I have a beater subie (2018). It has CarPlay (fairly basic variant). It also has very few touchscreens, which I like.

I could easily afford better, but have little interest in doing so. It’s low miles, paid for, handles well in the snow, and is in decent shape. A car gets me from Point A to Point B, and I want it to do so reliably and safely. I couldn’t care any less, what people think of me. Life’s too short.

I also write iOS apps; ones that make a lot of use of navigation stuff.

I like being able to use my app to determine a destination, plug it into CarPlay, and immediately get a map to where I want. Point A, meet Point B.

I’m sure that some of the systems fancier cars use, may be fine for this kind of thing, but CarPlay does it very smoothly.

I’m with the author. No CarPlay, no sale.

I really don’t think any manufacturer is concerned about what I think, though. There’s a lot of fish in the sea.

That’s the great thing about CarPlay it makes the usually junk infotainment system in cars (especially older ones) irrelevant, so they still seem modern.

For a budget car, I’d be perfectly happy if they had a screen for CarPlay/Android Auto that didn’t do anything else if a phone wasn’t connected. I think this makes a lot of sense as a cost cutting measure. Maybe it would just be used for the mandated backup camera.

I also love it for rental cars. I can get in any rental, and instead of having to learn my way around or figure out a Garmin add-on, CarPlay can make the navigation and music instantly familiar with all the data I need.