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numpad0 8 hours ago

> There exists a flavor of CarPlay — CarPlay Ultra — that does take over every screen of the car.

I wish software leaning Internet people stop framing that center console tablet as "the car". It's worse than people pointing at display monitors and calling it computers. They're just cheap complimentary tablets attached to the car. If we were to fully embrace the line of thinking that frame the touchscreen being the car, the Slate Truck cannot exist, since it lacks the car of the car. In reality it does exist, because that thing is just a tiny add-on unit of a car.

The reason why there's been zero cars with CarPlay Ultra is because those cheap tablets remote controlling features of the actual car that hosts it, like speedometer, is weird, and way too complicated, and plain unworkable, on top of being too controlling.

I'm not defending car brands, I find conversations with misunderstandings like this less than ideally productive. The 5.25" DVD drive unit is not the computer.

rogerrogerr 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Huh? Your own quote literally does not frame the center screen as "the car":

> that does take over every screen of the car.

numpad0 8 hours ago | parent [-]

The author clearly thinks that the dash and and the nav are connected to the same thing in the back, when in reality the nav is a self contained unit that runs on the power from the car. That only happens when people frame the nav as the car.

rootusrootus 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

CarPlay Ultra takes over the infotainment as well as the dash displays. The author is correct. In cars that support CarPlay Ultra, the dash screens are just additional infotainment screens that default to gauge display.

numpad0 7 hours ago | parent [-]

And I'm saying zero cars support CarPlay Ultra because that's not how cars work. The dash screens cannot be made into just additional infotainment screens because the infotainment is explicitly architected as an external device to the car.

What I've been saying is that the infotainment is external to the car, not significantly more connected and integrated than the spare tire, and that everyone needs to understand that.

kemayo 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Here's an explanation of CarPlay Ultra, which really is the phone driving your dash and instrumentation: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ultra-the-nex...

There's only a couple of Aston Martin cars that support it, but there's supposed to be more coming. See: https://www.stuff.tv/features/apple-carplay-ultra-compatibil...

rootusrootus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are mistaken, sorry. Even the normal everyday infotainment on most modern cars has receive-only telemetry available to it from the car control computers. Some elements are passed through (like EV state of charge) to old style CarPlay as well. Think data diode (making no claims as to the actual physical implementation, but logically it works)

CarPlay Ultra is just an extension of that where the gauge cluster is now just another infotainment screen that displays the received telemetry data. It does not have access to the ECU, cannot interfere, can be rebooted with impunity, etc.

MBCook 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wouldn’t that mean CarPlay Ultra is flat out impossible?

But it exists. And is available in at least one production car.

MBCook 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Casey is one of three hosts on an Apple focused podcast. They’ve discussed CarPlay Ultra numerous times. He’s discussed watching the WWDC session where how it works and gets themed was first explained.

I promise, he knows exactly what it is.