escargot said: All those controls, like for activating Siri, answering and ending calls, changing the volume, changing tracks etc are all built into the steering wheel so you don’t have to move your hands or take your eyes off the road. Aftermarket units hook into the existing controls on the steering wheel. Also, when you use Siri via CarPlay (or “Siri Eyes Free” via Bluetooth) she behaves quite differently, in a way that is all audio and doesn’t require you to ever look at the screen like she does normally. It’s all a “driving first” paradigm.
I guess that sounds great, but why did Apple limit this reasonably good driving functionality only to CarPlay equipped cars? What percentage of of all the iPhone using vehicle owners even have CarPlay? 5%, 10%?
I get that some of those things are only possible (at least to that extent) with steering wheel controls. But, even things like being able to tell Siri to answer a call would help a lot. Or, as you say, if the feedback/response type stuff was better so you didn't have to look.
entropys said: BMW (trying to kill it off with a not needed subscription) and VW are about the only ones offering wireless carplay in their OEM head units. That’s about it. So that means most aren’t.
And, even then, it will probably be a long time before the majority of Apple's iPhone owners have new enough cars to have it, especially new BMWs.
My BMW has wireless CarPlay, the article makes it sound like nobody is doing it.
"We've waited eagerly for wireless CarPlay to catch on amongst auto manufacturers, but they've continued to release new vehicles with a physical tether"
It works nicely, has a Qi charging pad. All the steering wheel and iDrive controls work great.
BMW (trying to kill it off with a not needed subscription) and VW are about the only ones offering wireless carplay in their OEM head units. That’s about it. So that means most aren’t.
I happened to be at an event with some of the BMW sr. marketing folks and I asked them about this. Interesting conversation after a couple of cocktails. They basically said this was a test for them to see if subscription based options would work. Their thought was that many of the "options" now available on their cars didn't really come with much added hardware cost vs the added cost of separate parts and assembly processes so they would start to simply build them "fully loaded" and letting people "try" the options for a year, then charge a subscription for whatever owners wanted to keep. They make the presumption that most people are starting to pay-as-you-go for many of the things they want so perhaps that makes sense for car options too. They also made it sound like this has been being discussed by a number of manufactures for several years, but nobody has really been willing to test the water. I suspect this will become the norm.
Resistive screen. BIG BIG bummer and a non-starter. You have to go up to the much more expensive model to get a proper capacitive screen. I'd stay 500 miles away from anything with a resistive screen.
I didn't know anyone even MADE resistive screens anymore??
Resistive screen. BIG BIG bummer and a non-starter. You have to go up to the much more expensive model to get a proper capacitive screen. I'd stay 500 miles away from anything with a resistive screen.
I was under the impression that CarPlay was supposed to require a touchscreen. At least, that’s something I seem to remember back when CarPlay was first announce, though I could be wrong. My wife’s car with CarPlay doesn’t have a touch screen at all, it’s all controlled through a dial on the console. I like using CarPlay but the dial being the only way to interface kinda sucks. A resistive touch screen would be much better than what we currently have.
I'm guessing your wife's car is a Mazda and it is true the CarPlay disables the touch screen while in motion and relies on the dial. It has it's plusses and minuses, but it would be nice to be able to remove this restriction but Im not sure how.
I have an Audi A4 - it does not have a touchscreen at all. There's a wheel on the center console that your turn to highlight an item and then press to select it. It also has a separate 'Back' button. In some ways it's less convenient, but in other ways it's actually better. Even though car play does a good job of giving an uncluttered display with large buttons, accurately touching the screen with an outstretched arm is not always easy if there are bumps in the road. With the dial, I keep may hand rested and stabilized on the console.
I have the higher end 8400NEX model and it's a little buggy. When it works it is awesome but sometimes the screen just goes black and there is no way to bring it back other than turning the car off and then back on again. Also I like to use Pandora and it will often just sit there saying loading forever even though if I use the phone interface itself it's fine. I cannot be sure but it seems like it happens more when I use wireless (including Qi power) and less when it is wired in directly.
The user interface is also a bit clumsy. Not in Carplay itself which is obviously standardized but there are way too many steps that require looking at the screen for me to switch between listening to NPR on the radio and going back Carplay for navigation. Also not to nitpick but it always showed the wrong time zone and there is no way to change it. I eventually figured out that it was because it wanted to use GPS built-in ot the unit to set it and I had never accepted the license agreement on their GPS app since I always use one of the navigation apps within Carplay. All just silly stupid stuff that as someone who has worked in primarily the Apple software industry, annoys me.
