Discussion summary
Discussions around CarPlay highlight mixed opinions on in-car screens, with some preferring traditional controls and others valuing CarPlay's convenience. Users mention issues like device control, car functionality, and brand loyalty.
What the discussion says
- Some users prefer traditional buttons over screens.
- CarPlay is seen as essential by some despite dislike for Apple.
- Concerns about driver distraction and device control are common.
- People acknowledge CarPlay's utility, especially for navigation and media.
- Brand loyalty influences opinions on in-car tech choices.
“I dislike plugging my iPhone into my car and losing control of it.”
“CarPlay is almost a must-have for me despite disliking Apple.”
Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- I think CarPlay is evidence of failure.
My aim is device independence. In the old days, to print I had to hook up my printer to a computer. To print from a computer on the network, I needed a print server. I had to administer that. Now the printer itself hooks to the network, which is far superior.
I have an older thermostat which allows me to program vacations directly on the unit. This is superior to the newer thermostat, with which I must use my phone for this.
My dishwasher requires me to use my phone to do a delayed start. This is inferior to what it replaced, which was a model that allowed me to do delayed start from the panel on the dishwasher.
Devices should work on their own. So it’s a failure if the first thing I need to do in the car is tether it to a phone. The car needs nav, it needs radio, etc. It would be better if it has those things built in.
I understand the complaint in this thread, which is that the carmakers are bad at this. I don’t own a Tesla or Rivian, but some folks are saying their interfaces are good. Those carmakers have the right idea. I begrudgingly accept CarPlay. I don’t like it. In this era when computing is as cheap as it is and where even a TV can hook directly to network to play back content, it makes no sense that the solution on a $40,000 car is to plug it in to a phone.
by massysett - You're absolutely right, but I don’t think we'll ever get to a point in which what a car ships is better than what Apple ships. This only gets worse over time when you have a new iPhone and a 10-year-old infotainment system, it's just not possible.
Car automakers are not going to support your infotainment system (for free) even just 5 years down the line.
Even just thinking about the integrations gives me a headache (will my music app work on my car? how do I transfer my trip from Google Maps on my phone to my car?)
So the solution for today and tomorrow is to just stream your entire phone to the car.
by flyingshelf - I kinda disagree. I want the top of the line map system that goes with me everywhere to follow me into the car. I want to carry my computer around with me and don’t want a different computer in each location.by dyauspitr
- But it does make sense. You probably looked up where you're going before entering the car on your phone. You probably want to hear the same music or podcasts as on you phone. Do you really want the car to have separate internet connection, and login for every app?
Also you need to connect the phone anyway if you want hands free calling.
by bmicraft - I agree that devices should work independently. But I believe the fundamental baseline should be open interoperability. Yes, the dishwasher should allow a delayed start from the machine itself. But it should also have secure yet open interoperability so other authorised systems that care about the dishwasher can interact with it. I think there's ultimately a user experience benefit. I'm familiar with my phone, its UI paradigms etc. If I (or my gran) can use the dishwasher through an interface or voice assistant we're already familiar with then that's a win. Especially if the form factor of the device itself makes it challenging to deliver a great and intuitive interface in-situ.
In this regard CarPlay is evidence of success - a sufficiently interoperable car that allows users to bring their own context and ecosystems.
CarPlay is only evidence of failure if your expectation is that the car should provide a comparable ecosystem to Android or iOS - one that must also somehow follow you in your pocket when you leave the car.
- As an R1S owner I feel like the elephant in the room is that the Rivian developed infotainment software is just not very good. For example, the Spotify app has weird scrolling issues and the interface for offline downloads is clunky and unreliable. The maps/route planning is fine but not really any better than Apple/Google Maps (or ABRP). So I find it hard to give much credit to their argument against CarPlay when they’re not providing a better experience via their native apps.by jebarker
- How well does Pandora work for music?by neogodless
- Car manufacturer build infotainment never is.by fsniper
- In the end they treat a podcast like this as PR. "We're great". Elaborate rationalizations of their decisions.by aswegs8
- It’s interesting one of the most sold accessories for a rivian vehicle is a phone mount that goes next to the huge main center screen.
I completely agree with you
- One of those silly little issues with inbuilt software that drives me insane is the number of times I’ve had to log back into Apple Music or Spotify (or one of the video services to occupy the kiddo while parked for extended duration).
That’s another one that phones have just solved with the integrated password manager. The friction of providing credentials on my other devices has been reduced, but all of a sudden I need to go hunting through that pwd manager, and hunting and pecking on the infotainment keyboard, to enter a 20+ char unique pwd that modern “best practices” has established. It got bad enough for a bit (swver changes resulting in needing to re-log in) that I stopped using all of these apps for 2-3yr on our Model Y because I got tired of having to do it.
- So this goes back to the loss of the DIN in vehicles. Vehicle manufacturers shot themselves in the tire decades ago when they stopped caring about DIN space and started forcing themselves to develop and then abandon the lead position on vehicle infotainment. Carplay isn't very special when you consider any 90s and early 2000s vehicle with a DIN slot or two can have all the exact same functionality as Carplay with unlimited upgrades for around $200 in hardware. The OEMs failed to innovate and outright hubris meant they would not roll-back to what worked well for everyone. Apple deserves to eat their lunch.by 1970-01-01
- > that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users
You lost me right there Rivian. Start picturing yourselves worrying more about how your users picture themselves interacting with THEIR car... and stop worrying about controlling interactions between you and your users. Switch your frame of thinking around.
by neogodless - This is the problem with so many modern companies. Instead of focusing on building great products that their customers will enjoy using, they're trying to build relationships with users.
