CarPlay rant
 

I know we've discussed this before, but now that I have a vehicle with CarPlay I get to be annoyed with it on a more regular basis. It's almost 2020 and Apple has had years to improve, and yet, it still sucks!

-The icons that appear on the left for switching between recently used apps are too small and too close together.
-There should always be a way to quickly exit back to the car's native system (instead of having to first return to the main menu and then selecting the brand "app".
-it should be possible to cancel navigation in apple maps with one click, same with turning on/off the nav voice. Also, doesn't show a straight forward list of recent destinations, offers no onscreen keyboard for entering a new destination (you have to use Siri or get your phone out), and there's no one click "go home" button. Some of these annoyances (and more!) also apply to Waze and Google. Although the car's (land rover) nav is mediocre i find myself using it more than the Carplay nav apps because, overall, it's less annoying than the Carplay based ones.

Not apple's fault but:
-Pandora's CarPlay implementation is still as buggy as a beta. It often doesn't load, or hangs while loading and forces you to force quit the app on the phone. Sometimes it will manage to play the current station but won't load station lists. For some reason, the BMW specific integration that they did for "BMW Apps" worked much better (even over bluetooth). Also, why do I need to click a little "hamburger" icon to be able to thumb up/down. There's a ton of unused space where they could easily add those icons to the "now playing" screen. Maybe Apple is to blame due to some overly restrictive interface guidelines.
-Google maps is overly sensitive to gyro data and constantly wiggles back and forth-- very distracting and annoying. It also seems to get easily confused and will "jump" to neighboring roads.
-Waze constantly makes annoying alert noises. I can't figure out how to turn them off without disabling the nav voice. Plus the interface looks like something from Garmin from the 90s. Very ugly and cartoonish.

I suspect that Apple and other app developers rarely if ever test their systems in actual vehicles.

On a related note, touchscreens in cars just suck. Even in cases where large properly spaced icons are used, it takes more concentration to select something than it does with an idrive-type system. Unfortunately, it seems the whole industry is going that direction. I admire BMW for holding strong. Adding touch screens for the press (who always ding cars without them) but keeping the click wheel for actual owners who know how to use it is a smart move by them



/rant

Counterpoint:

-The iDrive system works well for a very few specific functions, where you don't have to look at the screen at all.

-It is worse for every other function, and requires far more attention than a large touch screen does.

I agree on CarPlay, though. I generally don't like it; the one and only situation where I do is in rental cars, where it's better than trying to figure out the native OS in 30 seconds before I have to start driving.

I tend to agree on the buttons on the left. Also, the clock display is too small and it would be awesome if it pulled the exterior temp reading and displayed, too (the Camaro only shows external temp on the center display, not in an IP screen).

For going direct to the car's native system, does the RR not have a physical "home" (or similar) button? :dunno:

The Camaro does and my wife's RAV4 does. I don't think I've ever gotten to the car's home screen from CarPlay without using a physical button. The Toyota also has physical buttons for Map, Audio, etc that will go to the default (or last used?) app within CarPlay. The Camaro doesn't have physical buttons for those.

None of the nav apps are perfect, each does some things better than the others, but they all work pretty well. I have my phone in a mount, so it's always accessible and I never have to "get it out." Waze and Google Maps work better with two screens when needed, but it's the only way in my cars to have Waze running and have audio app display simultaneously.

CarPlay doesn't work exactly the same on every car. Manufacturers and enable/disable thigns as they wish. With iOS 13, CarPlay can now address multiple screens. I don't know how well that's working out so far, but I don't think it works with many cars yet.

Overall, the updates for iOS13 addressed my showstopper issues, so it's always running for me and I'm pretty happy with it.

I'm not super fond of how music is handled in CarPlay. Upon initial connection, it sometimes starts up in Apple Music, which I never use, instead of Spotify. The "Now Playing" feature in CarPlay is annoying, but it works. Okayish.

I wish it wasn't such a hassle trying to listen to actual radio while CarPlay is active

agreed

Ugh. I wish there was a good way to remove the radio. I HATE having my ear polluted by even a moment's exposure to that garbage.

Ha- that’s the one infotainment thing that actually works well in my RR. I can switch sources from the steering wheel or lower touch screen while carplay stays on the upper screen. If I’m listening to radio and select pandora on carplay it automatically switches back to carplay as the audio source.


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Nope. They went touch screen mad a couple years ago and removed nearly all physical buttons. Pretty stupid.


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Hey, another thing that Nick and I agree on! :D

NPR WNYC and Jazz 88 WBGO. I can't do radio commercials

I'd probably be mad at CarPlay, too, then.

Ditto to NPR (exclusively for me.)

I sometimes stream a San Diego radio station. But, I know that's weird

Hmm- trying to think of places where idrive is worse than a touch screen. The only things I can think of are manually entering destinations in the nav (Which I rarely had to do since the voice recognition was excellent in idrive 6) or using Apple carplay (Which my old car didn’t have but even if it did I wouldn’t have bothered with it). For which functionality do you find it less convenient than a touch screen ?


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which one?

>>>>>>>

I listen to the radio. I get tired of trying to figure out what to listen to and the playlists never seem as good.

I just slide a cassette in the dash and turn up the volume...

:p

Anything that requires any kind of text entry or menu navigation.

I listen to the radio (NPR or XM) in the BMW because I can’t be bothered to find a song I want to listen to on my phone. Much easier in the Tesla.

Changing sources also a pain in the ass with I drive.

Entering any kind of phone number.

I use the nav all the time in the Tesla because destination entry is so easy. I only occasionally do in the BMW, when I can be bothered to launch the separate BMW app on my phone—even that beats using I drive.

I drive is better really only for hitting mute on conference calls. Otherwise I just use the memory buttons to select new stations.

91X. Only listen in short bursts because their heavy rotation stuff is very heavy rotation most of the day, but I like hearing the DJ banter and SD local stuff between songs. Even the ads. When I can, I like to hear some of the Resurrection Sunday and Loudspeaker shows.

The built in streaming media on the Tesla system is nice. Surprisingly, my LR has a built in Spotify player but it requires a premium account and I’m not really a Spotify user. Kind of curious to try it out though. Changing sources with the bmw steering wheel should just be a matter of hitting the “mode” button iirc.

Idrive 6 brought a vast improvement in speech recognition - and I used nav all the time in our bmw. Unfortunately I think your car still has the previous gen. So, yeah, text entry with the knob sucks. Does yours have the handwriting recognition? Once you get used to it I found that works pretty well and you can keep your eyes on the road.

I found Selecting stations or songs easy in the bmw since you could quickly scroll through the list either using the steering wheel or idrive controller. I don’t think Tesla lets you use either of the scroll wheels to do that iirc (just to change source), right? Scrolling through lists such as phone numbers, stations or songs is something I did pretty often and I find it so fast and easy with the idrive controller or steering wheel.


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8 track/ ;)

I was also disappointed he didn't say 8 track. :D

Car record player? I had no idea.

Yes, mine has handwriting recognition. The problem is that it's a multi-stage process to get to the point you can use it. Click "Media," scroll to "External source." Now scroll to "search." That brings up screen with half-a-dozen fields (artist, composer, album, title, etc). Scroll to the one you want, click. THAT brings up an alphabetical list. Now scroll to "Keyword search" and click. At that point you can start drawing letters, which works pretty well for the first letter but at least on mine with my iPhone it just hangs on "please wait" if you try and enter more than one letter.


In contrast, the Tesla has a field on the main screen. Tap that, type the song or artist, off you go.

EDIT: In fairness, the Tesla's iphone integration is essentially non-existent, so if you want to listen to a song on your phone you basically have to use the phone to get to it. But then again, you mostly don't need to do that because the car has its own streaming.

CarPlay can be a big pain in the ass at times in my experience but I sure wish my S4 had it.

There are 2 parts of bmw’s system where touch screen is better and you need to be really familiar with it to understand what I will try to describe.

