5 ms·

This is a bit of a two-edged sword. I kind of doubt that Carplay and Android Auto will keep working with new phones as long as a car can. At which point you wil

by zevon 1y ago

This is a bit of a two-edged sword. I kind of doubt that Carplay and Android Auto will keep working with new phones as long as a car can. At which point you will end up with an old smartphone in your car or some workaround like that.

rimunroe 1y ago
Has this ever happened with CarPlay? As far as I know, even if your car was made in 2013 when CarPlay was first released it should continue to work just fine with the newest iPhones. If you plug the latest iPhone into your 2013 car, you would see the latest version of CarPlay pop up on the screen. I know there's a new version of CarPlay which requires support from the car maker, but I think CarPlay support is a binary matter of if the car supports CarPlay at all. I'd hope they'd design the system such that it wouldn't become obsolete over the average lifespan of the vehicle.
- bluGill 1y ago
  I would hope so, but I don't trust computer makers. There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US). Most parts are still available, and if not you can make them in your garage with affordable tools (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop). Apple switch to OSX, m68k to PPC to x86 (ARM is in progress). I had the first android phone - the apps I bought for it back then are not on installable on my current phone (most haven't very modified from what I ran back then). If I had a copy I could still run Office 97 on a modern windows 11 machine - or so I'm told - but nobody will know how to inter change files with me. My company has had to redesign perfectly good embedded controllers just because the chips are not made anymore.
  - philistine 1y ago
    On the other hand, Apple is quick to get rid of old APIs in their software, but they consider features sacrosanct. Only this Fall will macOS lose support for Firewire, which finally means that we have a version of macOS that doesn't support the first iPod. Which came out in 2001. All the USB iPods will still connect and sync.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    > I don't trust computer makers Nor should you! > There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US). I do like resisting the disposable economy, though I hope keeping ICE cars that old wouldn't be normal enough to be a factor in designing a product if for no other reason than emissions and safety features. > (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop). Indeed. I grew up with a >1 ton metal lathe in ours, as well as a milling machine. My siblings and I would use the lathe as a climbing gym.
spdustin 1y ago
CarPlay is essentially a conditional pair of video inputs. Any system that supports on-screen rear-view camera and that has a wheel speed sensor can support CarPlay.
- galangalalgol 1y ago
  Is wheel sppeed really the only car sensor exposed to the app? That is kind of sad.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    What do you really need? Is the car moving forward or backward is the only one you can't figure out from GPS on the phone (this is possibly what they are getting from wheel speed - GPS speed is more accurate if you have a signal). There are a lot of nice to haves of course. GPS does eat phone battery so better if the car can give you that. There is a lot of other car data that is interesting, why force plugging a OBDII dongle in to get DTCs, RPM, O2 sensor values, or whatever. However for car play to work at all it doesn't need anything more.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      Nav apps on phones will use dead-reckoning if they don't have a GPS signal, so they don't really even need the wheel-speed sensor, but I'd guess they use it just to increase accuracy.. e.g. in a long tunnel.
      - account42 1y ago
        Increasing accuracy is a wild understatement. Dead reckoning with mobile phone hardware won't give you a usable result for long. Maybe your experiences are from tunnels with dedicated beacons to tell the phone where you are.
        kube-system 1y ago
        Most vehicular tunnels aren't too terribly long, if you're stuck in one in traffic, yeah dead reckoning drifts quite a bit. But if you're driving through one for a minute or two, it's sufficient. On a side note I've personally had bad experience with beacons in train tunnels telling me I'm miles away from where I'm actually at.
MobileVet 1y ago
This isn’t something I have actively thought about… but now that you bring it up, I am definitely concerned. If the APIs were deprecated, CarPlay would be useless as the auto manufacturers would not update their head unit. The thread about an F150 with a known Bluetooth issue is a great example. Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently
- kube-system 1y ago
  Automakers didn't update the cassette decks in their cars when CDs came out. You could expect cassettes to be around in cars for a good solid ~20 years, but that was about it. At some point technology moves on. > Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently Yeah, there's no incentive to fix problems when people buy the product anyway.
  - devilbunny 1y ago
    > Automakers didn't update the cassette decks in their cars when CDs came out. And reasonably enough: few people even in the early 90s had CD changers in cars, and people didn't want to scratch their discs, and in any case everyone pretty much still had a tape deck at home - it wasn't too hard to copy your CD to tape, which was cheap, small, rerecordable, and more durable, and sound quality in cars wasn't great anyway.
- account42 1y ago
  It's not like car manufacturers have any more incentive to update the built in navigation and multimedia applications either.
numpad0 1y ago
HDMI should have had a multitouch-over-EDID extension. An I2C HID controller with a spec-agreed address should be able to be just wired in parallel to EDID ROM line and it would just work. Lack of such standard must have strongly justified existence of CP/AA.

