One week with Apple’s CarPlay

If you buy a car today, it will probably come with some kind of touchscreen computer onboard. These are basically embedded tablet computers that run some kind of operating system, but rather than coming from Apple, Google, or Microsoft, the software comes from car manufacturers and their suppliers. Car companies don't have a ton of experience when it comes to software, so the integrated computers generally aren't designed very well. They also never have the app ecosystem we've come to expect from smartphones and tablets, so it's no surprise that many people still prefer using their smartphones over the in-car option.

Traditional software companies are getting a foothold in cars, though. We already reviewed Android Auto, and recently we got to spend some time with Apple's CarPlay. CarPlay seeks to combine the benefits of the in-car system—namely the big, bright touchscreen—with the design, apps, and functionality of iOS. Plug an iPhone into a supported vehicle and the stock infotainment system will go away while the iPhone beams an iOS-style interface to the car screen. From our time with CarPlay, this system appears built from the ground up for computing on the go, with an easy-to-use, safety-focused UI, a heavy emphasis on voice commands, and a sliver of the huge iOS app ecosystem.

To run CarPlay in your vehicle, you'll need a compatible car (Apple has a list here) or an aftermarket radio. Phone-wise, you'll need an iPhone 5/5c or newer. CarPlay updates come up fairly frequently, but this is CarPlay as it exists in iOS 9.2.

The Basics

Out of the box with no apps installed, CarPlay looks like this.

Out of the box with no apps installed, CarPlay looks like this.

Add some apps and you'll get a scrollable screen with indicators and arrow keys.

Add some apps and you'll get a scrollable screen with indicators and arrow keys.

Like in iOS, notifications drop down from the top of the screen when they come in.

Like in iOS, notifications drop down from the top of the screen when they come in.

Add some apps and you'll get a scrollable screen with indicators and arrow keys.

Like in iOS, notifications drop down from the top of the screen when they come in.

Red notification badges show up on icons, again, just like iOS.

Siri is along for the ride and is the primary interface for many functions.

CarPlay is a "casted" interface—all the processing happens on the iPhone, but it uses the car screen as an external monitor. You plug in the iPhone and tap an icon on the car's stock infotainment system, then the infotainment system goes away and Apple's software commandeers the screen. Audio, touch, and voice commands get beamed to the car, and all the physical controls on the steering wheel and console switch to controlling CarPlay instead of the stock system. It can even invoke Siri by holding down the voice command button. And if the car doesn't have a touchscreen, physical controls are an option, too.

Having everything run on your phone makes CarPlay easy for Apple to update—it just ships an iOS update for CarPlay the same way it would for any other feature. Car manufacturers can build CarPlay integration into their vehicles and then get out of the way, allowing Apple to ship software updates.

The Hardware

Generally, one of Apple's biggest strengths is its full control of hardware and software. But for the first time in a long time, Apple doesn't control all of the hardware for a product. Maybe someday the Apple Car will become a reality, but for now the car's embedded monitor and touchscreen is provided by the car manufacturer, and that can lead to a sub-par experience. For instance, the touchscreen in our test car (a 2016 Chevy Impala) was awful.

Despite Apple popularizing capacitive touchscreens with the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, car companies haven't necessarily learned from that. Our Chevy naturally came with a resistive touchscreen. It looks and feels like a touchscreen from a stylus-equipped Palm Pilot or Pocket PC right down to the "calibrate touchscreen" option that requires you to press little targets in the corners of the screen. Resistive touchscreens rely on pressure to press two layers of the screen together, which registers a touch, while capacitive just senses the conductivity of your finger and doesn't require any pressure. The pressure requirement makes the screens more finicky than the smartphones and tablets that we're used to. Swiping to scrolling was frequently misinterpreted as a tap, taps would frequently go unregistered, and in general the system wasn't up to par.

Ultimately, we wanted this time to look at the software, so we won't let the 2006-era touchscreen color our impressions of CarPlay. But we're mentioning this as a warning: don't trust the car manufacturers to get it right. Make sure your touchscreen is from this decade. (We know OEMs are skittish about letting Apple and Google into their car systems, but maybe once such companies get a stronger foothold, Apple could impose some touchscreen standards on the car manufacturers?)

