.5 18.3 11.8 10.9 10.7 10.4 10.6 10.2 10.8
There's a lot of factors that go into reducing auto accidents, so that correlation doesn't really tell us anything about the danger of driving with touch screens in the car.
Or something else is making it safer
They're not, Garmin has offered not only custom touch screen flight decks[0] but they also have an ipad app that can be flown with.[1]
[0]https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/aviation/flight-decks/g3000-... [1]https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garmin-pilot/id340917615?mt=...
Please stop doing this
For one, BMW does this right. The large screen is controlled by the iDrive knob in the middle, which rotates with haptic detents, is pushable, and has 4-directions on it. All of the major controls are still present with physical controls: radio volume, presets, dual temp control, fan speed, vents, cruise control, phone, etc. The only time you would regularly use the iDrive is for navigation, which is always going to be kludgy because of the complexity of putting in addresses. I welcome voice and touch here.
http://www.moibibiki.com/images/bmw-4-series-interior-12.jpg
Mainly because of technology. But more modern systems are doing away with this.
" For operating complex vehicles/apparatus, you just cannot do better than tangible controls."
You're not controlling the vehicle.
" Knobs, switches, sliders can be operated without looking at them while giving rich tactile feedback, they have no modes = 0 risk for confusion, you know where they're going to be located on your dashboard regardless of what you're doing, etc."
Physical controls in airplanes have caused confusion. Wrong switches have been activated by mistake several times (either because someone bumped into them, or switched the one next to the one intended)
It would would be simple to not allow touch interaction while driving. So before you start and if you pull over you can text/call/setup navigation which is easy to do on the touch screen and hard to do with a few buttons.
Once moving the touch screen should dumb down to stupid mode with only one valid interaction: hitting the screen hard a few times should silence the navigation voice (a feature I have found missing in most current models).
I'm not joking around here either. I firmly believe we need safer cars, and self-driving cars would be a great step towards that, but the real issue here is how car-dependent our society is. If more trips could be done on foot or via public transportation, the U.S. would be a much safer place.
Our reliance on car driving makes other forms of transportation unsafe too. The risk of riding a bike is not that you'll fall or hit another bicyclist, but rather that a car will hit you (and probably not even be cited). The biggest risk to walking is that a car will hit you in a cross walk or on a sidewalk (will trying to avoid hitting another car), just because. And we're so cavalier about killing people with cars.
We don't need have to wait (or hope) for technology to save us. We can build better places to live today. Places that are safer and healthier. And that largely starts by making towns and cities more walkable.
When I walk and take the train to work, I can send texts, read news stories, listen to podcasts and check Twitter, all without endangering people's lives. And no futuristic technology is needed to accomplish this.
If society we're a game, I'd be putting my resources to building walking neighborhoods and better public transportation. Even if you have self driving cars, cars are still bad for your health from the lack of exercise and the pollution.
By the way, touch screens in avionics are gaining a lot of traction in the commercial aviation market. See one such example here: http://www.rockwellcollins.com/prolinefusion/
I'm curious if Apple will be controlling what apps are allowed to work with CarPlay to keep people from putting millions of Flappy Bird clones on a screen that drivers shouldn't be looking at. My guess would be yes, but all it says for now is "Stay tuned for even more supported apps coming soon."
What I would love to see going forward is real consideration for the optimal mix of buttons, touch-gestures, and voice control. A promising design [1,2] is the combination of mode-selection buttons and a thumb touch pad on the steering wheel. Left thumb holds down one of several modes, right thumb makes a simple gesture (no visual attention needed) and boom, you've got a lot of options for controlling things without taking your eyes of the road.
[1] graphic representation: http://i.imgur.com/sHhDLKZ.jpg
[2] pilot study: http://pro.sagepub.com/content/57/1/1643.short
Remember both Microsoft and Apple are using the same voice technology and sound libraries from Nuance Communication [2]. You can change the radio, mp3-playlist, do phone calls, listen the SMS, etc., though the internet enabled services are missing in older editions.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Embedded_Automotive
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuance_Communications#Partnersh....
Carplay seems to be just Apple reinventing the wheel.
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.
All of this on a Windows Phone device that stays in my pocket, connected to a single-DIN aftermarket stereo without a fancy LCD, in a 2000 model Toyota. Recent cars with advanced navigation head units can do much, much more than mine. I think Apple is a bit behind the curve here.
If you really think they are just mirroring the display, then you didn't even look at the linked Apple page.
The point here is the touchscreen appears to be an extension of the phone.
But this is Apple, so perhaps they want to make sure the interface only works with their phones. That makes sense as they are designing the in-car interface in the first place.
[1] http://bgr.com/2013/09/25/apple-maps-disaster-runway/
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...
[3] http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/11/new-clas...
I do hope it supports other mapping apps though, or if not I hope Apple gets pressured to support that. And I don't really see why they wouldn't, it makes their product better.