All that being said it combined with a license plate mounted backup camera put new life into my nearly 20 year old Ford F150. Now when I need to hookup a trailer to the hitch it's a piece of cake. Wiring it into something that old did require a bit of effort but nothing that watching a few youtube videos didn't get me through.
matthewk said: I happened to be at an event with some of the BMW sr. marketing folks and I asked them about this. Interesting conversation after a couple of cocktails. They basically said this was a test for them to see if subscription based options would work. Their thought was that many of the "options" now available on their cars didn't really come with much added hardware cost vs the added cost of separate parts and assembly processes so they would start to simply build them "fully loaded" and letting people "try" the options for a year, then charge a subscription for whatever owners wanted to keep. They make the presumption that most people are starting to pay-as-you-go for many of the things they want so perhaps that makes sense for car options too. They also made it sound like this has been being discussed by a number of manufactures for several years, but nobody has really been willing to test the water. I suspect this will become the norm.
Will be interesting to see if it sticks.
Yeah, as much as I don't like this, it seems to be more in line with the rest of of the world, just newer to the car industry. Within the car industry... look at what Tesla is doing. (ie: pay to unlock upgrades)
MplsP said: I have an Audi A4 - it does not have a touchscreen at all. There's a wheel on the center console that your turn to highlight an item and then press to select it. It also has a separate 'Back' button. In some ways it's less convenient, but in other ways it's actually better. Even though car play does a good job of giving an uncluttered display with large buttons, accurately touching the screen with an outstretched arm is not always easy if there are bumps in the road. With the dial, I keep may hand rested and stabilized on the console.
Yeah, although it is a much smaller screen, and I have my phone mounted where the radio is... it is dangerously distracting to try and reach out to control anything on it (which didn't feel the case when adjusting the heater, or pushing a 'station' button on the radio, etc.). Of course, there have also been studies that show people are simply distracted by screen-type-things just being there, even if they are off.
geordiekorper said: The user interface is also a bit clumsy. Not in Carplay itself which is obviously standardized but there are way too many steps that require looking at the screen for me to switch between listening to NPR on the radio and going back Carplay for navigation.
While not CarPlay (as I don't have that) there are some navigation/UI things that really bug me. For example, when I do try to use Siri, it will often leave itself hanging on the Siri screen rather than returning to what I was previously doing. Then I have to physically interact with the device to get back.
As one of my friends said, it seems Siri is more aimed at the urban city-dweller (like walkers) than true hands-free type operations. I don't think a lot of these things have even been well thought through.
Pioneer used to be one of my favourite brands, but your demo doesn't sell me on this product. I can see the lag (due to wireless), but the non-Apple interfaces it features also don't live up to my standards. I would not want to spend $500+ (CAD) on this product knowing that I'd be sponsoring this poor design by Pioneer. They really need to step it up to a whole new level.
I think there's only been one aftermarket CarPlay-compatible display that has impressed me with its great design and performance. Can't remember which brand at the moment, but I do remember it was far more than I was willing to spend.
Alpine ILX-107 was wireless CarPlay with an interface that mimiced Apple's.
Pioneer used to be one of my favourite brands, but your demo doesn't sell me on this product. I can see the lag (due to wireless), but the non-Apple interfaces it features also don't live up to my standards. I would not want to spend $500+ (CAD) on this product knowing that I'd be sponsoring this poor design by Pioneer. They really need to step it up to a whole new level.
I think there's only been one aftermarket CarPlay-compatible display that has impressed me with its great design and performance. Can't remember which brand at the moment, but I do remember it was far more than I was willing to spend.
Sadly there is not a single aftermarket model (almost none of the first party ones are much better either) that does not have a shoddy and tacky interface. The one you are thinking of is probably the Sony ones, but they are still pretty bad, just “less bad” than the rest
Alpine. For models that are CarPlay only, they just mimic iOS / CarPlay interface for the rest of it. The radio tuner interface is a little sparse, but icons, on/off settings all look like iOS.
vmarks said: If your steering wheel has call handing buttons on it, you can use those with CarPlay. You can also use them to prompt Siri.
You get notifications (text, whatsapp, etc.) at the top of the screen, and so if a notification comes in, you can blindly tap at the top of the screen to have it read aloud, without having to look where to tap.