by zevon 1y ago

rimunroe 1y ago

Has this ever happened with CarPlay? As far as I know, even if your car was made in 2013 when CarPlay was first released it should continue to work just fine with the newest iPhones. If you plug the latest iPhone into your 2013 car, you would see the latest version of CarPlay pop up on the screen. I know there's a new version of CarPlay which requires support from the car maker, but I think CarPlay support is a binary matter of if the car supports CarPlay at all. I'd hope they'd design the system such that it wouldn't become obsolete over the average lifespan of the vehicle.

bluGill 1y ago
I would hope so, but I don't trust computer makers. There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US). Most parts are still available, and if not you can make them in your garage with affordable tools (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop). Apple switch to OSX, m68k to PPC to x86 (ARM is in progress). I had the first android phone - the apps I bought for it back then are not on installable on my current phone (most haven't very modified from what I ran back then). If I had a copy I could still run Office 97 on a modern windows 11 machine - or so I'm told - but nobody will know how to inter change files with me. My company has had to redesign perfectly good embedded controllers just because the chips are not made anymore.
- philistine 1y ago
  On the other hand, Apple is quick to get rid of old APIs in their software, but they consider features sacrosanct. Only this Fall will macOS lose support for Firewire, which finally means that we have a version of macOS that doesn't support the first iPod. Which came out in 2001. All the USB iPods will still connect and sync.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  > I don't trust computer makers Nor should you! > There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US). I do like resisting the disposable economy, though I hope keeping ICE cars that old wouldn't be normal enough to be a factor in designing a product if for no other reason than emissions and safety features. > (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop). Indeed. I grew up with a >1 ton metal lathe in ours, as well as a milling machine. My siblings and I would use the lathe as a climbing gym.

spdustin 1y ago

CarPlay is essentially a conditional pair of video inputs. Any system that supports on-screen rear-view camera and that has a wheel speed sensor can support CarPlay.

galangalalgol 1y ago
Is wheel sppeed really the only car sensor exposed to the app? That is kind of sad.
- bluGill 1y ago
  What do you really need? Is the car moving forward or backward is the only one you can't figure out from GPS on the phone (this is possibly what they are getting from wheel speed - GPS speed is more accurate if you have a signal). There are a lot of nice to haves of course. GPS does eat phone battery so better if the car can give you that. There is a lot of other car data that is interesting, why force plugging a OBDII dongle in to get DTCs, RPM, O2 sensor values, or whatever. However for car play to work at all it doesn't need anything more.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Nav apps on phones will use dead-reckoning if they don't have a GPS signal, so they don't really even need the wheel-speed sensor, but I'd guess they use it just to increase accuracy.. e.g. in a long tunnel.
    - account42 1y ago
      Increasing accuracy is a wild understatement. Dead reckoning with mobile phone hardware won't give you a usable result for long. Maybe your experiences are from tunnels with dedicated beacons to tell the phone where you are.
      - kube-system 1y ago
        Most vehicular tunnels aren't too terribly long, if you're stuck in one in traffic, yeah dead reckoning drifts quite a bit. But if you're driving through one for a minute or two, it's sufficient. On a side note I've personally had bad experience with beacons in train tunnels telling me I'm miles away from where I'm actually at.

MobileVet 1y ago

This isn’t something I have actively thought about… but now that you bring it up, I am definitely concerned. If the APIs were deprecated, CarPlay would be useless as the auto manufacturers would not update their head unit. The thread about an F150 with a known Bluetooth issue is a great example. Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently

kube-system 1y ago
Automakers didn't update the cassette decks in their cars when CDs came out. You could expect cassettes to be around in cars for a good solid ~20 years, but that was about it. At some point technology moves on. > Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently Yeah, there's no incentive to fix problems when people buy the product anyway.
- devilbunny 1y ago
  > Automakers didn't update the cassette decks in their cars when CDs came out. And reasonably enough: few people even in the early 90s had CD changers in cars, and people didn't want to scratch their discs, and in any case everyone pretty much still had a tape deck at home - it wasn't too hard to copy your CD to tape, which was cheap, small, rerecordable, and more durable, and sound quality in cars wasn't great anyway.
account42 1y ago
It's not like car manufacturers have any more incentive to update the built in navigation and multimedia applications either.

numpad0 1y ago

HDMI should have had a multitouch-over-EDID extension. An I2C HID controller with a spec-agreed address should be able to be just wired in parallel to EDID ROM line and it would just work. Lack of such standard must have strongly justified existence of CP/AA.