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IOS Operating Systems Transportation Apple

Apple To Unveil Its 'iOS In the Car' Project Next Week 198

Posted by Soulskill from the for-cars-with-just-one-button dept.
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.
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Apple To Unveil Its 'iOS In the Car' Project Next Week More

Apple To Unveil Its 'iOS In the Car' Project Next Week

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  • "Apple Maps as in-car navigation" (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrspoonsi ( 2955715 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @08:09PM (#46378561)
    Way to go to kill the product before it begins...

    • Re:"Apple Maps as in-car navigation" (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jonwil ( 467024 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @08:20PM (#46378609)

      Apple Maps is still better than the out-of-date-before-it-even-launches navigation systems in most cars these days.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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

        Do you really want to have to manage the music library in your car with iTunes though? Android + an SD card or cloud storage would be much better, and you could install whatever navigation app and home screen you liked.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jonwil ( 467024 )

          Yeah Google Navigation as an in-car GPS would be awesome.

          • Yeah Google Navigation as an in-car GPS would be awesome.

            Yeah, it would reduce the number of cars on the road drastically.

        • Do you really want to have to manage the music library in your car with iTunes though?

          What manage? It'll have the same music collection you have on your other devices. Automatically.

          Android + an SD card or cloud storage would be much better

          How is sneaker-net better? And in what way is Android cloud better than iTunes and iCloud?

          You do talk a lot of shit.

    • The joke is old, and Apple Maps now looks absolutely fine in the areas of the UK, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe that I know. On the other hand, there is for example Bruce Tognazzini (www.asktog.com), who remarked that Apple was nice enough to move the main road that had been running through his living room on Google Maps for many years.

  • Volve (Score:3)

    by future assassin ( 639396 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @08:13PM (#46378575)

    I though Volve was going with Valve Steam OS for the cars.

  • proprietary stuff like this in cars is a bad idea. Look at all those cars from 200x that had startacs integrated... how dated. It may seem inconceivable for apple to disappear before the end of life for the car, but apple had no problem changing their connector cable and obsoleting millions of add on devices.
    There needs to be something platform agnostic.

    • Right, because once Apple switched to the Lightning connector, all those old 30-pin connectors stopped working, and everybody with older phones had to buy new cables. And we all know that Mercedes, Volvo and Ferrari use nothing but industry-standard parts that are compatible with those from all other manufacturers.
      • My old iPod still works with my old iPod dock, but the new iPod, iPhone, and iPad will no longer work with my old dock. If my old iPod stops working, i'll have to buy a new dock just to hook up my new devices.

      • That's what's brilliant about this. You buy a new phone and then you have to buy a new car to go with it!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jaymz666 ( 34050 )

        very few used different formats for connecting to your music, though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      All of these cars can speak Bluetooth now. The only thing the cable needs to do is charging.

  • Is that a new brand I've never heard of? Maybe the editors are so busy f*cking up beta that they no longer have time to introduce more than one obvious mistake into each thread...

  • Uhmmm... what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt.nerdflat@com> on Saturday March 01, 2014 @08:56PM (#46378763) Journal

    Drivers will be able to use Apple Maps as in-car navigation, as well as listen to music and watch films.

    Say what?

    No.... seriously... what?

    Is Apple fucking insane?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gutnor ( 872759 )
      That has been a common feature on BMW: the navigation screen - so in the middle of the console, meant mainly for the driver - had a DVD player. Never really understood that. The marketing about it is awkward, similarly targeted at the driver. I can imagine/hope it is ultimately for the passenger.
      • Not sure about your BMW, but I had that in mine as well as in my VW. Both of them would not allow playback of video if the car was not stationary, So yes they are for the driver, but not while your driving.

      • It's for Atlanta snowstorm drivers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      I have noticed that Japanese cars allow you to watch TV while driving too. However, I would assume that in this case they mean stream films to the passenger screens for the kids to watch on long journeys, not the driver.

    • So, you don't have ferries where you live?

