Best news out of WWDC2018. Now, we need wireless CarPlay in every vehicle produced and no one should buy new vehicle purchase without such CarPlay functionality.
Unfortunately some makers charge for it and BMW starting this fall will treat it like a subscription. That is nothing but greed.
One very good reason I was put off buying BMW. Subscription. Really. Its bad enough its an expensive add-on never mind being charged for it. It should be considered a value add feature.
I’m living in the second biggest City in the Philippines with a population of 1.5 million people. Five major roads are named in AM. Impossible to use it for navigation. My Chevy Supports CarPlay and to have alternatives like Waze or Google Map is a great improvement.
Best news out of WWDC2018. Now, we need wireless CarPlay in every vehicle produced and no one should buy new vehicle purchase without such CarPlay functionality.
Unfortunately some makers charge for it and BMW starting this fall will treat it like a subscription. That is nothing but greed.
Buy VW/Audi/Porsche instead.
Most new VWs at the SE trim (~$20K+ models) now include CarPlay. I don't know about the other Audi models but for some reason, CarPlay is not at all available (not even as an option) on the "base" Audi A3 e-tron Premium trim, and it is only available as part of a $3,600 Technology Package option on the Premium Plus trim. They do include it at the Prestige trim (starting at ~$48K)...
Note to Audi: Just because one is able to afford it, doesn't mean one should have to pay extra for CarPlay in a car that is basically a real nice VW--throw out a bone, and include CarPlay on all Audi models and trims!
One thing that I want from CarPlay is weather functionality, especially the ability to look at radar. I get why Apple does not include it because radar is a form of video but so is map data.
Why not just improve Apple Maps and keep users closer to their chest?
Apple Maps improvements are not happening fast enough, they'll know exactly how many iPhone users use waze/google vs Apple Maps and decided it's better to let those users have their preferred navigation app work with Carplay than frustrate them or even lose them entirely as potential CarPlay users.
I go back to Apple Maps every few months to see if it's improved but it's still miles behind Google Maps, in Scotland anyway. If I search for a place I know is local, i.e. last weekend I wanted to check how far it was to Huntly from where I was in Alford to estimate an arrival time. I knew it was roughly 15miles north but Apple Maps first result took me to HuntlEy, OH, USA! Still failing at the most simplest things in my experience.
Did it have side by side navigation and Apple Music? That would be awesome.
No. It would not be awesome. You run whatever Music application first, get your music playing, and then switch to navigation. Or do it in the reverse order. One thing on the screen at a time, less distraction.
I would like Apple to make a USB dongle for CarPlay enabled infotainment systems that is a wireless interface with the phone. That way even older CarPlay units could be wireless!
It doesn't make sense from an installed userbase- they know how few they'd sell based on how much CarPlay is out there in use, and how small a percentage of those users would buy such a thing.
Glad to see we can ditch Apple Maps- it is not ready for prime time for accurate navigation or traffic routing.
Hopefully we will get better streaming radio options. TuneIn Radio Pro has been on CarPlay for a long time but makes my iPhone run hot and no other app I have does that. They have been notified many releases ago and it still is a problem.
I would love to see a weather plug in to navigation apps so that drivers could be warned of severe weather along the route so they can delay or re-route and miss the mess. I work in healthcare and pull call. Many times we have to drive in really vile weather and that could be a great thing to have. I doubt any of you want to drive into a severe thunderstorm or tornado warning if you could route around it.
You've got two separate things going on here: One, you haven't used Apple Maps lately. It routes around traffic, and is more accurate. What's infuriating about it is that it stupidly will pick destinations thousands of miles away over ones that were intended and reasonably close.
What's interesting is that it tends to overestimate times to arrival so that you have time to park and get where you're actually going, where Google and Waze underestimate the time it takes to arrive. Of those two, Google Maps is actually better than Waze at rerouting and picking the best route, although it would seem like Waze should be.
Separately, you want a new feature none of them offer- the ability to route around weather. Interesting. Are most weather events so localized that you can easily drive around them, or are they large regions that it doesn't make sense to map around?
As for TuneIn bug reports, you have to file a new request every time they update a version. One bug report a few years ago does nothing. Keep on them.
To date the only navigation option in CarPlay has been Apple Maps. While Apple's software offers benefits like deep integration across iPhones, iPads, Macs, and the Apple Watch, other apps are typically more popular, and their exclusion was sometimes a source of frustration.
Define more popular? By installs, AM is more popular than GM. While techies, bloggers and pundits make loud noises about Google and Waze, the straight read of installs says most consumers aren’t as passionate and use AM.
The power of default app is an amazing thing isn’t it. A ton of people would use mapquest if it was the default.