My car has the buttons but didn't have the BT option so the call handling ones don't do anything currently. I wonder if they would work, or if I'd have to get some additional equipment? I can see that this would improve things, but I still don't understand why Siri can't just be told to answer a call on speakerphone, or stuff like that.
It's entirely possible that if you used an ASMC-1 steering wheel controls adapter with a CarPlay unit that the call handling buttons would work. My bet is that they're wired up and just not used.
The car is a super noisy environment. Road noise, audio noise of a ringtone being played, and the fact that you have just one microphone, usually mounted on a windshield or headliner (where it can pick up more road noise) all add up to it being really difficult to process "hey siri, answer call" over all that other noise. This isn't a HomePod where you have far-field mic arrays. That's why Siri can't answer a call when you tell her.
vmarks said: It's entirely possible that if you used an ASMC-1 steering wheel controls adapter with a CarPlay unit that the call handling buttons would work. My bet is that they're wired up and just not used.
The car is a super noisy environment. Road noise, audio noise of a ringtone being played, and the fact that you have just one microphone, usually mounted on a windshield or headliner (where it can pick up more road noise) all add up to it being really difficult to process "hey siri, answer call" over all that other noise. This isn't a HomePod where you have far-field mic arrays. That's why Siri can't answer a call when you tell her.
Hmm, I don't think that is the reason. I can say 'hey siri' and it responds. While the recognition isn't perfect, it isn't that bad... it just often doesn't know what to do with my requests. I don't find it a lot worse in my car than when I'm at home. I sure wish it was an option so I could at least give it a try.
Resistive screen. BIG BIG bummer and a non-starter. You have to go up to the much more expensive model to get a proper capacitive screen. I'd stay 500 miles away from anything with a resistive screen.
I didn't know anyone even MADE resistive screens anymore??
They're better at a lot of things. Gloved use, for example. I wouldn't use a capacitive screen for anything in a car.
Comments
I get that some of those things are only possible (at least to that extent) with steering wheel controls. But, even things like being able to tell Siri to answer a call would help a lot. Or, as you say, if the feedback/response type stuff was better so you didn't have to look.
And, even then, it will probably be a long time before the majority of Apple's iPhone owners have new enough cars to have it, especially new BMWs.
Will be interesting to see if it sticks.
The user interface is also a bit clumsy. Not in Carplay itself which is obviously standardized but there are way too many steps that require looking at the screen for me to switch between listening to NPR on the radio and going back Carplay for navigation. Also not to nitpick but it always showed the wrong time zone and there is no way to change it. I eventually figured out that it was because it wanted to use GPS built-in ot the unit to set it and I had never accepted the license agreement on their GPS app since I always use one of the navigation apps within Carplay. All just silly stupid stuff that as someone who has worked in primarily the Apple software industry, annoys me.
All that being said it combined with a license plate mounted backup camera put new life into my nearly 20 year old Ford F150. Now when I need to hookup a trailer to the hitch it's a piece of cake. Wiring it into something that old did require a bit of effort but nothing that watching a few youtube videos didn't get me through.
Yeah, although it is a much smaller screen, and I have my phone mounted where the radio is... it is dangerously distracting to try and reach out to control anything on it (which didn't feel the case when adjusting the heater, or pushing a 'station' button on the radio, etc.). Of course, there have also been studies that show people are simply distracted by screen-type-things just being there, even if they are off.
While not CarPlay (as I don't have that) there are some navigation/UI things that really bug me. For example, when I do try to use Siri, it will often leave itself hanging on the Siri screen rather than returning to what I was previously doing. Then I have to physically interact with the device to get back.
As one of my friends said, it seems Siri is more aimed at the urban city-dweller (like walkers) than true hands-free type operations. I don't think a lot of these things have even been well thought through.
Alpine. For models that are CarPlay only, they just mimic iOS / CarPlay interface for the rest of it. The radio tuner interface is a little sparse, but icons, on/off settings all look like iOS.
The car is a super noisy environment. Road noise, audio noise of a ringtone being played, and the fact that you have just one microphone, usually mounted on a windshield or headliner (where it can pick up more road noise) all add up to it being really difficult to process "hey siri, answer call" over all that other noise. This isn't a HomePod where you have far-field mic arrays. That's why Siri can't answer a call when you tell her.