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Surprised no one's mentioned it so far, but CarPlay / Android Auto aren't just features, they're consistency. Across makes, models, years. I know what I'm getti
by faitswulff 3mo ago
Surprised no one's mentioned it so far, but CarPlay / Android Auto aren't just features, they're consistency. Across makes, models, years. I know what I'm getting when I connect my phone - and if anyone uses my car with their own device, they get their own dashboard, as well. One interesting use case I saw was a couple where one used a left-to-right interface and the other a right-to-left UI. CarPlay makes this easy, because the interface is linked to your own personal device.
- arikrahman 3mo ago[flagged]
- pesfandiar 3mo agoThere are legitimate reasons to get help from LLMs when writing, including being an ESL. The comment has substance.
- jhhh 3mo agoThe prompt they used was probably more succinct. Not everything needs fleshed out.
- PlasmaPower 3mo agoI'm not sure if the parent comment was written by AI or not (you're probably right) but consistency is indeed one of the main things I think about with Android Auto. Not just consistency between cars, but also consistency with the rest of my phone. The principle seems worth considering.
- Griffinsauce 3mo agoI do though in other words "I can have my own stuff in any car immediately, it's especially nice on holiday in a rental"
- mikepurvis 3mo agoI used a car-sharing service (Communauto) for a while when I was between vehicles, and it was invaluable to just plug in my phone and not have to worry about setting up anything else. No menus to navigate, no signing into spotify or google maps or even pairing bluetooth. Just plug in, yes trust this car, go.
- MrGilbert 3mo agoIt‘s so annoying. Please, folks: Write your own words with your own quirks! Yes, you aren't a native speaker. Yes, it will read weird. But I prefer weirdness over AI. There is so much noise in text that is written by AI, it hurts my brain.
- iainmerrick 3mo agoThere are plenty of people who actually do write like that. That’s one reason why LLMs often write like that.
- MrGilbert 3mo agoI like to disagree here. Despite the downvotes, not many people write or talk like that. It is not that common, at least in english. Contrastive framing is a pretty low-effort, high-attention signal, which makes sense in e.g. summaries, titles or ads. AI uses this as training data, and once you have this data, reinforcment learning will only deepen the usage, e.g. it will appear more often. Because it "sounds" familiar. I'm sorry, but I do not buy the "people talk like that" argument. It's anecdotal evidence for me, sure, but I'm waiting for facts.
- skywhopper 3mo agoIt’s exhausting to read comments like yours where you are clearly triggered by a grammatical construction and reacting far more formulaically than the comment you’re addressing. The reason AI follows these grammatical patterns is because real humans also write that way. I personally identified with the word “consistency” specifically. Yes, that and quality are what I value in CarPlay.
- arikrahman 3mo ago"You are clearly triggered" "comments like yours" "reacting far more formulaically... you're" "you you you". They taught in the dorms first year to minimize "you" statements. Something to think about and profit from. If all it takes to be a good person is spam low-effort high attention virtue signals that's great I will do more of that.
- hsbauauvhabzb 3mo agoI would prefer knobs and buttons over a screen flow in either direction, but no modern car caters to this anymore.
- jackvalentine 3mo agoI bought a BYD that is as close to that as I could. https://esv6hz7yeij.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/byd-dolphin-chinese-ev-electric-vehicle-steering-wheel-and-digital-display.jpg.jpg?strip=all&fit=2560%2C1707 https://esv6hz7yeij.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/b...
- dhosek 3mo agoFrom everything I’ve read about BYD, I’m thinking it’s almost certainly going to be the car I buy after my move to Mexico.
- stavros 3mo agoBut still no pause button, only mute! Just maddening, do they think I only listen to radio?
- fuzzmz 3mo agoIn my Hyundai pressing the mute button while on Bluetooth/Android Auto pauses playback and mutes. Pressing again resumes playback and volume to previous level.
- stavros 3mo agoThat's a great solution, I wish mine did that.
