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Apple Launches CarPlay At Geneva Show

Posted by samzenpus on from the drive-differently dept.

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.'

15 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Innovation? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    --
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    1. Re:Innovation? by Black.Shuck · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Innovation != Invention

      innovate |nvet|
      verb [ no obj. ]
      make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products: the company's failure to diversify and innovate competitively.
        [ with obj. ] introduce (something new, especially a product). we continue to innovate new products.

      So yes, Apple innovates. They innovate on the execution of ideas, rather than invent new ones.

    2. Re:Innovation? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fancy new package to you has at times meant UI that consumers will accept to others. Take for example the first MP3 players. You could only get high capacity and bulky or portable but low capacity when the iPod came out. The interfaces sucked and getting music onto them was a pain in the ass. What Apple did with the iPod, anyone could have done; they just didn't. But as a geek, you may not care about ease of use as a feature. Consumers care.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    3. Re:Innovation? by maccodemonkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Innovation? by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ironic, considering what a pain in the ass it is to get music onto an iPod.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    5. Re:Innovation? by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    6. Re:Innovation? by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope.
      The early mp3 player where drag and drop. Connect to computer, drag music onto device.

      The first iPod where only useful on Mac with iTunes.

      Of course they moved to windows, but you still need there precious application to use it as designed.

      Clearly, you have let Apple dictate your narrative.

      Nope, the early MP3 players were custom software utilities.

      Rio PMP - you needed to use their software and the parallel port adapter to load MP3s onto the internal storage, or almost-like-SmartMedia-but-not-quite external storage.

      Nomad Jukebox - USB 1.1, requires custom driver and custom software application to load. "Explorer" functionality was provided by a third party app you installed.

      The later MP3 players started using USB MSC.

      Either way, loading a Nomad over USB 1.1 was a several-hour-long wait provided the relatively crappy software itself didn't crap out midway through.

      USB 2.0 was just wrapping up when the iPod came out in 2001, it wouldn't be in most new PCs until a couple of years later. In the meantime, Firewire was the fastest way to load up the iPod storage with stuff - taking minutes rather than hours.

      Oh, did I ever mention that if your ID3 tags were just slightly out of place (two similar but not exact entries in a field like artist or album) on the Nomad, you got very strange things, including oddball crashes and hangs? I got to learn a very nice ID3 bulk tag editor to fix them so the Nomad would actually work properly. iTunes and such handled them properly and wrote the database properly.

      Those were the early MP3 players.

  2. Re:Apple Maps! by Wild_dog! · · Score: 3, Informative

    Perhaps in the past Apple Maps was bad.
    In the last couple of months I have been using Apple Maps and there haven't been any major problems I have noticed.
    It is nice to be able to use Siri to find things while I am whizzing along in places I am unfamiliar with.
    Turn by turn has been accurate in my area at least.

  3. Lock in by Barlo_Mung_42 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wouldn't buy a car that has this unless it also works with other phones.

  4. It's not either/or by sjbe · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Here are 2 reasons this is crap by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First off all, most of the people who hate Apple are right here on your favorite website. Not exactly Ferrari / Volvo / Mercedes big customers.

    Second of all, lots of people like (or at least tolerate) the Apple brand. Makes more sense than Ford attaching themselves to Microsoft.....

    I think it's a dumb idea (and I have a lot of Apple hardware and software). I like my cars like I like my women - simple, easy to fix and not associated with a lot of proprietary add on junk that will out date in a couple of years. Upgrades are hell.

    But that's just me.

    --
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  6. Re:darn. by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh the humanity. Having to hold a button for a second with your thumb. Without having to take it off the wheel. At all.

    .

    You might be surprised as to how much "road attention" you lose performing such a simple maneuver. Anecdotally, I once totaled a Buick because I took my eyes off the road for .5 seconds to check the clock. Long story (chock full of statistics and more anecdotes) short, while your brain is on pause waiting for Siri to respond to that button hold, it's not paying full attention to the task at hand, namely operating a ton-and-a-half of steel and glass at high rates of speed.

    As opposed to every other navigation system...

    Nonsense hyperbole, and smacks loudly of fanboy-ism.

    My wife's VW has a single button on the steering wheel that activates the voice command system, and it's the same system VW has been using for half a decade. Oh, and BTW, you only have to press the button, not hold it. Works as well as one would expect a voice command system to. And I know VW can't be the only one with such a simple interface - Ford's Sync immediately comes to mind.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  7. Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. by sjbe · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1. Apple maps is a joke and completely useless

    Based on what? Yeah they flubbed the roll out but I've used it since and it mostly works fine. I'm guessing you are one of those people who read all the bad press and presumed that Apple would never fix the problem. Guess what? Over over 30 million people use Apple Maps mostly without problems. Apple Maps is certainly not a joke and anything but "completely useless". Your assertion is mostly without any basis to support it.

    2. considering how many people hate Apple, they're losing prospective customers for a $60,000 car for example because of one tiny feature.

    Apple sells millions of devices a year and you think people "hate Apple"? Have you actually been to an Apple store lately? They are packed. Nobody buys Apple products because they have to. They are all discretionary purchases and people buy Apple's gear because they... gasp, LIKE the products. Who knew?

    Maybe YOU don't like Apple but out here in the real world Apple is wildly popular.

  8. Re:Apple Maps! by Dixie_Flatline · · Score: 3, Informative

    It took a lot less time for Apple to go from 'pretty crap' to 'usably good'.

    I tend to use Apple's maps and, from the statistics, so do most people. Google Maps hasn't been downloaded on that many iOS devices compared to the number that are running a version with Apple's maps. The usage data is fairly clear.

    But in any case, it wasn't a play for dominance. Apple needs a built-in solution that is full-featured with turn-by-turn instructions and the like, and Google wouldn't give them that, so they made their own. Now Apple can say that they have a map application on their phone and it does the things that you would expect.

  9. Re:darn. by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Informative

    You might be surprised as to how much "road attention" you lose performing such a simple maneuver.

    Yes I would be surprised. And I wouldn't take your word for it. Especially as you example is of taking your eyes off the road, not a long press of a button that is already at your fingertip.

    Yea, too bad there's not a plethora of existing studies that show how non-visual distractions are just as bad (if not worse, in some cases) as vision-based ones, huh?

    http://www.scientificamerican....

    http://www.businessinsider.com...

    http://mentalhealth.about.com/...

    http://www.motherjones.com/kev...

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese