Thread: CarPlay rant
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Old 12-16-2019, 12:09 PM   #1
robg
Carmudgeon
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,225
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
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