Testing CarPlay with Apple’s most expensive ever accessory Apple’s CarPlay – which we got the chance to test with the ultimate iPhone accessory, a £200,000 Ferrari California T – is fighting a standards conflict against Google’s Android Auto, in what seems to be a replica of the war between Android and iOS. There will be a separate review of the car later, but for the moment it’s …
It seems daft that Apple don't seem to be allowing other satnav software manufacturers the keys to the CarPlay kingdom. I use the TomTom app on my iPhone and I'd love to buy a CarPlay ready head unit and have TomTom display on that.
They let music apps on, why not navigation ones too?
Liability is the issue here. For both carplay and mirrorlink it is the key constraint.
Car manufacturers do not want to be at the receiving end of a lawsuit if some cretinous tw*t adds his mail app or f***book to car mode. So they have come up with a set of criteria which are there to pacify the insurance companies and any app in car mode has to comply with them.
In order to show up on the car mode screen an app is certified by an independent lab that it complies with these criteria. The labs are places that do certification for a living. One I know of is 7 layers, the other one is the big German CE lab used by the like of Bosch (forgot the name, you can look it up). They charge a fairly substantial amount of money for it.
If you are a small app developer you simply cannot recoup the certification fee cost from the app income. Additionally, for SatNav it looks like the certification subject is app + data set, because the very few 3rd party SatNav bundles which are mirrorlink certified always include a specific map set. This is why you see only Apple apps on carplay and OS Load + Google Maps on mirror link. It is the certification constraint, not malice from the phone OS vendors.
By the way, all of this fuss about liability is actually quite funny as you can now buy a full Android 4.x and 5.x unit with no app restrictions from Chinese noname/OEM players and run anything you want on it.
"By the way, all of this fuss about liability is actually quite funny as you can now buy a full Android 4.x and 5.x unit with no app restrictions from Chinese noname/OEM players and run anything you want on it."
This sounds good, but I can see the Insurance companies bleating after an incident about non-standard mods and, even worse, further down the line when they've wished up to see it as a nice earner "non approved interactive head unit? - certainly Sir, I'll just apply the loading to the price..."
I'm not sure if I've more contempt for Apple, Google or the Association of British Insurers! :o)
Having used CarPlay on a Pioneer head unit for a couple of months now, this is a fundamental failing in the way CarPlay works...
If you're listening to a non-CarPlay audio source (cd, radio, hard drive full of mp3s, etc) and CarPlay cuts in to tell you about a message, or to provide a map direction, it is unable to switch back to the non-CarPlay source to resume playback of whatever was interrupted.
It works on phone calls as that acts as a system-level interrupt, and the whole device switches to the phone call and then switches back. They would need to change CarPlay to work in the same manner, which would probably make other functions screw up, so it may not be an easy fix...
Another flaw due to the lack of supported apps is that as the head unit becomes a secondary display for the phone, you cannot have the music or podcast app showing on the head unit and a different app (Waze, for example) showing on the phone! Either the music app shows on both, or you have Waze on the phone and the CarPlay menu on the head unit.
The workaround I currently use is to listen to music from the phone & use apps for radio stations if required. I run Waze on the phone for mapping, and put the head unit in Pioneer mode where you can still see track information etc. Would be good to have it all kept in one "system" but that would require "splitting" the display so that the head unit was seen as a second screen rather than just the first screen remapped...
Completely agree. I like iOS on iDevices but in the Ferrari it looks cheap and childish. And a very good point in the article about longevity. Apple is more than capable of dumping CarPlay on a whim because the icons clash with Tim Cook's socks but that will really leave Ferrari's customers high and dry. Should I ever be lucky enough to specify my own Ferrari, it won't include CarPlay.
"We managed “enjoy” a great driving road, following Apple Maps, while juggling two text conversations and a phone call'
Having been knocked off my bike three times now by idiots too busy "juggling" text conversations and phone calls this review makes me super pi55ed off.
The research on driver attention is consistent - making phone calls or texting is not safe and should never be done while the driver should be concentrating on driving.
In the week that a british woman was sent to prison for hitting and killing a cyclist because she was too busy texting to see them right ahead of her it's time that these "innovations" were barred by law - drivers can't be trusted to use them sensibly and the only guaranteed result is more being being hit and killed by distracted drivers.
I happen to live in an area with a pretty high number of expensive cars around and the mere thought that folks are hurtling (in this case) nearly two tons of matter down the road aided by about 500 horses while dabbling with Apple Maps is … discomforting.