The Interface

The interface is a bit of a departure from iOS on a phone or tablet. It's still very icon-centric, but Apple has morphed the status bar into a thick vertical strip that sits on the left side of the display. Apple's trademark home button is rendered in software, and it lives at the bottom of the status bar. The time, Wi-Fi, and cellular connectivity are in the center. The top of the bar is blank except when you're running Apple Maps. If Maps is navigating in the background, its icon will appear at the top of the status bar. With Maps in the foreground, you'll get the cardinal direction. The bar ends up being a status bar, navigation bar, and task bar all rolled into one.

Apple's choice to go with an icon-grid home screen screams "iOS," and the 4×2 icon grid on an 8-inch screen results in massive icons that are dead simple to use. You end up bouncing from app to home screen to app a lot, though, which is less than ideal while driving. The faster alternative is having always-on tabs at the bottom of the screen for things like maps, phone, and media, which is the design style used by Android Auto and Ford Sync 3. That tabbed design allows you to jump from any major function to any other major function in a single tap.

If you install some third-party apps and get more than eight icons, the screen will scroll horizontally like an iOS home screen. In that case, everything moves up a small amount to make way for the pagination dots. For cars without touchscreens, left and right arrows appear as an alternative to swiping. You can't move icons around the way you can on iOS, though—third party apps will be alphabetized, which means your favorite app might end up on page two. Again, extra taps like this are kind of a bummer in a car, where you'd prefer everything to be as fast and simple as possible.

Luckily, most of the additional phone and tablet controls have been simplified. There's no notification panel, control center, or multitasking view on CarPlay. You will still get notifications for CarPlay-compatible apps, which drop down from the top of the screen like on iOS. You won't be notified of e-mails, but you will get your calls, texts, map directions, and reminders. Red notification badges show up on the icons, too.

If you don't want to tap your way to a task, Siri is along for the ride. Siri is worlds better than most of the in-car voice systems we've tried. Like on iOS, it can handle a full command like "navigate to [point of interest]." In the smartphone world, this is barely worth mentioning, but in a car, this is usually a three-step process: you specify that you want to ask about a point of interest, then the city where the point of interest is, then the name of the point of interest.

Siri does a good job of integrating with the car hardware. You can bring up the voice prompt by long-pressing the steering wheel voice button or long-pressing the on-screen home button. When the voice prompt kicks in, the car audio gets turned down and so does the HVAC system. This gives Siri a nice, clear voice input to try to decipher.

Most of the interface does not have a "night" mode, but Apple takes a dark approach to just about everything (so a palette swap feels unnecessary). Icons, album art, and contact pictures are the only objects that would inject some bright colors into the UI. Even then, when Album Art is used for the background it is blurred and darkened to not blind the driver at night. The lone "bright" app is Apple Maps, which will make the majority of the screen the tan map background color. That's a little too bright at night, so Maps is the only app with a night mode that automatically kicks in based on the time of day.

CarPlay is surprisingly minimal. Out of the box your functions are Phone calls, Maps, Messages, and playing some kind of audio, which gets a whopping four icons: Music, Podcasts, Audiobooks, and Now Playing. There really are no settings for the apps or any significant system settings for CarPlay. You get the app icons, Siri, and that's it. That's obviously not the entire functionality of a car computer, so you'll still need to rely on the car software for things like the AM/FM/XM radio, climate control, settings, and any other car hardware integration.

Car companies have mentioned that CarPlay's video functionality is based on H.264, which has led many to believe it's an offshoot of AirPlay. The expected way to use CarPlay is to plug in your phone, turn off the phone screen, and then forget about it, but leaving the iPhone screen on reveals a little about how CarPlay works. Everything that happens on the CarPlay screen also happens on the iPhone screen—open Apple Maps through the car screen and it will also open on the iPhone. The reverse is also true—you can use the iPhone screen as a remote control for CarPlay.

The two experiences aren't exact copies, though. CarPlay runs the CarPlay interface, while the iPhone follows along by rendering the standard iOS interface, presumably allowing it to generate the necessary data to beam to the alternative CarPlay UI. This is in contrast to Android Auto, which fires up a ton of background processes and leaves the phone screen independent from the car display.

