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FWIW Teslas infotainment works better than CarPlay
by dzhiurgis 3y ago
FWIW Teslas infotainment works better than CarPlay
- filoleg 3y agoSomewhat 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 3y agoDoesn'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 3y agoThat'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 3y agoHave you not used maps via CarPlay?
- arcticfox 3y agoI 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 3y agoHmm 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 3y agoI 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 3y agoYes. It's awful. Plus CarPlay it's pretty unstable and requires cable on some cars.
- hollandheese 3y agoPeople listen to audio in their cars a lot more than they use navigation.
- katbyte 3y agoOffline maps such as Gaia don’t work on Tesla so that is it failing at its job compared to CarPlay
- tsudounym 3y agoTesla'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..
- lotsofpulp 3y agoIf 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 3y agoit is not just that, and cheap decks with laggy carplay/AA unfortunately prove that some processing happens external to the phone
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI 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 3y agoMy 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 3y agoOr because they want to charge a subscription for "premium data" which nobody would buy if there was CarPlay.
- scarface_74 3y agoUnless I want to use my favorite podcast app - Overcast - or use my radio station’s CarPlay app.
- katbyte 3y agoIt 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.