CarPlay is not great. I don't have any experience with Android Auto or MirrorLink, but I installed a Pioneer head unit (AVX-4000NEX) a few months ago in my car

CarPlay is not great. I don't have any experience with Android Auto or MirrorLink, but I installed a Pioneer head unit (AVX-4000NEX) a few months ago in my car so I could use CarPlay. The head unit itself is great, gets good reception, sounds great (especially after using the microphone calibration), and the Pioneer interface is fine. I don't know that it's worth the price without considering the deep phone integration. I considered reinstalling the factory head unit (a Scion Bespoke w/ navigation), but I had sold it before I could come to a decision. CarPlay would work great if Siri worked well, but I've never been able to get Siri to work well in the car or elsewhere (and that assumes Siri is taking requests at the moment). Text-to-speech works fine; dictation is a constant frustration. The other week, I tried to send a message to my wife that "I am in a little traffic so I'm running late, but should be there at 5:20". I don't recall the erroneous outputs generated by Siri, but they weren't even close. After multiple tries, I had to give up. The Maps colors are idiotically low contrast and it can be very difficult to see what current traffic conditions are as a result. The zoom levels in Maps never seem to be right, either too much or too little. The touch interface itself requires too much attention to use and is a car accident waiting to happen. CarPlay has a long way to go before it is competitive with iDrive, MyFord Touch, or Uvo, which are the systems that I've experienced. My experience with CarPlay makes me question how much testing it actually got while installed in cars with people driving, because there's a lot of glaring usability problems and general interface quirks that should have been caught during testing. I used to think that CarPlay, Android Auto, and MirrorLink were going to destroy the car maker's infotainment systems. After using CarPlay, I'm convinced it's going to be a while before that happens, if ever. The car manufacturers have a lot of experience with "car UX" and aren't standing still with their own products. Infotainment is also a minor part of the entire car ownership and use experience, and I don't know that I can think of anyone that bought or leased a car because "it has iDrive" or whatever. Drawing an analogy between car manufacturers and 1985 IBM feels forced and is flawed.