We still needed to plug the iPhone into the car with a USB cable. "Wireless CarPlay" is supposed to be a thing as of iOS 8.3, but as far as we can tell an end-to-end solution doesn't exist yet. According to Car and Driver, Volkswagen built a compatible car and planned to demo wireless CarPlay at CES 2016, but Apple shut it down. The cable does have some benefits, though—you get to charge the phone while using CarPlay. The battery life would be the biggest concern for a wireless version.

Apple Maps

Beginning a navigation route. This is the "overview" screen.

Beginning a navigation route. This is the "overview" screen.

Once you start navigating and the top toolbar minimizes, the UI looks rather nice.

Once you start navigating and the top toolbar minimizes, the UI looks rather nice.

Tap the screen and the top toolbar will appear.

Tap the screen and the top toolbar will appear.

Once you start navigating and the top toolbar minimizes, the UI looks rather nice.

Tap the screen and the top toolbar will appear.

The big block on the left is also a button; tap it and this "guidance off" message will flash on the screen.

With guidance off, the UI minimizes even further.

When you tap on the Maps icon, this is the first screen you get. You can scroll around here, but there's no way to scroll while navigating.

Tap the four-way arrow button in the toolbar and you'll get tappable scrolling arrows. Directly manipulating the map works, too. We'd guess the arrows are for non-touchscreen car systems.

The "destinations" button has a handy list of previous destinations.

Press the search button and you'll get Siri.

If you're in park, the keyboard button will appear and you can type.

The most important part of any car operating system is the map program, and for CarPlay we've got Apple Maps. Apple's map effort might not be as great as Google Maps, but it has come a long way since its troubled launch. Today it's worlds better than the out-of-date, poorly maintained solutions that most car manufacturers ship.

Maps really shines on the big, bright car screen, and it instantly modernizes the in-car navigation experience. It's not very special compared to what comes on a smartphone, but it's hard to overstate how bad in-car navigation is. In our 2016 Chevy, for instance, entering a destination by voice is a tedious, multi-step experience. First you say "navigate," then you'll be asked for the city, then it will ask if you want a point of interest or an address, then you can finally speak the address or POI name. Siri handles all of this in a single step with "navigate to [place]." Some in-car systems are getting better at navigation with always-on LTE connections (though it didn't seem to help our Chevy's limited point-of-interest database), and Nuance's new interruptible voice control system is even more flexible than Siri's or Google's voice system. But for now in our test Chevy, CarPlay's maps and voice commands are a big upgrade.

The map data is the same as the iOS app, but the interface is all new, switching from a white theme to a more night-friendly dark grey that matches the rest of CarPlay. An auto-hiding toolbar sits at the top of the screen, which houses most of the commands you would expect. The plus and minus buttons here zoom in and out, but, surprisingly, there's no pinch-zoom for maps. The speaker will mute and unmute the navigation commands, and a label called "destinations" will bring up a handy text list of your previous destinations. Most input is handled by Siri, but if you're in park the voice entry screen in Maps will have an option to bring up an on-screen keyboard.

Navigation isn't particularly well-suited to the wide aspect ratio screens that are usually in cars, so Apple makes the most of the vertical space by sticking all the information in a big block on the left side of the display. Here you'll find information about the upcoming turn and estimated time of arrival. Our favorite touch in Maps is that this block is actually a huge button—tapping on it will mute the turn by turn directions, which acts as a nice big "shut up" button to the UI if you get tired of being yelled at by Siri.

Our biggest disappointment with Apple Maps is that you can't move the map view around while navigating. During our testing we were directed to a closed road, and the system picked a new route when we drove by it. We couldn't tell if that was redirecting us to the closed road again, because there was no way to look ahead and see where the map wanted to take us. This is particularly odd given that the non-navigating view lets you scroll around, and re-centering is handled by a "my location" button. We'd like to see this on the navigating screen, too.

Music and Podcasts

The Music app. This screen shows radio stations, which is the only glimpse of Apple Music's online component in the UI.

The Music app. This screen shows radio stations, which is the only glimpse of Apple Music's online component in the UI.

The list of featured stations.

The list of featured stations.

The playlist tab.

The playlist tab.

The list of featured stations.

The playlist tab.

"Artists" pulls info from your local music only. If you depend on the online service it won't show up here.

The song list. Again, local only.

The "more" tab is just more ways to cut up your local library.

