I went to Congaree last week. It was pleasant, I would go again, we ended up hiking a bit over 5 miles on a beautiful day. Bugs were not an issue. Also saw Fort Sumter and USS Yorktown, went to a drive through Animal Safari, saw Biltmore in Asheville and drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Throw in a few state parks, saw a movie, had a few good meals and it was a pretty good road trip / van camping experience for my daughter and I.
Apple has gone from 68k to ppc to intel to arm. The look of their desktop has changed so much over the years that showing a screen shot instantly tells you roughly the date it was taken. A graphical change at this point isn't moving the needle significantly.
The reality is that Windows 11 continues to get worse. I was an embedded Linux dev for 15 years, and even I don't really want Linux on my desktop. Apple has better build quality, long support periods, simplified updates, and for the most part just works. My personal computer is just an appliance and a means to an ends, Apple still is the best of many bad choices.
The anti CarPlay stance is a real deal killer for me. I put an aftermarket radio in my Chevy Express to get CarPlay, and have a long history of Chevy, GMC, and Buick ownership, but this one blocks me from buying a new GM car.
My blazer doesn't have android auto either... where are these usb things, I might be interested. I really want my phone to respond to 'ok google' not the car saying 'this needs a subscription'
Annoyingly "Android Auto" and "Android Automotive" are completely different things.
Android Auto is where you can connect your phone to the car and your phone projects onto the car's display with apps and navigation.
Android Automotive is when the car itself is running Android Automotive for its infotainment OS, meaning it has access to a limited Android App Store to install apps natively into the car's infotainment system and you can sign in with your Google account.
Some cars with Android Automotive also support CarPlay and Android Auto on top of it, but GM has decided to disable those features, meaning you have to use the built-in Android Automotive system to manage your media streaming apps and pay GM for the data access plan.
These cars are sold with data plans which last quite a few years. What model year is your Blazer? I think that my Equinox has app access for 3 years and maps / google assistant for 8 years. I've tested tethering with my phone and it works with that, so I have a path forward once the built-in subscription lapses.
2024. I refused their privacy policy, so that might be why I'm getting nothing. I don't drive much so I'm worth more to GM than they are to me.
If GM tries to block it there are a number of ways a lawyer can fight back and likely win. The Magnuson Moss warranty act was historically written about car radios for starters. There are other consumer protection laws as well. You need a good lawyer, but I suspect they will take the case for the expected gains in the return lawsuit. If I were them I'd get a lawyer to write this up in a "white paper" - It would be a few thousand, but it is also something GM will likely see if they think about doing anything.
I've dealt with a lot of cheap android devices over the years, and GM did a good job with this one. It kind of sucks knowing that they could flip a switch and turn on AA/CarPlay, though.
Yes, yet somehow with over a year of ownership I have not had one stoplight race. I don't even need to go over the speed limit... I can do 0-50km/hr faster than a Corvette and that's sufficient demonstration for me... but without the ability to rev an engine nobody feels threatened enough to engage.
Either that or everyone's just too engrossed in their phone to consider their ego at the stoplight anymore. I should have just bought a minivan, cars are over
Golden age of drag racing was when cars were simple and teenagers rebuilt their own engines, blueprinted everything, added some custom mods, and then raced each other.
Nowadays with automatic transmissions and EVs, you just buy something and step on a pedal, that's not much of a sport.
Honda Prologue is an option if you really like the Ultium SUVs, sadly only a Blazer sized rebadge and no Equinox.
I do wonder what the outlook for that is now, they were supposed to be a shorter term bridge until Honda had their own EVs but Honda recently killed a bunch of EV plans so maybe the GM partnership sticks around a while?
Too bad. This is just a US market problem though, Honda still has new EVs, just not for us. Insight EV (formerly a hybrid sedan) announced earlier this month.
I have a blazer ev without it and I agree it is the biggest negative. If I drove 8 hours a day their onstar is better, but if you use a car a reasonable amount it isn't worth a subscription (or setting everything up that is already in the phone)
Honestly I'm an apple guy and felt the same until I drove their Blazer EV and loved the native google maps. This is way better than projecting from phone. The native integration knows about car's battery state all the time and auto-suggests stops. Any native map in car do they but they usually aren't good quality maps. In GM's case, the native maps are google maps. I can also sign in on my google account and I don't need internet to use it (in case I'm in a remote area).
I feel I want every car to have native google maps now.
>The native integration knows about car's battery state all the time and auto-suggests stops.
CarPlay does this on my F150 Lightning. It manages state, preconditioning when routing to a charging stop, will suggest charging stops as I'm routing, etc. etc.
There's really nothing special about GM's implementation IMO, except that they charge you monthly to access it.
The "low powered hardware" is why I always buy an external streaming device. I started with the original Apple TV, then a bunch of Roku variants, when Roku got unreliable, I went back to modern Apple TVs. They just work better. I've had sales guys in stores get really pushy with me about "you dont need that", one time I finally had to say to one of them "I get it, I don't care that its already in the TV, I'm buying the external box, either from you or from another store so stop arguing and just sell it to me".
As an outsider, the fact that cross-device stuff just works in apple's ecosystem is probably the biggest thing I'm jealous of. It's crazy that something as simple as screen casting is still hit or miss when it comes to (android / linux) <-> (web os / chromecast / fire stick)
I just bought binding of Isaac on Apple Arcade for my iPad, a very good surprise was not that the purchase is valid for my Apple TV and iPhone, but that the saves are synced, even in mid session!
About a decade back I was writing embedded firmware for a telephone for the hard of hearing. We ran compliance tests to ensure the handset was compatible with T-coils. In the early days of say Bell 500 and Bell 2500 sets, the coil in the handset speaker was big, and naturally emitted enough for hearing aids to pick up. As speakers shrank, the size of the coils dropped, it takes active design analysis to make a handset that will work. IIRC, ANSI has a standard for this compliance, this link leads me to believe it was updated in 2019: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8906258
reply