What Is Going On With Next-Generation Apple CarPlay?
I’d posit that a reason why people love CarPlay so much is because the media, communication, and navigation experiences have traditionally been pretty poor. CarPlay supplants those, and it does so with aplomb because people use those same media, communication, and navigation features that are personalized to them with their phones when they’re not in their cars.
No one is walking around with a speedometer and a tachometer on their iPhone that need to have a familiar look and feel, rendered exclusively in San Francisco.
As long as automakers supply the existing level of CarPlay support, which isn’t a given, then customers like us would be content with the status quo, or even a slight improvement.
In my humble opinion, Next-Gen CarPlay is dead on arrival. Too late, too complicated, and it doesn’t solve the needs of automakers or customers.
Instead of letting the vehicle’s interface peak through, Apple should consider letting CarPlay peak through for the non-critical systems people prefer to use with CarPlay.
Design a CarPlay that can output multiple display streams (which Apple already over-designed) and display that in the cluster. Integrate with the existing controls for managing the interfaces in the vehicle. When the phone isn’t there, the vehicle will still be the same vehicle. When the phone is there, it’s got Apple Maps right in the cluster how you like it without changing the gauges, or the climate controls, or where the seat massage button is.
The everyday irritations people have are mundane, practical, and are not related to how Apple-like their car displays can look.