The "Now Playing" screen has nice, big buttons.

Here's the "podcasts" app, which is pretty much the same thing as the music app, but with different content.

A list of podcasts that have been downloaded. No streaming option here.

The "Now Playing" screen for a podcast. The buttons get changed around a bit, but it's pretty much the same thing.

You can browse the top podcasts.

The "music" app is Apple Music. This is laid out just like the phone app, with big, beefy top tabs housing several scrolling lists. The majority of the interface focuses on your personal music library, where you can browse your music by playlists, artists, songs, and all the other usual music views.

What makes the app feel stripped down is the Apple Music subscription support, which is barely integrated. You can't browse the online catalog the way you can your personal catalog. The radio options are here, but any specific songs or albums from the subscription service have to be accessed through Siri. This will supposedly improve in iOS 9.3, though the final version of that update probably won't be out for another couple of months.

Besides music, Apple CarPlay also ships with other audio apps that are basically the same design but play a different kind of content. "Audiobooks" and "Podcasts" both take the display list and "now playing" page of the Music app, but they ditch the tabs at the top. They're consistent to the point that both of these "apps" feel like orphaned pages of the Music app, but they're given top-level access as home-screen icons.

On the home screen of CarPlay, you'll see a "Now Playing" icon, which is the one function of the system that isn't blindingly obvious. It's not really an "app," it just opens whichever music app is currently playing. On iOS, the app currently playing music gets a spot in the Control Center, which pulls up from the bottom of the screen. On CarPlay, there is no Control Center or any "here's what's currently happening" dashboard—there's just these icons, so the "Now Playing" icon serves as a link to the app that's currently making noise.

CarPlay does have an ongoing notification for one app, though: Apple Maps. While navigating a route, a Maps icon appears in CarPlay's vertical status bar, and tapping on it will jump you right back into Maps. Since Maps gets an icon when it is doing stuff in the background, why not have the music app do the same thing? There's definitely room for it, it would be more consistent, and it would quickly let the user know what app is playing music. Presenting the "Now Playing" button as an app when it's not an app is kind of odd.

The "Now Playing" screen is pretty much the same across apps. Like with Android Auto, it seems like there is one standard "media" interface that app developers—Apple included—tweak only slightly for each app. The "default" Apple Music layout has next and previous buttons to the left and right, while Podcasts and Audiobooks switch to helpful 15-second jumps forward and backward.

Apple's music solution has been in a bit of flux lately with the transition from Beats Music to Apple Music, and it feels like CarPlay's music and media layout just needs more time to cook. The five-tab layout of the music app seems rather odd: the first tab is dedicated to online radio, the next three tabs show different views for your local music, and the final "more" tab is just a list of even more views for your local music. To play UI designer for a minute: what if Apple just made every tab a "source" tab, like the radio, and had something like online music, local music, podcasts, and audiobooks as the top tabs? Right now, both the Music app tab layout and the four home screen icons for media seemed unnecessarily fluffed up to fill the available space.

Messages and phone calls

An incoming message!

An incoming message!

Tap it and Siri will read the message to you. You never get to see text.

Tap it and Siri will read the message to you. You never get to see text.

If you don't catch the notification when it pops up, a red badge will appear on the Messages icon.

If you don't catch the notification when it pops up, a red badge will appear on the Messages icon.

Tap it and Siri will read the message to you. You never get to see text.

If you don't catch the notification when it pops up, a red badge will appear on the Messages icon.

Tap it and you'll get this screen, which lets you jump to unread messages or compose a new one.

The list of unread messages.

This looks like just the earlier screenshot, but here we're composing a message.

Tap the phone app and usually you'll just get a Siri prompt.

Cancel out of it and you'll see the actual phone app UI.

The recent call screen.

All the data gets pulled from your iPhone, so contacts and recent calls all show up the way you would expect.

Voice commands are preferred, but if you want to poke in a number, you can do that.

The voicemail "tab" immediately dials your voicemail number.

Sending and receiving instant messages is strictly a voice-only affair—text is never displayed. Incoming texts and iMessage messages will pop up as notifications, and tapping on them will have Siri's text-to-speech engine read them to you. The "reading text message screen" has options to call the person, read the message again, or reply (which you can also do by voice).

