Posted on 01/24/2015 7:22:05 PM PST by Swordmaker
31 car companies and counting. Apple is closing in on adding every major, or exotic, car manufacturer on the planet to their CarPlay solution. Third party makers such as Alpine and Pioneer are also making aftermarket CarPlay receivers. Kenwood said only months ago it really did not need CarPlay, but in early January at the Detroit Auto Show, Kenwood announced its forthcoming CarPlay decks, as did JVC. The four major aftermarket deck manufactures are now building for CarPlay.
High-end smartphone market share was clearly going to shape which platforms auto makers would support, and Apple is dominating the U.S. smartphone market. Today’s latest data revealed iPhone activations taking a 50% share in the U.S. alone, while Samsung lost ground to 26%. Car manufacturers clearly understood the absolute need to support CarPlay, as iPhone owners are in higher income bracket versus Android owners, and therefore have more disposable income to spend on vehicles with more features – which of course, must support their iPhones.
As for the competition? Only Android 5.0 Lollipop is Android Auto compatible, and only a few Android phones will be able to upgrade to the new OS. Making matters worse for Google's automotive adoption hopes, is only a scant few smartphones are shipping with Android 5.0. Google certainly stopped any fragmentation issues with their strict requirements, but they also crippled opportunity for customers to actually use their product...
Based on Google’s own data, as of early January, their own Developer Dashboard says that any version below 0.1% adoption will not be shown. While new and flashy, Android Lollipop is completely insignificant. At this point, the complete lack of Lollipop support makes Android Auto nothing more than a marketing play. Car manufacturers are riding along just so they say they have Google’s solution also, even though 99.99% of any potential buyers won't be able to use it unless they have a brand new high-end Android phone from Google, LG or Motorola.
At this point, Android Auto is nothing more than a strange form of shipping vaporware, attempting to compete against the strong reality of Apple’s CarPlay availability and flexibility. Anyone owning an iPhone 5 or newer can use CarPlay to its full capabilities. This means that over 250 million users world-wide can take immediate advantage of any vehicle shipping with CarPlay or by simply adding an aftermarket deck.
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That’s great but, shouldn’t all other players for streaming be able to transmit via bluetooth and deliver real features?
I have Sirius....got tired of them just auto-renewing and gave in.
I have Pandora, which is largely just plain better in so many ways but, they should more closely integrate with my vehicle display, so I am sure of what is playing or cued.
My thoughts too.
I commute to work 75 miles round-trip every weekday. Two or three times a week I encounter people doing ten miles under the speed limit, and when I pass them they invariably are holding a digital device in front of their faces with one hand and the steering wheel with the others. Now they’ll be looking at their dashboards instead.
Because the NSA would like to know more about your driving habits.
Having never heard of ‘carplay’ I just went to appl and read their promo stuff on it. My main question for something like this is
1. Why do you need an iphone 5 to do this? I would think tat any iphone you plug in would work.
2. Is this another example of planned obsolescence? Most folk keep cars much longer than they do phones. How far intonthe future is apple committed to providing support for this? Is it likely at all that it will work with an iphone 8? (Whenever that comes out)
3. In my not so humble opinion, it would be preferable to build a component that has a well defined protocol for comms and display so you could effectively use it with just about any device. Maybe the google option is more like that. I’ll have to look at it too.
4. It would be interesting if the display could be tied to obd data.
On one trip from Stockton to San Francisco, I saw a fellow with a laptop propped up on the dashboard behind his steering wheel. . . watching a movie. . . porn. He had NO HANDS on the steering wheel at all, doing 75 MPH. I could not see how he could see ahead at all.
On the way home, we spotted another one with the laptop propped on the steering wheel. . . he was typing away with both hands. I was wondering what he was steering with! Where are the California Highway Patrol when you want them to be around?
On the other hand, I have seen numerous women driving full speed on the road putting on their make-up, using the rearview mirror, holding an eye open with one hand and brushing mascara on with the other, also at 70 MPH. That's called "farding" while driving. . . and Rush Limbaugh had a campaign against it back in the early '90s which people though he was saying "farting!"
It is not the device, or even the act, it is the idiot behind it.
CarPlay is built in and is voice activated — with no reason to remove your hands from the wheel or eyes from the road to do anything with it.
As long as I have a car radio that can pickup Rush, Herman Cain, oldies and smooth jazz, I’m satisfied.
I believe it has to do with the level of bluetooth required to accomplish some of what is required. Parts of it will work with any iPhone.
No planned obsolescence. But technology moves on as in any tech.
Whatta buncha crap.
Some consistency would be nice.
I shelled out some fairly righteous coin a few years back for one of these Alpine touchscreen head units.
But its programming didn't keep up with the iOS changes that Apple made over the years to the iPod, beginning with iOs 6.
Alpine mentioned coming up with a firmware fix, but I never heard anything more about it. Now the Alpine unit only works reliably with older iPods (and not consistently with iPhones 5 or 6).
I feel for you. I have a Hasselblad C503, which just sits there.
I think that was the point behind CarPlay -- to provide actual standards and APIs for functions that car and stereo makers have been kludging for years.
That's a Photoshopped iPad holder modified to look like it's mounted in a dash board. . . but it isn't CarPlay at all, Martin.
Right — my point is that it, or something very much like it, *should* be CarPlay < |:)~
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