Apple To Unveil Its 'iOS In the Car' Project Next Week 198
An anonymous reader tips news that Apple's efforts to bring iOS to cars will be shown at the Geneva Motor Show next week. 'Drivers will be able to use Apple Maps as in-car navigation, as well as listen to music and watch films. Calls can be made through the system, which will tie into the Siri voice recognition platform so that messages can be read to the driver who can respond by dictating a reply.' Apple's partners in the automotive industry will be Volvo, Ferrari, and Mercedes Benz to start. Apple first said they were working on this system at last year's WWDC.
iPod connectors/compatibility since at least '06 (Score:4, Informative)
For my '07 S80-V8 an iPod connector and in-dash stereo integration was a factory option (which I added).
It works pretty well -- playlists, artists, etc. It's the "older" dock connector so a 30 pin iPhone complains about it and won't charge, but I just put in an old 60 GB iPod and leave it in there and run my iPhone off a ProClip holder with a lightning-30pin adapter run to a split USB/aux cable that connects to the AUX in, so I can have iPhone audio on the stereo, too. It's kind of a Rube Goldberg setup, but the cables are neat and its nice to do podcasts or Pandora if I want.
Bluetooth would be better overall (less stuff, less cords) but the bluetooth from that year isn't as nice as the iPod control is.
I wonder why Apple can't make AirPlay mirroring with touch to an in-dash display a standard. For makers, it would make it something Android could support with an additional protocol and it would eliminate the need for most of the horrible in-dash infotainment systems car makers come up with.
Re:Ha ha Ford just signed up with Blackberry (Score:4, Informative)
Blackberry owns QNX [wikipedia.org] - one of the oldest and most-respected real time operating systems in production. It's got a rock solid reputation for reliability and stability in embedded applications [slashdot.org]. Ford made a good choice going with them.
Re:"Apple Maps as in-car navigation" (Score:2, Informative)
The real problem is that they use TomTom data for the maps, and it is shit. It's a common problem with TomTom sat navs as well.
I think they underestimated what it would take to have a world class mapping application like Google or Nokia/Bing. Those two have search engines to gather data too, so would have picked up the VW dealer from there. Their search engines are smart enough to rank the dealer highest in the list too. Then you have their street-view cars and the fact that they use image recognition and OCR to spot things like one-way signs, business names, the number written on the door of a building and so on. It took a massive effort in many countries over several years, and TomTom hasn't even started.