When I'm driving on the highway with spotty coverage, I very often hear "Turn Left in 50 m" when the magic fails and the GPS (mobile phone running TomTom in this case) now thinks I teleported on a side road.
Similarly, you could get yourself lost for hours if you follow your GPS blindly in a small European city. Actually, you would probably get into a traffic accident before that.
When I see people comment on GPS, I can only imagine that in 20 years, you will see headline like "Family had to be rescued after their autonomous car failed to exit Walmart Parking lot for 5 hours and ran out of gas. Google made no comment."
I wondered what sort of international airport can you drive onto the runway of without being stopped so I looked it up:
http://dot.alaska.gov/faiiap/pdfs/GA_Control_Surf.pdf
It's the Alaskan sort secured by yellow lines and red signs. Now I'm not saying Apple isn't at fault here but I would put greater blame on the airport. I would expect if not manned or electronic gates with an intercom at least there should be a barrier the of some sort to act as a warning. I'm not sure signs and lines are enough for something like an airport.
I guess being Alaska manning gates/opening windows or getting out of cars are seriously unappealing activities in the Winter.
I would have expected/hoped that it would be possible to simply silently improve the server-side algorithms because of all the data being sent in and analysed. But so far it's been a big disappointment. Google Now is far better and more useful.
Siri exited beta with iOS 7. As for updates there have been quite a lot but nothing major. They added new more human sounding voices. They added new sources (Wikipedia, Twitter). They added other functions like returning calls, playing voicemail, adjusting brightness. That was just iOS 7. iOS 6 added more I believe.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id284815942?mt=8
At least I think that's Google Now. It looks similar though maybe it's missing some features?
Of course with it not being integrated into the experience it's not quite the same. (can't appear on your home screen etc...)
3 Months ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bohfoK-edfU
While this feels years overdue the iPad was first released in 2010 and auto companies are terribly slow at change.
And cars take years to cycle through the global economy - mine is 15 years old. So perhaps velcro or a stand, an iPad, and bluetooth or wire to the radio is a cheap alternative. Or perhaps we will se an aftermarket service as with car radios.
The initial launch partners (Ferrari, Hyundai, Honda, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz and Volvo) are all "foreign", which speaks volumes about the adeptness of the US domestic manufacturers.
<edit - and yes, electric self-autonomous cars are the endgame. So will this be the control interface?>
Funny to see Hyundai called a great marquee by apple... In S Korea, Samsung is considered THE marquee company and Hyundai Motor is a few steps below it...
I'm over in the States, but are you sure that's really true about Samsung Motors, by the way? After about ten minutes of searching just now, the story looks very different -- Samsung may be a marquee brand in most other markets, but it looks like they're a complete disaster as an auto company. Renault took majority ownership of Samsung Motors in 2000. And their sales have been plummeting since 2010; they're behind both Hyundai and Kia in South Korea, and slashed a rather staggering 80% of their workforce in 2012. One report from that time period said that Samsung wanted to take their name off "Renault Samsung Motors" but Renault wouldn't let them.
CarPlay is a start, but I want something that doesn't require me to buy an iPhone and plug it in.
Value add. Only Ford has Sync.
Just like only Sony TVs have blah and only Fujitsu alarm clocks have foo.
Sure, no one buys the cars for that. You want a Honda so you buy one and are forced to get BazCarfoTainment 13.
But it's the most popular software among small cars (based on models sold) so it must be good, right? Surely that gas mothing to do with the other aspects of the car (except VTEC(r), VSP(r), Fold-o-seats(r), propell-o-toroids, etc.)
I can use any iPhone, Android or feature phone with bluetooth with my Mercedes right now. It will sync with the phone using bluetooth standards to display call history, place calls, receive calls, play and list music on the device, display and edit my contact book.
But I recently switched from an iPhone to an android phone - so the next Merc I buy presumably will be a huge step back for me in terms of connectivity with my device.
This is really just a makeover for a problem thats already been solved. I can't help to think that some of the decisions Apple has been making lately (different colored backs on the iphones) were concepts that Jobs was totally against, and then now that he is gone those that were for it are in charge. Apple is going rotten in my opinion.
Don't forget the iMac which came in thirteen different colours, or the iBook G3 with the 5 coloured shells, or the iPod mini, nano and shuffle.
This is the black box with access to your contacts and browsing history plus the ability to push Taco Bell ads directly to drivers. How much are your iMessage history and watering hole checkins and groundspeed worth to your insurer? Did you consider your insurer passing the cost of their access back to you with markup?
Of the countries supported by Dictation/Siri for most functions, that leaves out China and Hong Kong. Traffic in Maps, however, is supported in additional countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand (wait, why don't they get Dictation/Siri?), Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden. Strangely enough, this means Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, and Korea all have CarPlay but no Traffic information. Huh. Funny way to sell a car navigation system, I'm sure they'll add it soon. :)
As for me, a Canadian, I'm surprised to note that Siri is actually that global now. Even restaurant reservations works in Canada and Mexico now (but not outside North America yet). I shouldn't complain, though. I didn't realise movie reviews and showtimes were limited to basically Canada, UK and USA. (Australia gets reviews, but no showtimes.)
