Bold claim when you remember all of the horrific UI that car manufacturers utilized before everyone started using Apple and Google’s UI. Sometimes I have to borrow an old car from someone and you just can’t find anything. Really, I’m more in favor of bringing back physical buttons for all basic functions, but a good UI will not only make it quick and easy to say change to the next song or view trip details, but it will also prevent you from performing more complicated tasks while in motion. We’ll see what GM’s solution is, but I have little faith.
In my opinion there is a balance, where things you use commonly while driving are physical controls, and everything else is touch screen. But it seems like literally no one knows how to do this.
What’s unsafe is having to navigate a giant fischer price interface whenever you want to adjust the A/C
GM doesn’t get to sell your data.
Silly me, not thinking of the poor little corporations again
Chevy is still all about knobs, which is the proper way to create car controls. Ford is pretty heavy into a full touch screen control center, which is really annoying as a driver.
“It’s unsafe for Apple and Android to prevent us from monopolizing your user data!”
To achieve this, GM’s new system — called Ultifi, which is making its debut in the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV — uses Google apps built right into the system, like Google Maps and Assistant, which GM hopes customers will use for more voice controls. It can handle things like calls and texts, and it can control the audio and climate systems.
Now you have an embedded Android device that is never gonna be upgraded for the lifetime of the car.
GM Single handedly keeping aftermarket stereos relevant. I wouldn’t buy a car with this solution.
Android auto upgrades with my devices. It’s the best solution.
I highly doubt an aftermarket unit will work. Today, most units are integrated into the entire car system. Removing the unit from my car would mean losing access to a lot of functionality. I doubt the car would even accept a 3rd party unit. And this is not a Tesla.
You’d be surprised. Check AliExpress. There are aftermarket units built to fit perfectly into every dumb auto fascia they’ve come up with to prevent it. A simple harness adapted is usually sufficient to restore steering wheel controls etc.
I’ve heard of a couple of vehicles where you simply cannot replace the media centre because it doubles as climate control input etc but the simple answer is: refuse to buy those vehicles.
I know all that, the point is modern infotainments do way more than just play music. Look, I wish it was different, but most cars built today have controls in the infotainment that you can’t have anywhere else. Like very specific settings for interior and exterior lighting, consumption metrics, creature comforts, just to name a few. That’s not a simple case of getting the wires correctly installed like it was before. And good luck finding just the right car with a dumb head unit, even simple cars today are fitted with this stuff.
It‘d have to be tailored to that car, but that’s all just CANBus and software.
They’re going about this all wrong.
Apple car is not the issue. It’s all the other touch inputs that I have on my car to control every basic function like the climate controls and other shit.
Apple car switches on, already the navigation is setup and the music is on… I don’t need to touch it again. I can switch songs on my steering wheel and I can ask Siri for basic shit like finding a playlist.
I don’t need to go through a touch menu or button to change the temperature or any other action setting while in motion.
in fact, much of CarPlay’s functionality becomes locked while the car is in motion, making that a moot point anyway, lol. the only things left to distract or endanger would be the OEM stuff, as you mention.
The one unsafe thing in car play for me is the tiny stupid UI element needed to switch betweeen voice directions/alerts only/silent/.
I will quite often want to switch modes while on a long journey - full directions while driving on backstreets, alerts only while on motorways.
Have yet to find the Siri command to switch between them. Anyone know of one?
I mostly use Waze for navigation. And the alerts button setting is pretty small. However I find that just having it on alerts is enough for day to day use.
It’s true that for new routes I do enable the full guided voice assist
i don’t use it enough to know, but i think the UI varies a little between vehicles and models, so it may not be in the same spot for everyone-- or even look exactly the same.
as for a Siri command, you may try something like, “Set my notifications to…” or something like that.
Cool, then I’m dropping GM from my list of cars that I’ll buy or rent. CarPlay is a must have in 2023, just like a backup camera. Literally nobody wants your shitty car OS thing, it’s guaranteed to be way worse than iOS and Android.
Seems like this ought to be a dealbreaker for many.
GM was never on the list anyway, i’ve tried a couple ones and i was always surprised how much money they want for their cheap ass interior
Let’s be honest, GM can’t make money off owners using this software. They can make their own and have owners pay a subscription like some Tesla owners do now.
You know what’s unsafe? Putting a long-ass disclosure about keeping your eyes on the road that you have to close before you can use your infotainment center. We know how to drive, dude. Adding a distraction doesn’t improve safety, it makes it worse.
The fact that cars have touch screens and capacitive surfaces are what makes them unsafe. Physical buttons work with apple car play and android auto and make them safer
Capacitive buttons need to die a painful death. I’m ok with some functions being capacitive or touch screen buttons, like little unimportant ones like accessing my 6th favourite radio station or whatever. Or even Carplay or Android Auto.
But when it comes to operating the HVAC or shifting gears, it shouldn’t be allowed that these aren’t mechanical switches with proper fail-safe backups. I don’t even think those shifter buttons in a lot of modern vehicles, or the shifting knobs, like what’s been in the Jeep SUVs for the past decade, are the best idea.
I’m dropping GM, because they are unsafe. I’m not going back to looking down at my phone while I’m driving.
Also, as a former 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt owner, I’d love to have a good chat about safety with the executives of GM. That is, if they aren’t too busy creating their new in-dash subscription model. Which is what this is really about, and we all know it.
Maybe they should first focus on their gross manufacturing shortfalls, and their other issues. Maybe take a look at that parking lot in Pontiac that’s bursting at the seams with Corvettes stuck in limbo, and their very pissed off purchasers.
Fuck. What a bunch of numbskulls.
Can you elaborate on the corvettes stuck in limbo, I haven’t heard of that
It’s apparently quite a mess. Quite a few of the late summer and fall builds went into 3800 production status. That means it’s built, like it’s off the assembly line but sitting before the final inspection staging and shipping. So for some this went on for a couple months, and some people started questioning where the fuck their vettes were, like 3800 status usually doesn’t last for very long.
Then someone in Michigan noticed their OnStar got activated, and pinged the car and it was saying it was in Pontiac, not Bowling Green. So someone apparently went and looked and sure as shit, lot full of vettes. They took a bunch of shots of like heavy security but otherwise the cars just all sitting outside. GM was and is absolutely zipped about what’s going on, it’s under lock and key. Prevailing rumor is they needed heavy rework, some rumors are aimed at something to do with the DCTs, there’s also rumors that the bodies needed heavy reworking. Whatever the issue is, it’s a friggin snafu and a half. The boomers that have their orders sitting there were going thermonuclear because their Vettes have been sitting outside in the rain and snow. They just started getting delivered this past month, so guess we will see if some issues become apparent down the road. It’s maybe still going on too, like some cars are still getting stuck at 3800, and are returning pings a couple hours east of Bowling Green. Not sure I’d touch a late model 23 build, that’s for sure.
It’s a very thin argument about it being buggy and/or users picking up their phones when that happens. There’s no way they have data to quantify that. I use voice commands exclusively and as others have said the only things I wrestle with are climate and non-integrated functions. It’s way safer to do AA or CarPlay in my experience.
It’s GMs bet to lose here. I would immediately pass on a vehicle without CarPlay. My old Toyota had a horrible interface and I was quoted $300 just to update the map, not even a new radio, literally just a software update. No thank you.
I’ve a Mazda with Android Auto that doesn’t use a touch screen. It’s all controlled with a joystick/knob/button setup that is actually really nice. I wish my Nissan had a similar setup all the time.
