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It’s amusing when the author says “when the phone crashes.” My 2022 Subaru Outback head unit frequently crashes or is really unresponsive. My iPhone never cra

It’s amusing when the author says “when the phone crashes.” My 2022 Subaru Outback head unit frequently crashes or is really unresponsive. My iPhone never crashes. Car infotainment systems are garbage. I’d never buy a car without CarPlay. It’s maybe the #1 measure I have for vehicle quality when I rent on vacation.

dzhiurgis 2y ago
FWIW Teslas infotainment works better than CarPlay
- filoleg 2y ago
  Somewhat agreed (I prefer the Tesla infotainment system over CarPlay, but they both have their own advantages, despite being imo equally good overall), but I would say it’s not super relevant to the argument. And only because Tesla infotainment is the only car manufacturer’s first-party infotainment system I’ve seen that can hold a candle to CarPlay. Not a single other one I’ve seen was even close. CarPlay was the best I could hope for, because anything that was first-party (excluding Tesla) was absolutely awful. I don’t remember which specific brands had CarPlay and which ran their own infotainment systems, but I remember a couple years ago visiting dealerships of BMW/Mercedes/Honda/Toyota/Kia/Subaru/Ford and walking away either relieved that the car had CarPlay or internally cursing at their first-party infotainment system and promising myself to not even bother trying next time.
- cjensen 2y ago
  Doesn't matter because CarPlay and AA allow you to bring whatever apps you want to with you. If you listen to podcasts or books on your phone, you can continue them from the CarPlay/AA interface next time you drive. CarPlay and Android Auto give you the choice of your own app and full integration with the rest of your listening life.
  - ajross 2y ago
    That's a statement about audio playing only though. To first approximation the core job of a car infotainment product is map and navigation display. Everything else is noise.
    - lokar 2y ago
      Have you not used maps via CarPlay?
      - arcticfox 2y ago
        I think CarPlay is kind of stupid because the ONLY apps that make any sense are audio and maps. Both of which don’t need much variety… Google Maps, plus a handful of audio apps, and the infotainment system is complete.
        seer 2y ago
        Hmm waze is hugely popular where I come from, because of all the police speed traps it crowdsources. And I’ve not seen that as part of an official infotainment system like ever. And to be fair I prefer waze, not just because it makes driving simpler, but the community feeling you get by marking stopped cars or other obstructions on the road for others to pay attention to. Unless automakers organize and come together to build a common os/ui layer, I don’t see apps like that ever being present in official infotainment systems. And audio book apps change all the time too - local variants with local libraries, language learning apps etc. There is quite the variety of stuff you could do in a car.
        _flux 2y ago
        I imagine a lot of companies would like to integrate their apps to cars. Think the police, ambulances, taxis/Uber, etc. Currently they just solve the problem by mounting more devices to the car. And even if you want to use only audio and maps, then there are still a selection of audio streaming providers and map providers around.
      - dzhiurgis 2y ago
        Yes. It's awful. Plus CarPlay it's pretty unstable and requires cable on some cars.
- tsudounym 2y ago
  Tesla's Spotify app had a long standing bug where it couldn't recognize playlists with more than 100 songs. To be dependent on a car company to give bugs for every individual apps rather than to just mirror from your phone, which will have patched apps right away..
  - djtango 2y ago
    Yeah its like smart TVs but worse
    - lokar 2y ago
      Plus, that musky smell…
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  If that were true, Tesla would have no problem offering CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. After all, it’s just a protocol to let your phone use the display (or part of it) as a second monitor.
  - hatsix 2y ago
    it is not just that, and cheap decks with laggy carplay/AA unfortunately prove that some processing happens external to the phone
