linkman

avon b7 said:
And if you ever get the chance to experience some of the Chinese systems for example, you might even decide CarPlay (in whatever form) isn't the best option. 

I would guess Tesla is in a similar situation to the Chinese with its onboard solutions but Tesla doesn't have its own phones. I don't know much about Tesla's software interfaces so that's guesswork on my part. At least Tesla isn't providing its solutions to third parties AFAIK. That could be a slight advantage for Apple in the US at least. 

After using many different car makes and stereo head units I've decided that CarPlay is currently the best interface/system of its type. Each carmaker's version has some integration features that Apple can't directly provide (such as displaying which seat belt isn't secured), but as for displaying and controlling phone/music/navigation/notifications Apple's is #1.

Tesla's interface is good but to take full advantage of it you'll need to subscribe to their cellular connectivity -- which adds to the cost because I can't use Spotify (example) over cellular carrying my car in my pocket where I can obtain Spotify on my phone both in my pocket and in my car. Without paying for Tesla's subscription I'm stuck using my phone solely in the car using Bluetooth, and that degrades the user experience.

I ordered a 15" MBA in Starlight with the only upgrade being a 1 TB SSD on March 10 and the expected delivery date is March 26.

I find that Lightning is easier than USB-C to plug/unplug. I have to plug my USB-C non-Apple work laptop in once per day to a dock and find most of the time I can't do it blind -- where I can always plug in a Lightning connector without looking. I'll definitely miss it.

One thing I highly recommend is avoiding 8 GB of RAM unless you intend to use if for less than 3 years. While macOS does a lot better than the latest versions of Windows with low amounts of RAM (a mere 8 GB at my work is quite painful to use now without launching any apps), do not underestimate the ability of application programmers to be lazy and inefficient and consume far more memory than they need to.

Nikon8 said:

I didn’t even know there was a YouTube TV. 

It is surprisingly possibly the biggest lineup for a streaming-only service. I switched to it when Google dropped their Fiber TV service. I did some research and it had the most comparable channel listing compared to what I was losing. The "DVR" is a pretty good setup with unlimited "storage" (the "recordings" are kept on Google's servers but you can access them from any compatible device for 9 months after they are recorded, and there is no limit on how much you record. You could potentially set everything to record if you don't mind your list of recordings being nearly impossible to navigate. YouTube TV does not require any of Google's hardware to watch it, and can be viewed using a lot of different platforms.