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.
Re:"Apple Maps as in-car navigation" (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple Maps is still better than the out-of-date-before-it-even-launches navigation systems in most cars these days. The ones where you might (if you are lucky) be able to get a set of 2-year-old maps as an "update" to your system if you can find a dealer willing to sell it to you and you are willing to pay the big price.
Uhmmm... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what?
No.... seriously... what?
Is Apple fucking insane?
No Thanks (Score:0, Insightful)
Just trading one proprietary heap of shit for another.
With the cost of hardware as it is now, it would be very easy and economical to create a dockable/interchangable infotainment system for cars.
Of course, car makers would have no part of that as they wouldn't be able to gouge customers for multi-thousand dollar navigation/infotainment systems with crappy software, shitty UIs and horrendous voice control.
Re:"Apple Maps as in-car navigation" (Score:4, Insightful)
Most Apple Maps issues were a side effect of an early launch.
Maybe, but as far as I can tell, they've never fixed the somewhat hilariously misplaced POIs near me. They appear to be untouched from when I first checked them back when iOS 6 was released. (Although I see that the power substation is now a Men's Wearhouse instead of a Nordstroms, so I guess something has been updated.)
The other Apple Maps issue is that they don't show the difference between "there's no traffic here" and "we don't collect data for this road" making their traffic reports entirely useless.
Combine the two, and no one I know with an iDevice bothers with Apple Maps for navigation, they stick with the Google Maps app. It's still better.
I know it borders on sacrilege to point this out but Google Maps conks out on you the moment you don't have network coverage and while it has a caching function I'll still put my trust in an old fashioned Garmin unit any time. I haven't tried the Garmin iPad app yet but if it's any good, combining it with the Garmin HUD [garmin.com] looks like it would bee too good a nerd toy to pass up.
Re:"Apple Maps as in-car navigation" (Score:4, Insightful)
Their usual first-mover advantage? Has Apple ever been a first-mover? Maybe the Lisa 30 years ago, and that sold horribly. Apple's last 3 successes have been taking something that mostly sucked with a tiny market and blowing it up by making something that sucked a lot less and thus expanding the market.