The screen has like 7 (maybe more or less) tiles on the main screen (radio, nav, phone, etc.) when you want to open up the radio station your listening to and when you want the weather you just touch the tile it is displayed on where with the idrive you need to click on the tile and which then opens up the menu.

In the radios case when you click the tile it brings you to the radio menu (presets, etc) in the weather’s case when you click the tile with idrive it opens connect drive(or whatever it’s called).

Then you need to click again to the menu you want ...

:cool: I listen to 91x too but prefer 94.9 nowadays

Yep- I'm familiar w/ the home screen with the tiles- that's how the system in my x3 was setup. I found that I rarely used it since the buttons around the idrive controller let me quickliy jump between the various sections. For getting to the radio screen, I typically just used the "media" button next to the idrive controller or used the "source" button the steering wheel. I didn't regularly check the weather in my car, but when I did I just used the voice system to say "what's the weather", or just "weather" and it opened it. Im pretty sure I could have also setup one of the preset buttons to go to weather directly.

Ah. Yes, doing a keyword search for music with idrive is not fun. I guess I never really did that cause I ended up using Pandora most of the time. When I wanted to find a particular song on my iphone, I actually found it pretty fast to use the idrive wheel to scroll through all the songs and select the one I wanted. That being said, on my F10 (which I think had the same version of idrive as your M3), I vaguely recall being able to use the voice recognition to search for a particular song on my phone. I can't remember the phrasing for it right now (was something like "Play Yellow Submarine from my phone" or something like that). It may have only worked when connected via USB however.

I guess when you have built-in streaming media with keyword search you end up using it a lot. The system's interface and capabilties start to influence the types of things we do with it. Since scrolling through lists was easy with idrive, that's what I did. With tesla, keyword search is easy so that's what you do. With RR, nothing is easy so i rant about carplay...lol

His M3 should have the touch screen so it would probably be more like your X3 then the F10.

Even my X3 didn't have the touch screen; some models got idrive 6 without a touch screen (like the last gen x3), while others (like your 5 series) got the touch screen. I think JST's M3 has Idrive 4:
https://www.bimmer-tech.net/blog/ite...cic-nbt-nbtevo

Yeah, no touch screen in my car.

That is so strange my sons 340 has the touch screen and it’s a F30.

IIRC, Josh's M3 is MY2016. No idea if/when there was a transition.

My 2 series is a 2017, and does not have a touch screen but a touch controller (is that what you guys are talking about? Our 2016 X5 does not.

Looks like the 2 is NBT Evo (the Next Big Thing Evolution) ID5/ID6.

The X5 is NBT
(CIC-HIGH, also called the Next Big Thing – NBT)

https://www.bimmer-tech.net/blog/ite...cic-nbt-nbtevo

It appears different models have different screens (touch and not):

https://www.bimmer-tech.net/blog/ite...idrive-upgrade

LOL

I have my (audio quality) limits... lol

Never had an 8 track.

Home stereo wise, for analogue sources - I do have 2 reel to reel's, 4 or 5 cassette decks, 2 turntables.... a couple of tuners... as sources.
Will be paring down after the house and shop get settled. I think this summer...

CarPlay rant
 

Yeah 2017+ f30s got the newer headunit with touch. Depends on production date.


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CarPlay rant
 

Yep. What’s confusing is that some vehicles got ID5 with a touch screen (my mom’s x1) while some did not (my x3). Probably depended on plant/production date. ID6 is the same hardware but just a different home screen (you can even “code” an id5 car to give it the ID6 interface) - and I think all ID6 cars have a touch screen.

The touch screen is almost a necessity with carplay (very frustrating to use without one)

I’m still such a bmw nerd.

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:lol:

I have ID5, I think. It is SO much better than what's in the older X5.

CarPlay rant
 

Agree. I loved that system in my x3. First (and only) infotainment system I’ve really liked. Everything just worked so well. That’s one of the reasons carplay annoys me so much - how is it that a trillion dollar tech company like Apple can’t do any better? Even Bmws voice recognition seemed better than Siri!


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