The driving skills exhibited by a great number of these motorists are bad enough as is, there is very little need to add more trouble in the form of buggy maps and apps, locked up or crashed phones and other items of distraction.
Exempt from this observation are, of course, all the gentlefolks with actual driving skills and an immunity to the idea that spending six figures or more on your ride somehow turns you into Batman.
Personally, whenever I find myself at the wheel, especially if it happens to be a high-powered car, I tend to ignore my phone during the ride. "Important" calls will be dealt with before I start, delayed to when I get there or handled by other passengers.
Call me old-fashioned but I would much rather live to see another day than be updated about some trivial detail Dick from the office added to the presentation or about how little Timmy was such a darling today while missing out on that lorry switching lanes. I am sometimes forced to share a ride with people who do not follow this philosophy and I find it rather disturbing that they deem their ability to yack away to be more important than the wellbeing of themselves, their passengers, fellow motorists and possibly pedestrians. It is not that you are making any great decisions during these calls anyhow – because your brain is busy driving a vehicle in traffic. If I want to make important decisions while on the road, I leave the driving to someone else.
Then again, I may not be rich and/or important enough to see the allure of it all.
> I happen to live in an area with a pretty high number of expensive cars around
Erm... if you're a pedestrian or a cyclist, a cheap car can kill you just as well and, well..., more cheaply. So what's the matter with focusing on high end cars?
I fully sympathise with your point about inattentive drivers, but that hardly has anything to do with how much the car costs.
"I am sometimes forced to share a ride with people who do not follow this philosophy and I find it rather disturbing that they deem their ability to yack away to be more important than the wellbeing of themselves, their passengers, fellow motorists and possibly pedestrians"
On the flip side I find it just as annoying when my passenger thinks I'm ignoring what they're saying while I navigate a 3 lane roundabout.
No, I'm not ignoring you, I'm trying my level best not to have us both killed!
All good points; have an upvote. Not sure why you have attracted so many downvotes, though.
Having been knocked off my bike three times now by idiots too busy "juggling" text conversations and phone calls this review makes me super pi55ed off.
The research on driver attention is consistent - making phone calls or texting is not safe and should never be done while the driver should be concentrating on driving.
I'll join you in being pi55ed off, but my annoyance extends to cyclists who use their 'phones while cycling and pedestrians who yak away while trying to cross roads. I know that a car is more capable of causing damage and injury than a bike or a pedestrian but if 'phone use results in their straying into the path of a car (whose driver may be behaving more or less impeccably) the outcome is very much the same.
If using a mobile 'phone distracts a driver and is thus illegal, it is high time that cyclists were subject to the same restriction and pedestrians told that if they stray into traffic while using a 'phone then the outcome will be their fault by definition unless they can prove otherwise. Are cyclists and pedestrians not distracted by using a 'phone for some mysterious, unexplained reason?
And don't get me started about cyclists on pavements (with or without phones) or even children with scooters for that matter. I am forever having to take evasive action while walking to the papershop with the dog in the morning while children propel themselves to school. Guess what their mummies are doing; yakking on their phones. (OK you didn't get me started; I started myself.)
Very true. It's been a while since I last looked at the research, but I believe one study found that entering a text message using speech recognition was only slightly less distracting than entering it on the screen, and more distracting than making a hand-held phone call. The more errors the speech recognition system made, the worse the distraction level.
It's pretty clear people aren't going to stop doing it, though; there's something addictive to us about the erratic social feedback we get from smartphones. Ultimately only self-driving cars will stop the carnage.
If you can make a case for not using your telephone, eating a sandwich or taking a drink of water at the wheel, which you can, then surely Sat Nav should be subject to the same rules since they demand so much of your attention.
You do know you can replace head units, right?
I replaced the ancient cassette-reading unit in my old FIAT Punto with a more modern Bluetooth-capable model three years ago. The car itself was already old enough to get its own driving license. These units tend to be standardised round the back, with car manufacturers often only changing the fascia, for which suitable blanking plates are freely available.
I doubt Ferrari would mind charging multiple limbs for an 'official' new head unit for an old car model with their official logo. FIAT (and Skoda, and other car manufacturers) already sell official replacement head units for their cars, though you'd have to be denser than a singularity to pay their prices.
Or swapping the headunit means that getting the steering wheel mounted controls to operate it requires some sort of additional plug/convertor/jiggery pokery
And the dashboard built in 3-line display no longer works because the "trip computer" has some sort of integration with the headunits output.