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      I assume every touchscreen monitor has its own processor, but that does not mean it is seeing any data other than the video stream. And I imagine that video stream data is not going elsewhere.
  - caf 2y ago
    My theory is that Tesla want to strongly encourage people to use the in-built navigation that works very hard to ensure you don't run out of charge.
    - hamandcheese 2y ago
      Or because they want to charge a subscription for "premium data" which nobody would buy if there was CarPlay.
      - dzhiurgis 2y ago
        You don't need premium data for online maps. Premium data is for sat maps, music and live camera views. Also at $10 per month it's actually quite cheap.
        caf 2y ago
        Yeah it doesn't seem to be a profit centre, at the moment anyway.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  Unless I want to use my favorite podcast app - Overcast - or use my radio station’s CarPlay app.
- katbyte 2y ago
  It has a far more limited selection of apps and Some I use daily are not available so it really doesn’t matter if it works better because for me it doesn’t work at all.
hot_gril 2y ago
Depends on lots of variables, overall not something I want to rely on just to play music. Like I got a Chevy rental and CarPlay took forever to pair then proceeded to play distorted music for some reason, while the FM radio worked fine. Worked better on another car but still took forever to pair. I installed a new stereo for my old car today, intentionally avoided CarPlay and got a simple non-touchscreen JVC. $60, 15 minute DIY job, BT paired instantly, has aux too, and sounds great.
- KerrAvon 2y ago
  The quality of a rental Chevy head unit is not a good indicator of the CarPlay user experience in a decent car.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    It shouldn't matter, it's just music. And one car that failed the test was a $50K Suburban. If it's this flaky, maybe some other car works fine but one day it stops.
    - b112 2y ago
      I think we should collectively start saying things like "wow, look at how horrible this system is. I wonder how bad the computer control for steering or brakes is!" The point being, further hurt the sales of any cars like this, because really, it could be true.
      - hot_gril 2y ago
        Eh, that's something a lot of people would notice and the government would get involved in, and it's been played out already. I generally trust GM's steering and brakes to work. Infotainment is not their expertise, and if they were releasing a self-driving car, I'd also be wary given their track record.
- derwiki 2y ago
  CarPlay is alright on rentals, but I don’t care for it as a daily driver. Gimme a USB port I can plug a 32GB flash drive full of MP3s into. I don’t mind using a phone holder in the vent when I need to map, but I only map on <10% of trips. This is probably the most luddite thing about me: I loathe using a phone while driving. I just find it too distracting.
mlinhares 2y ago
Second this, had VW, GM and Ford cars, complete unusable shit without carplay, doubt the other car makers are any better. The insane lag to enter anything on google maps on my 2024 Yukon is ridiculous. Worse, the fact it makes me TYPE in the touchscreen instead of letting me do this on the phone is yet another reason to completely ditch it. Google could easily let me control it through the phone (as they do with youtube on my tv) but I doubt they care enough to do that. It should be straightforward, pick a direction on my phone, beam to car, car opens it automatically in google maps. That is not difficult.
- ghosty141 2y ago
  Mercedes seems to be quite good from what I’ve heard and seen on ytube. Not cheap though.
  - vladvasiliu 2y ago
    Drove a rental GLA last September, and the system was quite nice to use. No noticeable lag. Also, the integration with the iphone was top-notch. It understood that the iphone provided navigation, so if I pressed the nav button while on the radio screen, it would activate google maps from the iphone. The only thing which wasn't great was typing in some long address, which is why I connected the iphone. Rented some kind of Audi a few weeks later, and it had the usual crappy integration. "nav" is the car's laggy navigation, etc.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  My Renault Megane e-Tech uses an Android Automotive based OS, along with some Qualcomm chips to drive it[1]. Result is that it's smooth like a tablet, even with it's quite large 12" screen. Been very pleased with it so far. It also supports Android Auto and CarPlay though, something I had as a requirement. [1]: https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault-megane-e-tech-electric/ https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault...
