Apple Says CarPlay Ultra is Coming to These Vehicle Brands

People hate touch interfaces for instruments like the AC or fan control. It's why manufacturers are returning to such controls. Sounds like Car Play Ultra is for a very niche market (i.e. nobody).

People hate touch interfaces for instruments like the AC or fan control. It's why manufacturers are returning to such controls. Sounds like Car Play Ultra is for a very niche market (i.e. nobody).

Thankfully VW has learned this lesson and their upcoming EVs are bringing back a lot of physical controls.

I think you don’t understand. Physical buttons - which you’re in favour of - can be used with CarPlay Ultra in the immediate term.

You’re being short-sighted thinking about today, not the future - ie. the real reason Apple are pursuing this deep integration of their OS with cars. The very same reason, in fact, that car manufacturers are pushing back.

Hint: The ambition for CarPlay is not a touch screen UI slapped on a dashboard.

I've no idea what you're wibbling on about. People buy cars and use the controls in that car they have. It's well-known that car manufacturers are going back to physical controls as people hate, HATE, buggering about with touchscreens to do simple stuff. As I say, I don't think you drive (assuming you're the original poster I responded to).

Carplay is not a customizable interface so I don’t use it on my VW 2026 Tiguan. I have the larger screen and the VW display has multiple customizable home pages PLUS and apps/functions screen PLUS dedicated screens for each app/function.

I use BT audio/phone connection for the iPhone because the VW media player is just as good/bad as the carplay/Music app, the VW phone app is just as good/bad the carplay phone app.

But the VW interface has a much nicer look to it, and being able to choose which widgets go where and what size and having multiple home screens is far better than Apples dated looking carplay icon or single fixed home screen layout.

And the VW setup isn’t even that great. I understand some other brands have even better built-in.

The only thing I use carplay for is route guidance because I can click directly on an appointment and have it map it. But even then, I have to use my PHONE to do that, then let carplay do the guidance. If BT connection could send addresses to the built in car Nav, I probably wouldn’t use carplay at all.

I use CarPlay a lot, I like it a lot.
But I really would prefer if more native apps could access content of other services.
I’d would love my native car media player to access my Apple Music library; my native calendar app in the car my Apple calendar; my car native parking app RingGo.
Just like my SatNav uses Google Maps, or my email client accesses my gmail.

I delayed getting a Tesla for years (in addition to my dislike of a certain CEO) because of the lack of CarPlay. (Tesla does not appear to be anti-Apple, as there is plenty of other tight integration with Apple devices, and I think the issue is integrating Apple Maps with Tesla's route/supercharger planning and battery management system.) But I finally bought a Model Y, and I am surprised to say that I don't miss CarPlay. Tesla's native apps are robust and feature rich, music sounds great, no CarPlay glitches, and it still uses Siri if you wish for calls and sending texts. I would still like to have CarPlay as an option, but I am living quite well without it.

Would like to see apple release an actual entire electric vehicle instead of just carplay. They could do "apple things" like making 80 amp home charging standard and even push the boundaries of level 2 charging with optional 100 amp / 120 amp upgrades. It's more fun to charge from 40% to 80% (120 miles to 240 miles) in 2 hours instead of 4 or 5 hours.

If they do an actual EV Apple would have to stop treating it's user base as beta testers.