      For the millionth time on Slashdot - don't assume that because you don't have a personal use case for a technological feature that it's a bad idea.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )
        A person who is sitting in the driver's seat of a car that is not moving is not actually "driving" the car anywhere, and thus is technically not really a driver at that moment.

  • Ha ha Ford just signed up with Blackberry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @09:04PM (#46378809)
    Ford goes from Microsoft's sync (which most people call MS Stink) and signs up with the zombie corpse of a phone company blackberry. I wonder which genius company (who's shares are about to get another boost) will team up with Apple? Tesla maybe? Fiat? Ford having Blackberry will probably cause exactly 3 customers to pick ford. But Apple will attract hoards of people not only can they put an apple in their pocket but they can get into the pocket of an apple.

    • Re:Ha ha Ford just signed up with Blackberry (Score:4, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday March 02, 2014 @03:24AM (#46379923)

      Ford goes from Microsoft's sync (which most people call MS Stink) and signs up with the zombie corpse of a phone company blackberry.

      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.

    • Ford having Blackberry will probably cause exactly 3 customers to pick ford

      Did you completely miss that Ford is going with QNX, not Blackberry's phone OS, both properties of the not-dead-yet RIM?

      QNX will survive whatever re-org comes because it's valuable - there are some robots rolling around Mars right now powered by QNX.

      I'd rather see something open source, but as I understand the market, QNX's real-hardtime is still better than linux can do. There's even a solution out there which runs linux on top of

      • The Mars missions absolutely do not use QNX, they use vxWorks; a completely different OS. Plus I don't think that QNX or Apple is going to be used for brakes, just the in car stuff. Keep in mind that as cars go driverless the car will become people's livingrooms; I want an Apple in my livingroom not a playbook.
  • "Drivers will be able to use Apple Maps as in-car navigation"
    And why the hell would anyone want to do that?

  • Glad someone is finally getting in on this one (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @09:44PM (#46378949)

    Every in-car nav system I've looked at has terrible reviews; even the dealership told me not to sweat going for the GPS option in my new car. I've got this big fancy LCD and a fancy audio system and a cell phone, but no one to tie them together.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Take a look at Pioneer's AppRadio. Basically mirrors your phone's screen on its own larger LCD, complete with touch control. It isn't perfect but seems to be the best option at the moment, as long as your car has a double DIN slot to take it.

      There are a few other similar options. Search for head units that have MirrorLink compatibility, it's basically the same thing only standardized.

  • Airplay mirroring with touch to in-dash display (Score:3)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @10:05PM (#46379033)

    This is what they should be doing, but I fear it will be something more idiotic than that.

    They can already do Airplay mirroring now and it's hard to believe that there's not an as-of-yet unimplemented protocol extension that would allow the touch input on the remote display to be sent to the phone. About the hardest part would be making sure the in-dash display was big enough and the right aspect ratio.

    It'd be the most elegant solution -- all your apps with cellular data on the in-dash screen. No cords. They'd have to suppress messaging and maybe the keyboard in any app except maps or when not moving.

    But I fear it will be iOS somehow adapted to the car itself and running on its hardware with a mandatory cellular data contract to make any of it useful and the 'apps' will be limited to a half-dozen or so and we'll still just use bluetooth for music and phones.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by malakai ( 136531 )

      I heard from Tim Cook that they plan on replacing the gas and brake pedals, with just one pedal. The context of applying pressure to this single pedal will determine whether the car speeds up or slows down.

      • Many EVs essentially work that way. In ordinary driving, releasing the accelerator engages regenerative charging, which slows the car. They do have a brake pedal too, but you only use it for emergency braking or extreme downhill slopes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      They can already do Airplay mirroring now and it's hard to believe that there's not an as-of-yet unimplemented protocol extension that would allow the touch input on the remote display to be sent to the phone. About the hardest part would be making sure the in-dash display was big enough and the right aspect ratio.

