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A Review of Apple's CarPlay

The designers have gotten it right

By Rain Noe - February 6, 2017

in UX

Chevy recently loaned us a brand-new, wi-fi-equipped Cruze outfitted with Apple's CarPlay. Here I'll give you my CarPlay review, and I'll start with describing the UI/UX issues I usually have while driving, so you can decide if they're idiosyncratic or universal.

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Problems I Have with Non-CarPlay-Equipped Cars

1: No place to put the phone where I can see it.

As a car share participant, I've driven lots of different cars over the past few years: A Honda Insight, a Ford cargo van, a VW bug, an Acura RDX, a Mini Cooper, and on and on. When navigating I use Google Maps on my iPhone. But no matter which car it is there's never a convenient place to perch the phone on the dashboard, particularly now that the iPhones have their charging cable protruding from the bottom. This sets up the dangerous sitation where I must leave the phone somewhere down near the shifter, either glancing down or picking it up to look at it while driving.

2: Taking eyes off the road.

Also, on long drives I like to listen to podcasts. Navigating through them on my phone while trying to drive is cumbersome and dangerous.

3: Remembering to pre-download podcasts.

In advance of a long trip I must remember to download enough podcasts to fill the time. More than once I've forgotten to download them and sync my phone, and then have several hours on the interstate flipping through bad talk radio to look forward to.

4: Unable to charge phone and listen at the same time.

Since Apple got rid of the headphone jack, when I plug a minijack-to-minijack cable between the AUX port of the car's stereo and the Lightning adapter on the iPhone, I can listen to podcasts…but cannot simultaneously charge the phone. Between the podcast app and the Google Maps app, a drive of several hours tends to drain my battery, particularly if I've left the house on half-charge.

5: Burning up data minutes.

This won't apply to all of you, but using Google Maps on the road for long stretches often butts up against my plan's allotted minutes. If you don't monitor and catch this in time, AT&T's overage charges are steep.

How CarPlay (and Chevy's In-Car Wi-Fi) Solves These Issues

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With CarPlay, you plug the phone into the USB port in the dash, fire up the CarPlay app on the dashboard's screen, and boom: The apps I want to engage while driving are right up on the car's dashboard screen. Maps, Podcasts, Music, Phone and Messages. (Those are the stock ones; you can also download third-party apps like Spotify.)

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I feel that designers have got the UI right when you don't have to read a manual to figure it out. CarPlay just works, the way Apple's stuff all used to. (You are forced to use Apple Maps rather than Google Maps, but the former has worked out the kinks and worked identically to the latter for me—with one huge improvement that I'll touch on below.)

The Maps app opens right up on the screen, providing navigation visuals much closer to the windshield, and of course there are the voice prompts. It took me just a second to figure out how to navigate to the Podcasts app: There's an icon of an iPhone's home button on the lower left of the screen. Pressing it takes you to the main menu, and from there I can open up Podcasts and see everything I've got.

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Even better, since the phone is connected to the car's wi-fi I can stream any podcasts I'd forgotten to download. Another benefit of the wi-fi is that the Maps app is getting its data there, instead of eating into my cellular data minutes.

And of course, since the phone is plugged in, it's charging the whole time. I arrived after three hours on the road with a full charge.

Another UX touch that I loved: When the Maps voice prompts kick in while you're listening to a podcast, it pauses the podcast, which then starts back up right where it left off after the voice prompt ends. Google Maps does not do this, but instead just mutes the podcast, meaning you miss a few seconds of dialogue. This is supremely irritating when you're trying to follow a convoluted discussion. So, integrated product suite FTW.

Lastly, you can of course take phone calls and even dictate text messages through Siri directly through Carplay. That should be a boon for road warriors who do a lot of business behind the wheel.

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CarPlay isn't unique to Chevy, of course; there are a plethora of brands spanning over 200 models that now integrate it. If I was in the market for a new car, and the next time I choose a model from the car share list, I'm only going for the ones that have CarPlay.

Here's a video look at the system:

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Philip Tiffin

7 years ago

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Pretty sure the WIFI uses your phone's connection.....

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Mark Jones

7 years ago

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I've been using it about 2 months now too and although I much prefer it to dash mounting my phone, I do wish for the following features; a) to be able to lock volume of navigation separate form other audio. When using the volume control on the steering wheel, it will affect whichever audio is playing at the time. SO many times now I wanted to turn down my music but because the navigation voice kicked in you end up turning that down by accident and the music is still loud. Then you have to wait for the nav voice to come back before you can correct it. I wish in the map app, you could just toggle a button to lock the volume, can't be that hard. B) I much preferred the Spotify app on Android Auto as opposed to on Car Play. Apple is clearly reducing features to steer users to use Apple music instead. Fine, that could be expected, but at least make Apple music just as good interface wise. I much preferred when I could see the album art more clearly and I don't' think that would ever distract me from driving as it's a static image, so why not make it less dim and let out of focus. Finally, C), it sure would be nice if you didn't HAVE to plug it in to work, a Bluetooth option like we are seeing in new BMW's for all cars would be great because sometimes I either forget to plug it in before I start driving or I leave it plugged in by accident when I leave the car because I have already become so conditioned to not plugging it in previously via Bluetooth.

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John Zimmatore

7 years ago

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Personally, I find Android Auto a better solution, but to each his or her own.

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Horace Ho

7 years ago

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Hi Rain, thanks for the very useful review. Just have a question regarding the nave apps.

Whilst the apple built-in Map may have some superior UI/UX touches (the very important pause rather than dim podcast included), I wonder how does it compared to Google map in terms of route picking and avoiding traffic?

For me, these two are the most important aspect of a nav app, especially if you are driving in a dense Urban area trying to utilising back routes. I agree it matters less if you are driving on inter-state. Though in UK, you sometimes get to your destination faster on back B roads than the motor way.

Thanks.

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- Mark Jones
  
  Horace Ho
  
  7 years ago
  
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  Apple maps have come along way recently. I was the same as you cursing them for not allowing google maps yet, but I believe they use the same data banks now and suggesting routes and avoiding traffic I think now work just as about as well as google.
  
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