Game Loop
With a new car in the family, Brianna wu finally has the chance to discover the pros and cons of CarPlay – with mixed results
Brianna Wu’s thoughts on CarPlay thus far.
After eight years of driving a 1998 Toyota Camry, my husband finally upgraded to a 2017 Dodge Challenger - a modern reimagining of the 1970s muscle car that he could never afford as a teenager. For Frank, it’s a chance to go in a straight line faster than any human really needs to. But for me, it was a chance to finally evaluate Apple’s CarPlay thoroughly.
CarPlay was
announced by Apple back in 2013 as a system to allow your car to connect to your iPhone. Although adoption was slow, today all major car manufacturers support CarPlay. Now that I’ve gotten to extensively test it, I can confidently say every iPhone owner should consider adding CarPlay to their vehicle. At the core, CarPlay is just a reskin of iOS for a second screen. The interface is simplified for driving, trading functionality for safety. Many of your apps are inaccessible in CarPlay, such as Mail; but ones that make sense to use while driving, like Maps and Music, do appear. Some third-party apps are also usable in CarPlay, mainly those focussed on audio output, such as Audible and MLB At Bat.
When the CarPlay interface is in use, the system is a delight. In the Challenger, Siri can be accessed by holding a steering wheel button, giving you the ability to get directions or send text messages. Playlists from your iPhone are also easily accessible with Siri. The advantage of CarPlay isn’t just gaining access to your phone’s maps and music - it also promotes safety while driving.
Where the
system falls apart is with the terrible Dodge software that supersedes CarPlay. It’s a UI nightmare. Dodge has its own (far worse) versions of navigation and music that have far more prominent buttons. To access CarPlay you must plug in your phone physically to a USB port, then continually choose the last option for the CarPlay submenu. For people that are less technical, CarPlay will probably confuse them to the point they’ll ignore it.
The other problem with CarPlay is that things frequently don’t work as you’d expect in the minimal interface. I listen to Anna Lunoe’s Hyperhouse show every
I can confidently say every iPhone owner should consider adding CarPlay to a vehicle
week on Apple Music, which is two hours long. But I can’t scrub through this unusually long track by touching the screen, as you might expect to be able to. Also, CarPlay does support wireless connections, but it’s not implemented in many cars - meaning you’ll probably have to plug in your phone.
Despite these quibbles, CarPlay is a must have for an iPhone owner. In fact it’s so good, I ordered a custom Double-DIN dash for my 2001 Audi TT roadster so I can install a Sony CarPlay receiver. I can’t wait to have Siri built into my car, leaving my right hand free to shift the manual transmission.
I grew up
in Mississippi, where the age you could get a driver’s license was, unwisely, just 14 years old - the reasoning being that your average teenager needs to drive tractors on the highway for their after-school farm job. My parents didn’t get me a tractor, but they did get me a piece-of-garbage 1987 Honda Accord instead.
When the car broke down, my parents wouldn’t pay to take it to a mechanic - but they would allow me to buy any part so I could learn to repair it myself. When I look back at the reasons I became a software engineer, I realize that gaining confidence from fixing that 1987 Accord was a large factor.
All of which brings us to 2017 and the ways in which the Apple ecosystem can help with car maintenance, too. While cars with onboard computers in the early ’90s could give you error codes from sensors, these were very expensive systems that were proprietary to each auto manufacturer. After a California lawsuit, the OBD-II port became a standard for every car sold. Today, these systems are so easily integrated with your iPhone, there’s no reason not to pick one up.
On Amazon, you can pick up any number of OBD-II Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices. I got mine from Foseal for just $20, which broadcasts its own Wi-Fi network that you connect your Mac or iPhone to. Regulations require your car’s OBD-II port to be easily user accessible, meaning you can quickly plug in a device and get diagnostic information on your phone.
Here, I used the $10 iPhone app OBD Fusion to find out why my 2001 Audi TT was telling me “Service Required.” The engine was misfiring, and the heater circuit was producing errors. A quick inspection of the engine showed that the wiring around the coil pack had started to fray. By giving me this complete information, I could see that a repair my mechanic originally quoted at $1,600 could also be done with just a $20 harness repair.
A word of
warning however: the security on most OBD-II wireless devices is nonexistent. Mine connects with no security through a default IP address. Though it’s tempting to leave it plugged in all the time to get real-time engine stats on your iPhone, it leaves your car extremely susceptible to hacking. If you want real-time data, go with a plugin solution.
In 2017, our iPhones are the centerpiece of our lives, so it makes sense that they should be the centerpiece of our cars as well. Hopefully, Apple will continue to refine CarPlay as aggressively as it has refined iOS. CarPlay is off to a great start, but the quirks keep it just short of “It just works.”
My parents didn’t get me a tractor, but they did get me a piece-ofgarbage 1987 Honda A word of warning: the security on most OBD-II wireless devices is nonexistent