      There is already a standard for this, MirrorLink. Several manufacturers produce compatible head units. They screen doesn't need to be the same aspect ratio as the phone because Android apps can cope with different/changing screen resolutions and aspects. iOS may have a problem though since it is designed for a number of fixed resolutions and screen sizes.

      Unfortunately these systems are likely to suck. I just hope they are not iOS specific and can support Android as well, because there is no way I'd want to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bogtha ( 906264 )

        Android apps can cope with different/changing screen resolutions and aspects. iOS may have a problem though since it is designed for a number of fixed resolutions and screen sizes.

        Don't mistake what's common for what's designed in. There's very little about iOS that is resolution dependent. While applications generally make assumptions about resolution, iOS and its UI frameworks are fairly flexible. In fact, you've been able to develop iOS applications that use varying screen resolutions for years n

  • Glad my car uses Google instead (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AaronW ( 33736 ) on Saturday March 01, 2014 @10:58PM (#46379205) Homepage

    I'm glad my car uses a combination of Google and Garmin for the GPS. On the main screen (Tesla Model S) it shows a satellite view of the map, with pinch-zoom and rotation support via the touch screen whereas next to the speedometer it shows a more traditional 3-D GPS view which I understand is supplied by Garmin (I could be wrong though). For voice recognition it uses Google's service. The next major update due out soon improves the time estimates in real-time using the live traffic information that is overlayed over the Google map. The main screen map caches data along the route (except satellite data) for when the 3G signal is lost and the other display relies entirely on in-car maps.

    My car also runs Linux for the main screen using the Qt toolkit for the UI. The only complaints I have heard are that the radio doesn't handle the proprietary Apple audio files but it handles MP3, Ogg and Flac just fine (with my USB drive formatted EXT4). Now if only Waze were integrated.

    • Huh? Using maps from two different systems seems like a bad decision. What happens when they don't agree?

      Also, there was a slashdot story about Apple and Tesla meeting last year. So maybe they are going to have iOS for cars on the Model X. Or maybe nothing came of the meeting...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AaronW ( 33736 )

        I suspect the meeting with Apple may have more to do with the Gigafactory since Apple is a huge consumer of batteries. I don't see Tesla moving to iOS for the car, though they might be able to add better integration with it. They already have a very good responsive UI based on Qt and Linux and I'm sure they have a lot of processes running under Linux. It would be a big job to port from Linux to iOS and probably not worth it.

        As for the maps from two different vendors I have never had a problem. I'm not sure

  • "Drivers will be able to use Apple Maps as in-car navigation"

    Not sure how that compares to most in-car navigation, but Apple maps is still a pile of garbage. They maps are much harder to see than googles, the POI database is terrible, the routing is unusable, at least in small-town Canada.

    Be interesting to see what they come up with but I sure hope it has an App store to switch out the maps.

  • This needs to be standardized (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday March 02, 2014 @03:30AM (#46379939)
    At some point, automakers settled on a standard stereo plug for their cars, meaning you could install any aftermarket stereo into any car. The same thing needs to happen to car nav and entertainment systems. A standard plug should allow access to the car's GPS antenna, radio antennas, power, speakers, climate control, rear back-up camera, etc. Then you can plug in whatever you want to control these functions, be it an iPad, an Android tablet, a Garmin tablet, or some new doohickey which hasn't been invented yet. For bonus points they can have the car transmit various sensor readings through the plug, allowing the device to display things like fuel consumption, engine maintenance logs, hybrid battery charge state, etc.

    • First, they weld shut the hood. And now they lock down the navigation system...
      It is only a natural progression...

    • At some point, automakers settled on a standard stereo plug for their cars, meaning you could install any aftermarket stereo into any car.

      Except that they never did standardize. The closest to standardization was probably mid-90's vehicles, when you could at least count on a car maker to have 1 type of connector across all models, and that harness contained standard power and speaker connections. It was still necessary to get the other gender plug for it, and match/connect wires to the aftermarket brand harness included with your aftermarket stereo. It has only degraded from there.

      Some aftermarket stereo misadventure examples:
      Got a GM vehicle

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