Im sure if you had to go out and download either, GM would be right there if not ahead. Even now, both GM and Waze are one of the highest downloaded apps for a huge reason. Because people prefer them.
Like I said, judging by installs, they aren't as popular as just using AM. So what is your metric, specifically, that declares a minority-used app "more popular"?
Whining about AM being default doesn't change the data, that's irrelevant to the metric definition.
Glad to see we can ditch Apple Maps- it is not ready for prime time for accurate navigation or traffic routing.
Your conclusion wasn’t what I read in articles a year or two back that compared AM and GM and said they’re about the same. In practice, I haven’t used GM in years and have had no problems driving in multiple US cities.
Yep! You don’t have any issues so no one else could possibly have issues. All those people are lying.
Straw man fallacy. I never claimed anyone was lying, so saying I did is just a troll tactic.
What I said was, objective reviewers have rated them about the same.
No to choose Apple's side here, but I find AM to work very well in the US, Europe and even South Africa. It prefers main roads over little local roads only to shave of one minute of driving, it provides a realistic ETA and it has the nicest of all interfaces.
What it absolutely sucks at is search. But let's face it: Apple is very bad at search, even in the App Store. It doesn't have fuzzy search and it doesn't take your location or context into account. As a result, it shows search destinations at the other side of the world. Even very easy searches like IKEA are wrong: last week I didn't show the stores in my country in order of distance so it suggested one further away (while it knew all of them).
Other weak point of AM are missing road works on local roads. Waze (and consequently its integration in Google Maps) has the upper hand here. Apple will never achieve such a fine grained maze of local data.
While I'm quite impressed with the keynote yesterday, I'm surprised they're still not tackling search.
Best news out of WWDC2018. Now, we need wireless CarPlay in every vehicle produced and no one should buy new vehicle purchase without such CarPlay functionality.
Unfortunately some makers charge for it and BMW starting this fall will treat it like a subscription. That is nothing but greed.
I can't remember how many times I checked when apple would support waze. Even contemplated to get Android on as my next phone. AM is just unusable in Philippines and now I am happy, and looking forward to this fall release.
Comments
Note to Audi: Just because one is able to afford it, doesn't mean one should have to pay extra for CarPlay in a car that is basically a real nice VW--throw out a bone, and include CarPlay on all Audi models and trims!
Why not just improve Apple Maps and keep users closer to their chest?
Worked fine for me.
Oh, and your problem is Siri (probably a language translation thing), not Maps.
Gotta love it when folk post one outlying, misdiagnosed problem and declare a completely different app a disaster.
🙄
I go back to Apple Maps every few months to see if it's improved but it's still miles behind Google Maps, in Scotland anyway. If I search for a place I know is local, i.e. last weekend I wanted to check how far it was to Huntly from where I was in Alford to estimate an arrival time. I knew it was roughly 15miles north but Apple Maps first result took me to HuntlEy, OH, USA! Still failing at the most simplest things in my experience.
You've got two separate things going on here: One, you haven't used Apple Maps lately. It routes around traffic, and is more accurate. What's infuriating about it is that it stupidly will pick destinations thousands of miles away over ones that were intended and reasonably close.
What's interesting is that it tends to overestimate times to arrival so that you have time to park and get where you're actually going, where Google and Waze underestimate the time it takes to arrive. Of those two, Google Maps is actually better than Waze at rerouting and picking the best route, although it would seem like Waze should be.
Separately, you want a new feature none of them offer- the ability to route around weather. Interesting. Are most weather events so localized that you can easily drive around them, or are they large regions that it doesn't make sense to map around?
As for TuneIn bug reports, you have to file a new request every time they update a version. One bug report a few years ago does nothing. Keep on them.
(Apple Maps is still trash in London. It does a very poor job of highlighting important POIs.)
Whining about AM being default doesn't change the data, that's irrelevant to the metric definition.
Straw man fallacy. I never claimed anyone was lying, so saying I did is just a troll tactic.
What I said was, objective reviewers have rated them about the same.
What it absolutely sucks at is search. But let's face it: Apple is very bad at search, even in the App Store. It doesn't have fuzzy search and it doesn't take your location or context into account. As a result, it shows search destinations at the other side of the world. Even very easy searches like IKEA are wrong: last week I didn't show the stores in my country in order of distance so it suggested one further away (while it knew all of them).
Other weak point of AM are missing road works on local roads. Waze (and consequently its integration in Google Maps) has the upper hand here. Apple will never achieve such a fine grained maze of local data.
While I'm quite impressed with the keynote yesterday, I'm surprised they're still not tackling search.