you settle with one failure story for another failure story.

there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.

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JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> there are companies with amazing software experience

I don't want an amazing software experience. I want an unsurprising experience, ideally the one I already have.

The only thing better than Android Auto would be to just provide a standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs. Then you wouldn't need two different standards (Android Auto and Apple Carplay), just one, which would also work with any new device that came along to break that duopoly.

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taneq 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs

So a web browser loading a page off the phone? :)

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JoshTriplett 2 days ago | parent [-]

Emphatically not. I want the head unit to act as a dumb terminal for the phone. My first instinct would be a USB-C docking station supporting DisplayPort video, various interesting USB devices, and a descriptor that makes it clear it's a car's head unit so the device can intelligently offer a car-specific experience.

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taneq 2 days ago | parent [-]

Oh, right, more like a car-flavoured docking station? That does sound better, it relies on the car for less in terms of functionality so it should be more consistent and futureproof.

	▲	JoshTriplett 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, exactly. And USB enumeration has the advantage of being extremely standard and making it easy to extend by adding additional devices rather than changing the data stream to the existing devices.

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maxdo 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

you just stuck in this paradigm, this apple/auto surprised me so many times :

- when you need to re-pair Bluetooth

- when you forget the cable to charge and you need to drive

- when you want to share your car to someone and they need to spend 5 minutes to accept every single ToS possible to simply put a GPS

- several people with phones paired before, now you dealing with complete random

you name it.

- you listen music and you need to go out to buy something while others in the car

None of these problems exist if you have a decent, dedicated computer in the car that just works, it knows profiles, it does need you to be always on wire, or on the line.

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cyberax 2 days ago | parent [-]

The TLDR; answer to all your problems is: "Just use a freaking USB cable".

I rent tons of cars and my experience with the wired AndroidAuto is:

1. Plug it in.

2. That's it. It just works. No ToS or any other crap.

3. The same cable also supplies power!

Some cars _may_ need me to press something on the screen to switch to AA mode, but it's rare.

And it works perfectly with _everything_ on my phone. A navigator properly pauses my audiobook before announcing a turn, for example.

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maxdo 2 days ago | parent [-]

for rental it honestly probably make sense, since this is not your car.

Why on earth everytime i sit in the car i have to neurotically plug the cable. I had situations i forgot and in the middle of the ride i started to look for cable or try to wire car play, simply because i figure out i don't know where to go .

This type of crap is not convenient and simply dangerous.

what proper car should offer: keyless enter; keyless profile adjustment including seats, heat, music profiles, etc wheel etc; keyless start and go;

one of the best tiny features i have. In the morning i drive to work; i can go several ways there depends on traffic, My car knows that in the morning i go to work; GPS is on, traffic is calculated.

I open the door , my music started to play, I press gas and drive; zero cables, zero pairing ; open the door and drive.

	▲	cyberax 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry, but you're getting confused. First you want to give car to somebody else, and somehow having built-in shitty navigation (that they don't know how to use) makes it better. Now you're offended by Android Auto making it easy for people to just plug in the phone and start driving? It's clear that you have not used AA/CarPlay, but they _also_ offer wireless pairing. If you're using the car constantly, you can just pair it with your phone. There are even retrofit adapters available, so even a 10-year-old car can be wirelessly connected. > what proper car should offer: keyless enter; keyless profile adjustment including seats, heat, music profiles, etc wheel etc; keyless start and go; Nope. Cars should offer one thing only: Android Auto/CarPlay. That's it. Nothing else is needed. Can your car play audiobooks and pause them when the navigator makes a voice announcement? Can it play a Youtube podcast that you started listening on your computer?

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rootusrootus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid

I own a Tesla, and a Ford. Amazing is not how I would describe the Tesla software experience. It lacks features like iMessage for group and for non-phone recipients that I am able to use in my Ford. Even though many people would say the Ford software is otherwise inferior. And if history is anything to go by, there are features in CarPlay today that Tesla will never add to their infotainment system.

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maxdo 2 days ago | parent [-]

i can create an entire list of features, that will never ever be in CarPlay, because it's not made of this is just a dongle on steroids, not a proper way to make your car smart.

Joe mode ( silent your car when baby sleeps)

automatic profiles that are connected all the way to what music played and in what device, headphones seamlessly stop playing after i go into the car from the gym

send navigation to car from any device , while I'm driving my gf or friend can send it, so i do not distract myself

proper navigation , order management etc as part of the vertical integration, including re-routing to less busy charger etc.

	▲	rootusrootus 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You might be unaware of CarPlay Ultra. In any case, thank you for contributing evidence to my assertion that CarPlay is additive, not subtractive, and since you can choose to use it or not, adding it to Tesla's infotainment is strictly a win.

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pbhjpbhj 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Meanwhile my car - Vauxhall Zafira Tourer - from 2018 has a broken Android Auto, they stopped offering the map updates for sat nav in, like, 2019 and that update system is locked. AFAICT you need an encrypted thumb drive.

It's my first car with built in satnav, so it was not something I thought to test. A working Android Auto would be great compared to 10+ years out of date maps.

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cyberax 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid

Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit.

Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.

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maxdo 2 days ago | parent [-]

huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.

Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.

their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists on fsd with myself. Yesterday i 0 touch 1h 30 min drive from long island all the way to a very busy manhattan street. tons of exits, complicated connections etc.

It's not even comparable. Everything else feels like a horse carriage vs space ship.

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maxdo 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

you can swipe left to show full map if you in the navigation and open it almost in full screen. even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Really fake concern.

you can pin your Bluetooth app with drag-n drop , never used car link so not sure if that's an app or an icon.

glovebox is the real annoying item i can confirm is a 100% weird design choice. I still love pin in valet mode so that my items are not stolen.

	▲	cyberax 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> you can swipe left to show full map if you in the navigation and open it almost in full screen. even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Really fake concern. Would you mind uploading a picture of this "almost full screen"? > even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Yeah, sure. "We removed about 40% of the screen, but don't worry, you still have a lot of screen left!"

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cyberax 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.

I think it's 40%? Most of this screen is utterly useless for me. I don't care about "other items". I want more map, and next several turns in that spot.

The speed limit can stay in a nice carved-out area at the top left.

> Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk.

Oh wow. Being able to opening the trunk is now the pinnacle of usability. How about a glovebox?

How about making the Homelink button always visible, because GPS is not always reliable. How about making Bluetooth icon always available? Ditto for compass.

> I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.

Nope. It's just copium.

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redsocksfan45 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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