sircastor 2y ago
CarPlay is still wholly dependent on the car’s infotainment stack. If your Suburu’s system is crashing, CarPlay can’t insulate you from that.
- nmcfarl 2y ago
  I don't know about that - my Subaru head unit crashes a lot more when I'm clicking around in the Subaru programs, and it very rarely crashes when I'm clicking in CarPlay. My feeling is there are bugs in the Subaru provided programs, and very few bugs in the program that launches CarPlay and gives it control of the screen (probably because that is a very simple program). So it seems that the more features I use via carplay the less it crashes. It's not perfect, but it certainly helps.
  - bonestamp2 2y ago
    I had the same problem with my Volvo XC-90 (2020 Model). It's been years since any of my iPhones have crashed. Never had a problem with carplay in my BMW or Chrysler minivan either. I hope Volvo has found the problem and released a fix by now.
  - skinner927 2y ago
    I had/have a 2020 Subaru Forester and 2024 Subaru Ascent and both head units have completely frozen to the point removing the battery was the only fix (even the radio fuses didn’t reset the underlying computer). It’s really quite a shame as they’re fantastic cars otherwise. But yes, it’s never CarPlay that does it.
- saganus 2y ago
  In my case, I own a VW SUV and to my surprise when I go nearby a particular antenna, if I have my Android phone connected it crashes the whole infotainment system, and I can't do anything with it unless I turn the car off for several minutes, which is obviously impossible if I'm going somewhere. However my wife has an iPhone and although going next to the same antenna does crash the system as well, it does so very briefly and just resets the connection or something, and as soon as we go out of range it starts working again. So it does look like there's some difference between CarPlay and Android Auto even when using the same exact car with both. No idea why this happens and I can only assume the antenna is transmitting in a frequency that interferes with the wifi connection (it does not require a cable like older VW cars) which triggers a bug in the Android's stack, but Apple's stack seems more resilient somehow. I would love to know if anyone else has had the same experience because I find it quite baffling and very annoying when I forget to disconnect my phone when going through that antenna.
internet101010 2y ago
My iPhone crashes... intentionally. Because the Spotify app caches everything rather than doing refreshes when loading "new episodes" of podcasts. I had to abandon them for podcasts because of it. That said, a car without CarPlay is simply out of the pool of possible cars I would buy. It's a requirement.
barbariangrunge 2y ago
My infotainment unit is pretty unreliable. Sometimes I have to play music or use my map from the phone speakers because the cars unit just goes black and won’t reboot
x-shadowban 2y ago
Fell for the Crosstrek but then got the ick with that dash tablet
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katbyte 2y ago
Also I find it CarPlay crashes or hangs you just unplug/replug and it works
jkestner 2y ago
Once my Ford's infotainment system (Microsoft CE, I believe) crashed hard, and I had to open and close the door while I was at a stoplight to get it to reset. On the other hand, the voice command system works as badly as it did when I got the car, while Siri has gotten worse.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Happens on mine too. I discovered not later than yesterday that if I plug a Nintendo Switch to one of the USB ports (to recharge it), the interface disappears. And this is still one of the least garbage infotainment I had to endure to this day.
  - jkestner 2y ago
    Agreed! Seems like these systems are about 10 years behind in general, so I was pleasantly surprised that the voice system worked after a fashion. Just requires too specific phrasing to make it do stuff, and then I didn't pay to keep the maps up to date... Also appreciate that the main UI follows Fitt's Law and I can jam my finger to the corner to go to audio (though if it would just stay on that screen between drives I wouldn't have to do anything).
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dzhiurgis 2y ago