In the Mazda I know how many physical interactions will get me the result I want, it takes barely more than a glance at the screen to know what’s up. With the touch interface I have to put my eyes on the screen to confirm that the car didn’t bounce when I went to tap a “button” and/or confirm that the tap was actually registered. I know that GM has to know that Android Auto supports non touchscreen interactions. If they’re concerned about how unsafe touchscreens are, just add a knob to the center console that doubles as a 4-way joystick like Mazda has and all those concerns go away. It’s really that simple and it IS miles better than using touch for everything.
I have a 2016 with no android auto support, and my biggest pet peave is that the infotainment system is absolutely the worst I’ve seen.
I’ve been planning a long project of replacing it with a customized tablet, but I’m afraid whatever I land on won’t integrate that push wheel control well, because it’s just so damn nice
My Mazda is a 2016 CX-5. It was a limited option in 2016, but it was an option, and it only cost me $400 to purchase the upgraded head unit and have it installed by my Mazda dealership. I don’t know what model yours is, but 2016 is the year that you can actually look into the option depending. It was going to run me more than $400 to do my own AA solution with the risks of losing the steering wheel or knob controls, so $400 for the upgrade that retains all of that without any hacky workarounds was a godsend.
I bought mine used, so I didn’t really have the option to upgrade anything but the tires. The head unit has some pretty bad pressure cracking in the screen, so really it would be a full replace regardless. I used a open sourced hack at one point to add AA to the default software, which worked for a while, but I started having issues with it freezing and hard-resetting while I was driving and using google maps on it, so I had to take it off (i think AA made an update that broke the hack)
I’m not the original owner of my Mazda either, I had the upgrade done well after the original sale of that vehicle. I had also looked into the software modding scene but decided that an official upgrade costing only $400 wasn’t worth the potential headaches of hacky homebrew updates I had to service myself.
Yea, I’m just also generally really disinterested in OEM software, and on principal I believe I should have exclusive rights to my own data and the data of the things I own. It still enrages me that in order to pull data about the car systems that are normally accessible through the headunit, I basically have to decrypt binary signals from the canbus myself, since they intentionally do not make those codes available.
TL:DR, i’ve made my life so much harder with my principles, but I am who I am
Yeah, I do enjoy jumping into my wife’s Mazda every now and then, for just this reason. Touch screens requires too much attention be diverted away from the critical task of driving, as people need to look at the screen for the purpose of aiming a finger at a control on it.
The steering wheel controls for my Ford’s Sync are good for volume, music back/forward, and phone calls, but that’s it. It’s the reason I still need to use a voice assistant while driving. I really hate using the touch screen except at the start or end of journey.
Like, could I just have the aux jack back please? I can frig with my phone before I put the car in drive and just push audio through the speakers, I don’t need to be able to sort through my playlists or make calls from the steering wheel, I’m distracted enough by billboards, for chrissakes. The only thing I like about my phone being connected to my car is that I can skip forward and back, that’s it.
And with proper software support, the aux jack can do some limited pause/forward/back!
I do really like Android Auto, but the reliability of the Aux connection is something I very sorely miss.
Yeah what’s up with that?! My new car comes with a host of connection possibilities, but lacks a simple jack. I still use that 5th gen iPod, is it too much to ask for a connector?
Honestly it’s probably because you are likely in the minority in wanting this, at least according to the car manufacturers. Cell phones haven’t had audio jacks for a few years now. Most iPods are in junk drawers, dying long and slow deaths. Take a look around the next time you are in a crowd, the people with headphones on, like 90% of them are going to be airpods or other Bluetooth style headphones.
Ain’t saying I like it either, don’t get me wrong, but I imagine that’s probably the logic behind it.
They are doing it to light up revenue streams.
literally any change or a new feature in any product of any company is only about collecting and selling your data, and never about making something actually better.
Yep beware, any time a company you do business with sends you a letter saying something like,
“Good news! (Our old company name) is now (new company name)!”
You’re about to get fucked.
Oh, did GM just step in it this time. Being stupid and removing important features is one thing, but straight-up defamation like this is another.
Google and Apple’s lawyers must be salivating a river right now.