Maybe I'm overthinking things, but to me "user" implies a different more subordinate role where you take what you get, there's no "the customer is always right" when it comes to "users".
by sorenjan - I can’t be the only one who thinks we’re going a bit too far with the attention grab of vehicle infotainment.
CarPlay is a fantastic system because it keeps you off your phone.
But some of these new infotainment systems, and the complete lack of physical controls, are starting to feel extremely unsafe.
by whh - Completely agree with you.
That said, Car Play isn't a panacea for keeping me off my phone though, because some manufacturers have the ability to LIMIT what Car Play can show you.
Example - we have two vehicles for our 3 person household.
One is a 7 year old Kia EV, the other a nearly new Ford.
Ford has somehow limited apps like Music and Podcasts to show or give access to only a tiny subset of playlists and songs when the car is moving - exactly when you absolutely shouldn't pick up your phone.
So you pick up your phone because that thing that works in one car, doesn't work in the other - and it's the newer car and car play implementation that's more limiting.
by davidee - > CarPlay is a fantastic system because it keeps you off your phone.
Tinfoil hat time: CarPlay was created as a 4D regulatory chess move, because it enables users to continue interacting with their phones in a legislative environment where said action is otherwise illegal.
It would be hard to argue that it’s illegal to use the phone in a way that’s nearly identical to the way you interact with your vehicle controls.
by xattt - I admire the restraint the CarPlay designers have in adding features. E.g. in music apps, you can't click-through to an artist page from a song page. Annoying on the surface, but it actually naturally restricts your mucking about in menus. I bet any money that that one choice has saved lives.by moolcool
- Luckily the pendulum is about to swing back the other way for most brands, as they have to reintroduce physical controls to comply with the updated EU safety regulationsby swiftcoder
- I agree with the author: CarPlay is table stakes for me. Whenever an automaker says a car won't support CarPlay, I mentally cross it off my list. Which is fine, because there are plenty of other viable options.by symfoniq
- I love Android Auto but I don't miss it when driving my Tesla because the Tesla has all things I want anyway.by emmelaich
- We bought a Honda Prologue last year and didn’t even test drive the built-on-the-same-platform GM cars (e.g. the almost-identical Chevy Blazer EV) because they didn’t have CarPlay.
People like us have got to be affecting GM’s sales by some measurable amount, right?
by jrmg - I think what’s become more interesting/impactful for me is why they elect not to support it.
Most firms moving away from it (or who never implemented it) seem determined to either sell additional subscription services to their user base (connectivity) or sell their user base to a third-party (either as data, or eyeballs). And for a product at this price point I find myself very annoyed at the attempted payment extraction.
Either way, I’m with you. Lots of vehicle manufacturers out there that will support it.
- I used to refuse to buy cars without carplay. For many of the reasons I expect others do.
I have a rivian, and my wife has a car with carplay. I've had rivians for years now. I don't miss carplay when i drive my Rivian.
In truth, I used carplay for 3 main things - navigation that didn't suck, listening to music on the apps i wanted to, and reading text messages out loud.
Rivian has made those things not suck. So i don't miss carplay.
On my wife's car, those things suck, badly, without carplay.
I'm sure there are people out there who heavily depend on carplay for other things, and thus, it really does matter if they have carplay or not.
and maybe a day will come when the features carplay could provide me are as shitty on the Rivian as they are on my wife's car, and i'll start demanding it again.
But at least right now, that's not true, and so I think Rivian's choice is fine.
by DannyBee - I’m in a similar spot. I miss CarPlay much less than I expected because the Rivian software is really good. The big thing I really miss from CarPlay is having text messages announced. Google Maps on the phone is a bit better too but I got over that quickly (TTS, features like showing road hazards, and general rendering)by mikelikespie
- I own a Tesla not a Rivian, but I agree with you here. As a software engineer, I find CarPlay to be a tack-on solution. For that, it works well, but only because the base infotainment systems on almost every OEM are utter trash.
Something that I don't believe is discussed enough, especially here, is how bad 90% of software is in general. Software from non-software companies, almost without exception, is just junk. It has stuff tacked garbage from a partner deals, confusing organization that seemed like a product or marketing guy that never used the software. I could go on.
The exceptions, of course, are Rivian and Tesla, who actually make first-class software. On them, I don't miss it, And actually, I would be slightly annoyed if they had it, simply because it breaks up the consistency with infotainment.
- My Polestar didn't have Android Auto when I bought it.
Navigation was still Google Maps, and text integration was there.
But no Pandora for music. And that's the problem, in my opinion. Even Android Automotive is way behind Android Auto in app support. That reduces the owner's choices for which software they want to use for their use cases.
by neogodless - I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I’ve had Teslas for 8 years and we currently also have car that supports CarPlay. The CarPlay interface is overall far inferior, especially with navigation. First of all, searching for destinations is terrible on CarPlay compared to Tesla! Even worse, Apple didn’t even add multi-touch support to CarPlay until iOS 26, and the vast majority of cars (including ours) don’t support it, so you have to hunt for and tap the zoom controls, which is pretty barbaric compared to the fluid pinch and zoom gestures that work on Tesla and our other devices. Also on our CarPlay car, it never seems to know the direction the car is facing until it starts moving, which becomes incredibly frustrating navigating out of a parking lot. The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back, whereas on Tesla (and Rivian) you can choose and control music while keeping navigation on your screen.by appden
- Most OEM infotainment sucks, and it's taken a while for things to improve. I'd be willing to say your older car has a resistive touchscreen and physically couldn't support multitouch
CarPlay is definitely an improvement if you're comparing it to something like Ford Sync for example
by thorbutt - OK you don’t like it. How is that an argument against allowing people to choose?by MBCook