FWIW Teslas infotainment works better than CarPlay

filoleg 2y ago
Somewhat agreed (I prefer the Tesla infotainment system over CarPlay, but they both have their own advantages, despite being imo equally good overall), but I would say it’s not super relevant to the argument. And only because Tesla infotainment is the only car manufacturer’s first-party infotainment system I’ve seen that can hold a candle to CarPlay. Not a single other one I’ve seen was even close. CarPlay was the best I could hope for, because anything that was first-party (excluding Tesla) was absolutely awful. I don’t remember which specific brands had CarPlay and which ran their own infotainment systems, but I remember a couple years ago visiting dealerships of BMW/Mercedes/Honda/Toyota/Kia/Subaru/Ford and walking away either relieved that the car had CarPlay or internally cursing at their first-party infotainment system and promising myself to not even bother trying next time.
cjensen 2y ago
Doesn't matter because CarPlay and AA allow you to bring whatever apps you want to with you. If you listen to podcasts or books on your phone, you can continue them from the CarPlay/AA interface next time you drive. CarPlay and Android Auto give you the choice of your own app and full integration with the rest of your listening life.
- ajross 2y ago
  That's a statement about audio playing only though. To first approximation the core job of a car infotainment product is map and navigation display. Everything else is noise.
  - lokar 2y ago
    Have you not used maps via CarPlay?
    - arcticfox 2y ago
      I think CarPlay is kind of stupid because the ONLY apps that make any sense are audio and maps. Both of which don’t need much variety… Google Maps, plus a handful of audio apps, and the infotainment system is complete.
      - seer 2y ago
        Hmm waze is hugely popular where I come from, because of all the police speed traps it crowdsources. And I’ve not seen that as part of an official infotainment system like ever. And to be fair I prefer waze, not just because it makes driving simpler, but the community feeling you get by marking stopped cars or other obstructions on the road for others to pay attention to. Unless automakers organize and come together to build a common os/ui layer, I don’t see apps like that ever being present in official infotainment systems. And audio book apps change all the time too - local variants with local libraries, language learning apps etc. There is quite the variety of stuff you could do in a car.
      - _flux 2y ago
        I imagine a lot of companies would like to integrate their apps to cars. Think the police, ambulances, taxis/Uber, etc. Currently they just solve the problem by mounting more devices to the car. And even if you want to use only audio and maps, then there are still a selection of audio streaming providers and map providers around.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      Yes. It's awful. Plus CarPlay it's pretty unstable and requires cable on some cars.
tsudounym 2y ago
Tesla's Spotify app had a long standing bug where it couldn't recognize playlists with more than 100 songs. To be dependent on a car company to give bugs for every individual apps rather than to just mirror from your phone, which will have patched apps right away..
- djtango 2y ago
  Yeah its like smart TVs but worse
  - lokar 2y ago
    Plus, that musky smell…
lotsofpulp 2y ago
If that were true, Tesla would have no problem offering CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility. After all, it’s just a protocol to let your phone use the display (or part of it) as a second monitor.
- hatsix 2y ago
  it is not just that, and cheap decks with laggy carplay/AA unfortunately prove that some processing happens external to the phone
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    I assume every touchscreen monitor has its own processor, but that does not mean it is seeing any data other than the video stream. And I imagine that video stream data is not going elsewhere.
- caf 2y ago
  My theory is that Tesla want to strongly encourage people to use the in-built navigation that works very hard to ensure you don't run out of charge.
  - hamandcheese 2y ago
    Or because they want to charge a subscription for "premium data" which nobody would buy if there was CarPlay.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      You don't need premium data for online maps. Premium data is for sat maps, music and live camera views. Also at $10 per month it's actually quite cheap.
      - caf 2y ago
        Yeah it doesn't seem to be a profit centre, at the moment anyway.
scarface_74 2y ago
Unless I want to use my favorite podcast app - Overcast - or use my radio station’s CarPlay app.
katbyte 2y ago
It has a far more limited selection of apps and Some I use daily are not available so it really doesn’t matter if it works better because for me it doesn’t work at all.

hot_gril 2y ago

Depends on lots of variables, overall not something I want to rely on just to play music. Like I got a Chevy rental and CarPlay took forever to pair then proceeded to play distorted music for some reason, while the FM radio worked fine. Worked better on another car but still took forever to pair. I installed a new stereo for my old car today, intentionally avoided CarPlay and got a simple non-touchscreen JVC. $60, 15 minute DIY job, BT paired instantly, has aux too, and sounds great.

KerrAvon 2y ago
The quality of a rental Chevy head unit is not a good indicator of the CarPlay user experience in a decent car.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  It shouldn't matter, it's just music. And one car that failed the test was a $50K Suburban. If it's this flaky, maybe some other car works fine but one day it stops.
  - b112 2y ago
    I think we should collectively start saying things like "wow, look at how horrible this system is. I wonder how bad the computer control for steering or brakes is!" The point being, further hurt the sales of any cars like this, because really, it could be true.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      Eh, that's something a lot of people would notice and the government would get involved in, and it's been played out already. I generally trust GM's steering and brakes to work. Infotainment is not their expertise, and if they were releasing a self-driving car, I'd also be wary given their track record.
derwiki 2y ago
CarPlay is alright on rentals, but I don’t care for it as a daily driver. Gimme a USB port I can plug a 32GB flash drive full of MP3s into. I don’t mind using a phone holder in the vent when I need to map, but I only map on <10% of trips. This is probably the most luddite thing about me: I loathe using a phone while driving. I just find it too distracting.

mlinhares 2y ago

Second this, had VW, GM and Ford cars, complete unusable shit without carplay, doubt the other car makers are any better. The insane lag to enter anything on google maps on my 2024 Yukon is ridiculous. Worse, the fact it makes me TYPE in the touchscreen instead of letting me do this on the phone is yet another reason to completely ditch it. Google could easily let me control it through the phone (as they do with youtube on my tv) but I doubt they care enough to do that. It should be straightforward, pick a direction on my phone, beam to car, car opens it automatically in google maps. That is not difficult.