- empiricus 3mo agoOh yes the mute button, very useful when trying to pause a podcast :(
- cromka 3mo ago
- rjrjrjrj 3mo agoAgreed. Extremely important on rental cars.
- izacus 3mo agoYeah, this! Getting all my information - calendar, maps history, music, contacts, etc. on a rental car without syncing that info to it is absolutely great.
- jwr 3mo agoExactly! I can't stop wondering: are these executives just not thinking, or are they blindly repeating what they were told to? If I get into a rental car, do they seriously think I want to spend the next 30 minutes logging into Spotify, mapping apps, Overcast and anything else that I want to use but that needs to know me? And then worry about logging out of all that stuff once I return the rental?
- ZeroGravitas 3mo agoIt is hard to make an executive not enshittify something when his salary bonus depends on him enshittifying it.
- michaelt 3mo agoDoes their salary bonus depend on that though? Car makers make money selling cars. Which buyers happily pay five figure suns for. An executive can add to the bottom line by raising sales prices/volumes with a more competitive product, or lowering component costs. This isn’t some weird social media business with non-paying users and a reliance on ad money.
- bluGill 3mo agoThe power here is on the rental car companies. They buy the most cars by far. And so when they say that customers won't accept a rental car without a CarPlay, the car makers will listen.
- vincefutr23 3mo agoHow could you say something so brave yet so true
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Poacher5 3mo agoThis is huge for me - I'm in rental cars every other week or so 'cause I fly a lot for work and getting to factories in the boonies isn't really doable on public transport. I used to spend 20 minutes in the europcar car park every single time and then have to log out of everything when I dropped the car off. Now I just hook up Android Auto and I'm back into the same podcast I had on the flight, my itinerary is planned in already and I can head straight to my hotel. Still have the old problem with smart TV's though. Can't usually be fucked to login for two nights so I just watch TV on my laptop.
- alias_neo 3mo ago> Can't usually be fucked to login for two nights so I just watch TV on my laptop I recently had the idea of taking the FireStick 4K Max that I bought ~1year ago for the living room smart OLED TV which is getting a little older, I had gotten ready to take it on a few trips I'm doing this year, thought I was being clever, unfortunately it died a literal week after the warranty, boot looping constantly. I won't buy another Firestick again, it was atrociously add-riddled and often showing things inappropriate for the kids in the middle of the day, but if generic Android TV stick like that was available with good performance and all the necessary DRM levels, I'd probably use that. For now, I will just carry an HDMI cable and use my laptop.
- lopis 3mo agoHotel TV's often have all inputs blocked out actually. It's really stupid.
- 0x457 3mo ago> Surprised no one's mentioned it so far, but CarPlay / Android Auto aren't just features, they're consistency. No, they are not. When you press "Home" button on your car where does it go? In some cars it goes to CarPlay main screen, in others it goes to car's built-in system main screen. When you press back what happens? When you press Nav/Maps button where does it go? Again, some cars will launch built-in navigation while others will go in whatever last nav app you used in car play. Mazda disables touch screen when car play is enabled (which is good and I like it) > One interesting use case I saw was a couple where one used a left-to-right interface and the other a right-to-left UI. That depends on if car was originally made for left-hand or right-hand traffic, some cars allow you to change that (in my BMW it required messing with obd port)
- vtbassmatt 3mo agoWhat vehicle did Mazda screw this up so badly in? Neither of my Mazdas with CarPlay disable the touchscreen in CarPlay. The ‘21 Miata disables it while in motion (which sucks badly, and I just learned there’s a hack to fix). The ‘24 CX-5 doesn’t ever disable the touchscreen.
- 0x457 3mo ago2018, 2020, and 2021 MX-5 (so all of NDs?) disabled touch screen in CarPlay unless you're in Park. I'm okay with it because using touch screen in ND Miata is uncomfortable for me to use any way, and Mazda really nailed hardware buttons navigation there.
- faitswulff 3mo ago> That depends on if car was originally made for left-hand or right-hand traffic I was referring to i.e. Arabic vs English