Slashdot Mirror
Apple Launches CarPlay At Geneva Show
An anonymous reader writes "Apple announced today a system called CarPlay, which integrates your iPhone with your car, with Siri voice control. CarPlay will be offered in Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo vehicles this year, and others 'down the road.' From the press release: 'CarPlay makes driving directions more intuitive by working with Maps to anticipate destinations based on recent trips via contacts, emails or texts, and provides routing instructions, traffic conditions and ETA. You can also simply ask Siri and receive spoken turn-by-turn directions, along with Maps, which will appear on your car’s built-in display.'
The 3 auto makers offering it first are all high-end luxury brands.
Volvo cars aren't exactly priced in the stratosphere. Even their expensive offerings are still FAR cheaper than those from Mercedes and Ferrari. Volvo makes nice cars but they are mostly at the lower end of the luxury segment if you consider them a luxury vehicle at all.
Personally, if I had they money to be driving around a Ferrari, I would already have a really nice custom stereo system in it, which would surely have a dedicated GPS system in it.
A reasonable thing to do but why not have the option of layering on Siri or similar Android services in addition? I'd rather have the consumer electronics stuff handled by a consumer electronics company whenever possible. I have a GPS in my truck but it is woefully out of date, expensive and the graphics pretty much suck. Car companies are REALLY bad at updating firmware and they don't do enough product volume to get costs down to reasonable levels. When possible it makes a lot more sense to use something like a smartphone to handle many of these tasks.
(Again, the wealthy have the means to pay for "concierge" services by phone where they can make requests of a live operator who answers. Why settle for an automated system like Siri?)
Just because you have a bit more cash doesn't mean you want to spend it needlessly. Concierge services are expensive and most people who can afford a nice luxury vehicle didn't get their money by being frivolous with their cash. It's not an either/or proposition either. Personally I'd be more likely to use Siri (even with its deficiencies) than some high priced live service even if I had the money just because it would probably be an occasional use thing with me.
Apple seems to have invented what a lot of people have been using for years - a head unit with MirrorLink capability. How come it is suddenly wonderful?
Eh, there's an argument for functionality, but on a technical level, it's actually pretty cool. It's actually a second screen capability, not a mirroring capability. Apps using the API get to use the car display as a discreet second display, rendering whatever content they want dedicated to that display.
Please describe how it is a pain in the ass
In a Windows context, pre-iPod MP3 players mounted as a drive letter and simply allowed you to drag over a file structure and related files, which were mirrored on the player.
iTunes required you to recreate this structure, renamed and, in some cases, moved all your files - And don't get me started on iTunes inability to list files based on filename. If you didn't have the 'title' tagged correctly in the MP3 file you were S.O.L.