ghosty141 2y ago
Mercedes seems to be quite good from what I’ve heard and seen on ytube. Not cheap though.
- vladvasiliu 2y ago
  Drove a rental GLA last September, and the system was quite nice to use. No noticeable lag. Also, the integration with the iphone was top-notch. It understood that the iphone provided navigation, so if I pressed the nav button while on the radio screen, it would activate google maps from the iphone. The only thing which wasn't great was typing in some long address, which is why I connected the iphone. Rented some kind of Audi a few weeks later, and it had the usual crappy integration. "nav" is the car's laggy navigation, etc.
magicalhippo 2y ago
My Renault Megane e-Tech uses an Android Automotive based OS, along with some Qualcomm chips to drive it[1]. Result is that it's smooth like a tablet, even with it's quite large 12" screen. Been very pleased with it so far. It also supports Android Auto and CarPlay though, something I had as a requirement. [1]: https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault-megane-e-tech-electric/ https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault...

sircastor 2y ago

CarPlay is still wholly dependent on the car’s infotainment stack. If your Suburu’s system is crashing, CarPlay can’t insulate you from that.

nmcfarl 2y ago
I don't know about that - my Subaru head unit crashes a lot more when I'm clicking around in the Subaru programs, and it very rarely crashes when I'm clicking in CarPlay. My feeling is there are bugs in the Subaru provided programs, and very few bugs in the program that launches CarPlay and gives it control of the screen (probably because that is a very simple program). So it seems that the more features I use via carplay the less it crashes. It's not perfect, but it certainly helps.
- bonestamp2 2y ago
  I had the same problem with my Volvo XC-90 (2020 Model). It's been years since any of my iPhones have crashed. Never had a problem with carplay in my BMW or Chrysler minivan either. I hope Volvo has found the problem and released a fix by now.
- skinner927 2y ago
  I had/have a 2020 Subaru Forester and 2024 Subaru Ascent and both head units have completely frozen to the point removing the battery was the only fix (even the radio fuses didn’t reset the underlying computer). It’s really quite a shame as they’re fantastic cars otherwise. But yes, it’s never CarPlay that does it.
saganus 2y ago
In my case, I own a VW SUV and to my surprise when I go nearby a particular antenna, if I have my Android phone connected it crashes the whole infotainment system, and I can't do anything with it unless I turn the car off for several minutes, which is obviously impossible if I'm going somewhere. However my wife has an iPhone and although going next to the same antenna does crash the system as well, it does so very briefly and just resets the connection or something, and as soon as we go out of range it starts working again. So it does look like there's some difference between CarPlay and Android Auto even when using the same exact car with both. No idea why this happens and I can only assume the antenna is transmitting in a frequency that interferes with the wifi connection (it does not require a cable like older VW cars) which triggers a bug in the Android's stack, but Apple's stack seems more resilient somehow. I would love to know if anyone else has had the same experience because I find it quite baffling and very annoying when I forget to disconnect my phone when going through that antenna.

internet101010 2y ago

My iPhone crashes... intentionally. Because the Spotify app caches everything rather than doing refreshes when loading "new episodes" of podcasts. I had to abandon them for podcasts because of it. That said, a car without CarPlay is simply out of the pool of possible cars I would buy. It's a requirement.

barbariangrunge 2y ago

My infotainment unit is pretty unreliable. Sometimes I have to play music or use my map from the phone speakers because the cars unit just goes black and won’t reboot

x-shadowban 2y ago

Fell for the Crosstrek but then got the ick with that dash tablet

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katbyte 2y ago

Also I find it CarPlay crashes or hangs you just unplug/replug and it works

jkestner 2y ago

Once my Ford's infotainment system (Microsoft CE, I believe) crashed hard, and I had to open and close the door while I was at a stoplight to get it to reset. On the other hand, the voice command system works as badly as it did when I got the car, while Siri has gotten worse.

pjerem 2y ago
Happens on mine too. I discovered not later than yesterday that if I plug a Nintendo Switch to one of the USB ports (to recharge it), the interface disappears. And this is still one of the least garbage infotainment I had to endure to this day.
- jkestner 2y ago
  Agreed! Seems like these systems are about 10 years behind in general, so I was pleasantly surprised that the voice system worked after a fashion. Just requires too specific phrasing to make it do stuff, and then I didn't pay to keep the maps up to date... Also appreciate that the main UI follows Fitt's Law and I can jam my finger to the corner to go to audio (though if it would just stay on that screen between drives I wouldn't have to do anything).

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