Sending a message works the same way. You speak and Siri transcribes, but there's no text. Siri will at least read the message back to you. The lack of text here seems odd considering the plethora of text in the rest of CarPlay's interface, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration specifically singles out text message text as dangerous to view while driving. The guidelines seem to lag behind reality here, as studies show that voice-activated infotainment systems and notifications are also really distracting. For now, this is the model the industry seems to have settled on.

Phone calls are of course part of CarPlay, and the app is pretty simple. By default, the phone icon opens Siri and asks who you want to call. If you skip out of this, you can get to the actual phone UI, which is a large-format tabbed interface. The phone app shows all your contacts, recent calls, a dialing keypad, and a shortcut for voicemail. You get about four items per screen, and you can swipe vertically and tap the arrow keys (as you would expect). Moving your finger along the scroll bar will activate letter-by-letter quick scrolling.

Since CarPlay is powered by your iPhone, all the call and contact information comes right from your phone, so you'll see all the people and places you'd expect.

Apps

Pandora's radio list.

Pandora's radio list.

Pandora's Now Playing screen.

Pandora's Now Playing screen.

Pandora lamely skips the bottom row of buttons on the Now Playing screen and has a weird pop-up menu.

Pandora lamely skips the bottom row of buttons on the Now Playing screen and has a weird pop-up menu.

Pandora's Now Playing screen.

Pandora lamely skips the bottom row of buttons on the Now Playing screen and has a weird pop-up menu.

There are some third-party apps on CarPlay, but for now development is a secretive process available only to a few Apple-approved developers. There seems to be one type of app allowed on CarPlay: audio media players. All these apps stick very close to the music app, but they supply audio from some other source and tweak the functionality of a few buttons.

The CarPlay developer documentation isn't public, but if we use Android Auto's third-party system as a model, we'd guess that every piece of UI has to be approved by various government safety bodies around the world. Evidently, Apple has gotten this one media player UI approved for third parties to use. So while you'll see music apps, sports audio, audiobooks, and podcasts, you'll never see a driving stats app, gas station finder, video player, or anything other than this one approved type of app.

As far as audio apps go, CarPlay does have a great selection. There's Spotify, Pandora, Audible, iHeartRadio, TuneIn Radio, Slacker Radio, and tons more. Most of the big ones seem to be here, but I was bummed out to see that SoundCloud didn't have CarPlay support. Apple doesn't seem to have an official list of apps that support CarPlay anywhere, which makes discoverability a challenge. The best you can hope for is to search the app store for "CarPlay" and hope to hit on description text.

Audio app support is great, but the biggest gripe people will have with CarPlay is that nothing else takes advantage of the iOS app ecosystem. For Maps you can only have Apple Maps—Google Maps, Waze, and other navigation apps are off-limits. You're also stuck with "Messages" for instant messaging, which can only receive iMessage and SMSes. If you and your friends were all-in on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Kik, WeChat, or any of the other gigantic IM platforms out there, you're out of luck for now.

The lack of alternative IM platforms is a tough pill to swallow. On the other side of the smartphone duopoly, Android Auto offers many IM clients a seat at the table. There really is no interface to speak of for messages in either platform, so the "third-party support" in Android Auto boils down to plugging into the voice system and generating a notification. We hope to see support like this in a later version of CarPlay.

Dragging the in-car computing experience into the 21st century

CarPlay is a great way to get a top-shelf software experience while driving, especially when compared to the almost universally awful options from car manufacturers. It's hard to overstate how bad most car companies are at making software. CarPlay brings competent, modern design to the car along with all your phone data, up-to-date maps, and tons of music apps. It integrates beautifully with the car, taking over the screen, steering wheel controls, and even turning down the HVAC system when issuing a voice command.

The experience here is so much better than what car manufacturers ship, we have a hard time believing any iPhone owner with access to CarPlay would choose to ignore it. Access to CarPlay is the hard part, though. You'll either need to buy a brand new CarPlay-capable car or go through the complicated process of gutting your existing system and installing an aftermarket receiver. We don't really see a way to fix this problem, but it's a big barrier for most users. There are also a few edge cases where CarPlay won't integrate seamlessly with the car—namely models where navigation directions can be shown directly in front of the driver via a heads-up display or digital instrument panel, but those directions won't be sourced from CarPlay.