I love CarPlay, but I do feel like I'm risking my family's life when it fails to connect and I'm left fiddling with it while driving. It seems like what GM's doing would at least eliminate that risk factor.
Actually, whether it's texting, talking on the phone, or yes, troubleshooting a connection, tech-distracted driving is a big risk for drivers, causes tons of accidents.
How about no. I don't want to pull over and "reboot" the car (like I had to with the Mach-E). My daily for 15 years has been a 2006 Mazda 3 with an added AUX port and a magsafe phone holder on my dash. No software crashes, no nonsense.
This isn't really responsive to the conversation, here. OP was complaining about having to fiddle with his device and putting his family at risk. I have no idea what you think you were responding to, but it wasn't that particular conversation (especially given I mentioned having no issues after plugging in my device - no different than you've stridently suggested doing).
You are proposing to "Just pull over." What a ridiculous thing to have to do. There is this problem that is a potential safety issue and your response is to have the OP adjust his "workflow" to compensate for this? Carplay is just another bug prone layer.
An alternative solution is to not have to deal with these bugs in the first place by eliminating that extra layer. Thats what I am proposing. Direct connection of the phone to an AUX port is not carplay. It is the app running directly on the phone with its own context. Is it 100% bug proof? no because only a paper map would solve that problem. But far more testing has been done on the apps running directly on the phone vs the phone having to connect through the manufacturer's implementation of Carplay.
I am proposing that, rather than putting your family's life at risk because you're bothered that your wirelessly connected device doesn't connect to your car particularly well, you prioritize your family's life an pull over to fix it. You're making this a product discussion for some bizarre reason, and it feels like you just want to scream at me about how bad the connectivity options are. I haven't, at all, disagreed with that.
Again, I have simply and clearly suggested that OP prioritize his family over his device. Anything else you've chosen to read into that is you wanting to be angry and refusing to read anything written as a result. Please take a deep breath.
Implementation still varies between car to car. Example: Mach-e interrupts the song playing and takes many seconds before it resumes. Sometimes this leads to multiple driving instructions preventing the song from resuming for a long time.
Other implementations (looking at you Hyundai) crash requiring you to pull over, disconnect the phone, reboot the infotainment and then re-enter your navigation destination.
The best implementation is no carplay: instead use an AUX port and mount the phone on the dash.
Second best is Tesla's custom navigation. They do something other car companies should: use one of the million speakers in the car to focus on navigation directions while allowing audio content to continue playing on all the other speakers. Such a simple idea but so good.
My phone is much smaller and harder to read than my car's screen. Also, my phone overheats when I'm driving in the hot sun, which causes it to dim the screen. I've had a dash-mounted phone for many years; Carplay has been much better for me (though yes, it has occasionally crashed).
> ...use one of the million speakers in the car to focus on navigation directions while allowing audio content to continue playing on all the other speakers.
My previous-gen Kia Sedona does this as well (at least when using the built-in maps).
I’ve spent a lot of time with both, and hands down the wired one is far more flakey. Granted I think that’s more a Mazda software issue, but a solid 10% of the time I get “CarPlay failed” and the only way to fix it is to turn the car on and off. Never once had an issue with wireless in a Hyundai.
In my Mazda the wired CarPlay also seems to fail a lot. But whenever I rent a car with wireless CarPlay it's been fine. Take this one anecdote for what it's worth.