"Being a Fiat, the Ferrari would probably give you the dreaded/annoying flashing odometer CANBus error and you'd have to get a "proxy alignment"."
Had this on my Alfa 159, £30 for MultiECUScan + £15 for a cable, all sorted and the damned odometer stopped flashing at me.
Not sure how far you'll get with something newer though.
COULD.
Now try doing that on a new Crysler/Fiat where the cretins have hooked up the head unit to the ECU and have connected the whole shebang to the Internet so someone can shove you off the road. I would like to see you successfully replacing something with that level of integration.
It was possible on older (and cheaper) vehicles - all of my (rather old in the tooth) cars have the head units replaced. The last one was done this summer after the Pioneer POS that came with it set itself on fire destroying the central console in the process.
There is another issue with older cars and modern head units. On older cars you cannot use touchscreen safely. Touchscreen pretty much requires you seeing where your fingers are. This means that you need the display within the field of view of the driver. There are very few old cars which have the car stereo within the field of view of the driver (old VW Polo comes to mind). Usually it is too low and too far to the side to be safe as a touchscreen because it is positioned center and under the heating grilles.
I have a touchscreen unit retro-fitted on a 2007 D-Max so I can have an integrated reverse camera in the dash. I actually often end up telling the "co-pilot" (junior) to chose the music. I can just about safely scroll on the touchscreen on a clear motorway crawling at ~50mph. Trying to do anything at speeds above that is a "forget it". It is simply in the wrong place for that.
"Now try doing that on a new Crysler/Fiat where the cretins have hooked up the head unit to the ECU "
Haven't they just hung everything off the CANBus. Like all the other manufacturers.
You can take things off the 'Bus and also connect other things like steering wheel interfaces. It's just a bus.
"There is another issue with older cars and modern head units. On older cars you cannot use touchscreen safely. Touchscreen pretty much requires you seeing where your fingers are. This means that you need the display within the field of view of the driver"
I'd argue that on any car you can't use it safely. Having the display in the field of view is irrelevant, you would still be switching your (literal as well as figurative) focus. Try setting a touchscreen satnav while driving and you're practically taking your eyes off the road.
I have a touch screen in one of my cars, and I hate it for most things, thankfully I have buttons around it for the most used functions as well.
Am I that weird in the idea I don't want to actually look at a screen to see where my finger is when I want to change something?
I prefer a physical button and the feedback of it moving, thereby not having to take my eyes off the road..
Absolutely right! Good old buttons and knobs are way better than touch screens in the car; especially if you can have information displayed in the dash, between odo and speedometer, like Audi do for example -- as opposed to having to look to the side to operate and see what you're operating.
Extra points for voice control or a sensible selection of controls on the steering wheel.
As for phone integration, all that is needed is a proper Bluetooth implementation that supports both phone and audio profiles and ideally a number of stored pairings. I wouldn't want to offload functionality and control of car devices to my phone.
Touch-screens in my mind are not good in cars. I had one in my previous car (VW) and it was more of a distraction trying to find what I wanted to listen to. The BMW iDrive is quite a good solution IMO, you don't need to engage so much with the screen and is less of a distraction.
Toys are great but have their place. Distracting drivers with an overcomplex UI is not a good use of tech.
Car makers keep developing head units instead just providing a spot to slap the phone into (magnetic mounts work great). All that's really needed is charging, good bluetooth link, decent amp and volume knob (no touch please). The rest does not matter much. With the size of new smartphones all these dashboard gadgets attempt to duplicate functionality (and fail miserably at it). CarPlay (and alike) locks out most of the phone interface (safety or not most users will get annoyed in no time), adds to the cost (or encourages cuts elsewhere - i.e. drive-train or even amp/speakers). And since it makes no other sense we know it's all about money, our money. And I'd rather spend it on the phone (or keep it given the choice).
I agree wholeheartedly, the volume should always and I mean always be a knob it's basic common sense, I know where it is and while driving I can either adjust the knob without looking or use the controls on my steering wheel which are placed intuitively. If it's touch then I have to have the hand eye co-ordination of a professional archer whereas with a knob I can just fumble without taking my eye's off the road. Sat-nav yes, touch away, I'm only going to use it when the car is stationary to set a location though it's a sad state of affairs these days as the only sat-nav I used to need was pubs any location any street you could just tell someone take the third left after the crown etc...