Notably absent from the Facebook and Twitter integration with Siri (say what?) is China, of course.
This feels strange and needlessly wall-garden, exactly like the apple TV before airplay.
I'd probably go BMW instead of Audi if the BMW had better iOS integration, even though I generally prefer Audis. I assume an Android user would go the other way.
I'm happily surprised to see Apple go this route, as I suspect/hope I don't have to have an iPhone in order to make use of the cars built-in display.
Also, if auto manufacturers are going the virtualized route, their is very little preventing Android/WP/Ubuntu/Firefox/etc. to work just as easily.
Then Apple can act as a gateway and the automakers cannot put a veto on which app goes to the car dashboard or not.
I think we can learn from the fiasco of Renault trying to create a plateform with their R-link system. In this case the car manufacturer does the filtering of the apps but the rewards are low for the developers :
- antique system : android already 3-4 years old!
- no access to the car data : it's like making a smartphone app without being able to use the camera in your app. So as the user experience designer you're loosing very important data about the context of the user.
- low number of users : not many cars are sold with this system. (Carplay do not have many users yet but has much more potential of growth than R-link).
The marketing page of r-link : http://www.renault.co.uk/innovations/r-link/
I think people already showed many time they do want control, variety and choice.
I want to swap out my phone for a better in-car experiences, not switch out my entire car (as is the current way of doing it).
If this enables that and makes it possible across brands, that's fantastic. In a way it would be an unprecedented level of tech standardization in the car world.
This means it'll be a hard sell to auto-makers in the US since most want only 1 computer in the car (to do infotainment AND sensor control). This is the holy grail currently in infotainment systems.
The only automaker moving in this direction currently is Ford by using blackberry's platform which is Realtime. The problem then being your downgrading from a 600MHz PPC chip to a dual core ARM. Your heat generation decreases significantly, but so does your computational muscle.
Honestly I'll be surprised if this catches on with US automakers.
Source: Close friends who could possibly lose their jobs if I give names. Or suppliers, some of the outfits who know about this are small.
On another note, I was actually expecting Android to do this first. Interesting times ahead!
Also, putting the emphasis on voice control is great, but I'm really not sure Siri is up to the task.
If I had to express my first opinion on Carplay, it'd be "new and shiny but probably not functional enough for it to *really* work as advertised".The other day I loaded a youtube video on my phone and played it over bluetooth. The in car system didn't understand play and pause and thought I was trying to control my music playlist. It kept switching between YT video and iphone playlist. It was awful.
On mobile phone side it is supported by number of Nokia Symbian phones and quite many Sony Ericsson smartphones.
Otherwise, my newest car is seven years old, so maybe I'll get CarPlay around 2022.
Inbuilt car audio, navigation and entertainment systems age very badly. Seeing a car with a CD or even a cassette drive feels very dated. (the iOS Carplay photos feature a slot CD drive, very old-school for Apple the re-inventor of the mp3 player - the iPod)
says it all. No it doesn't make this conversation interesting. It makes it divisive. It makes people fight each other for no reason. It confuses and disillusions. YOU ARE THE PROBLEM, not greedy old white men, you racist.
Just say no to phones (in any form) while you drive.
Multitasking is a myth. Try driving on a new road while chitchatting to someone siting next to you; or, even try walking fast while thinking something hard or even recollecting something.
I have no trust in Apple Maps.
My first time using Apple Maps was for driving directions from NY to Baltimore. It was mostly pleasant and the voice directions worked.
Mildly annoying though was that when I took a side road to grab lunch, it kept pestering me to get back on the road.
Granted, Google maps does the same thing, or did at the time. I switched it up for a short leg of the trip and when I stopped for gas, I nearly lost my mind when Google Maps did it too. How hard could it be to have a side trip mode or to understand the driver is hungry?
CarPlay is compatible with these iPhone models
CD drive on the marketing photo, very retro for a company that reinvented the mp3 player with iPod. USB-port is very common, but will CarPlay support it?
Definitely not onboard with providing drivers another distraction in the car.
A good responsive/adaptive layout will give Apple options for more diverse screen sizes and proportions from cars to watches to other phone and tablet aspect ratios.
Can't wait.
Who writes this crap? Do they even read the copy back to themselves? Jesus. Lose the taglines!
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/03/03Apple-Rolls-Out-C...
[0] http://www.qnx.com/products/neutrino-rtos/neutrino-rtos.html
[1] http://www.qnx.com/products/qnxcar/
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-22/ford-said-to-swap-b...
[3] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230461040...
[0] http://www.openautoalliance.net/
[1] http://officialandroid.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/new-partnershi...
[2] http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2014/01/06/were-joining-google-...