You are also right that there is absolutely no need other than bluetooth for calls that I need my phone to connect, I've got a pioneer head unit that has a microphone on my visor, If someone is texting me it's not exactly going to be urgent so I really don't think I need my stereo to read it out to me mid-drive and I'm not going to be messing about trying to play music from it (my head unit has an sd card slot anyway for music)
"If someone is texting me it's not exactly going to be urgent"
but it might be important, "Bob says he meant he'll meet you at the services outside Sheffield not Lichfield" or "I forgot to buy milk can you get some from the shop on your way past"
My phone reads these and then goes back to playing music/being a sat-nav but it's not made by Apple.
I had a bluetooth THB handsfree in my 2001 focus, it did voice control/dialing, read out texts if you said yes when they arrived.. none of my later cars with built in handsfree kits are anywhere near as good as that system was.
It also sounded a bit like alan dedicoat.
Both Rolls Royces and Ferraris tend to be bought by people of advancing years.
I would not say that out loud anywhere near many of those R&B/Rapper so called musicians who seem to drive an awful lot of Ferraris (or for the even richer, Lambo's). Yellow Ferrari's seem to be rather popular with them.
Agreed about the Rollers though.
Now, if you had used an Aston then the age profile would be right.
"This makes a touch screen a dubious choice because as we age the conductivity in our skin decreases."
Really? No really? Is that the excuse you're sticking to?
"We managed “enjoy” a great driving road, following Apple Maps"
Wait, you're saying you followed Apple maps and it DIDN'T lead you offroad?
Now I KNOW you're taking the piss. And I don't mean about how old farts have to go every 10 minutes.
Why not just a hole in the dash which you can buy insert-able "plates" for, which will take whatever phone you have and route the USB connection properly (Nokia fixed car kits used to do this - base + adaptor cradle for specific phone model).
As long as you've got audio-out via USB (and in I guess - so you can have a mic fitted in a better place in the car) you don't need any expensive touch screen or any software converting screens into video - you use the phone's screen, mounted in the dash. And, most importantly, you'd be using *open standards*. The phone can even detect it's in the cradle and switch to the special car mode they all claim is needed for safety purposes.
For those who don't want to use a phone in the car make a blanking plate with a clock in it or something that'll fit in the gap.
I have access to Spotify, my personal MP3 collection, navigation and phone calling in my car, all for the price of... £50. £30 quid for the cheap Android phone I got especially to mount in the car (connected to cheap headunit via the aux socket) and £20 quid for the foam, glue and paint to make a mount to fit into a cubby hole in the dash.
I have zero issues with complex so-called infotainment systems on cars. My own (high-end) ride has one such system.
However, and albeit I'm not a Ferrari type of person (nothing wrong with them, I've driven one and found it great fun), I have the impression a Ferrari is more about the mechanical side of things and getting close to the metal, not about widgets and gadgets. For that, why not just get one of the many other cars in the market with similar or superior performance, but more oriented towards customers who just want a fun, responsive, and (if safe and legal) fast ride, but don't care about how it is achieved?
Just a thought.
..my using my £50 Nokia and Hyundai i10 I can:
Start and receive phone calls
Receive and reply to texts
Get Navgation on the speakers (HERE anytime over the other ones, thankyou very much)
Control volume
Switch between media sources (automatically if Maps / Txt / Voice interupts)
The things I can't do (without taking hands off wheel)
Start a new text
Set up the navigation
Choose a new MP3 on the phone
which all seems pretty sensible to me, as they would be far to distracting.
This whole thing about supporting a particular phone platform is stupid. People change (usually) phones lot more often than cars for varying reasons. Surely in order to support existing customers and attract most new customers the car should support whatever phone the user has? Like other commentards have already pointed out car should just offer proper bluetooth support (possibly augmented with USB).
Would be be even better if there was a common protocol for the steering wheel controls that any phone could tap to (for things like answer/reject call) but that will never happen any more than universal support for interfacing aftermarket head units to existing controls and displays in the car.
> Where CarPlay fails the Ferrari philosophy is in having to look left to see the Apple map. Most high-end cars give the next sat-nav direction in a screen in the drivers binnacle, some even on a heads up display. Looking to the left to follow a map is far from ideal. It really needs better integration.
This one is a pain, albeit it's not a Ferrari I've got, but it's a choice between the built-in nav which uses the mini-screen in the binnacle, or one of the Carplay navigators, who presumably have no access to the mini-screen.
Anyone know, but it sounds as if it's never going to be fixed if the philosophy is that the car is just a dumb touch-screen?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
