I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I’ve had Teslas for 8 years and we currently also have car that supports CarPlay. The CarPlay interface is overall far inferior, especially with navigation. First of all, searching for destinations is terrible on CarPlay compared to Tesla! Even worse, Apple didn’t even add multi-touch support to CarPlay until iOS 26, and the vast majority of cars (including ours) don’t support it, so you have to hunt for and tap the zoom controls, which is pretty barbaric compared to the fluid pinch and zoom gestures that work on Tesla and our other devices. Also on our CarPlay car, it never seems to know the direction the car is facing until it starts moving, which becomes incredibly frustrating navigating out of a parking lot. The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back, whereas on Tesla (and Rivian) you can choose and control music while keeping navigation on your screen.
I have a boring Mercedes mid-size SUV. Carplay works. I can skip/repeat tracks using the standard control on the steering wheel; the instrument cluster shows the current track the same way it's done with connected phones forever. On the center console screen, we use the Carplay view with 3 splits - one for Spotify, two for navigation (map & next direction). Google Maps and Apple Maps are both reliable where I drive (Miami).
Tesla is a great car below the from the headlights down, I love driving my dad's Y performance to the grocery store when I'm visiting home. But no way I'm going to get a car where I can't point the vent at my armpit without using a touch screen. No way I'm going to get a car where I can't talk to whatever agent I want while stuck in traffic. I much rather have a boring car that doesn't tick me off.
If Tesla (or Rivian) add Carplay, they'll really move up the my list (still want physical vent control tho). Would you stop driving your Tesla if an update added Carplay tomorrow?
Personally I find the feeling of air blowing on me, no matter how pleasant initially, to quickly become grating. In most cars I adjust the air to blow where I am not, and compensate with a notch higher fan speed.
Having the ability for the air stream continually moving is more valuable to me than constantly moving it by hand.
Being able to pre-cool the car before entering it is more valuable to me than sitting in a hot car and pointing the MAX A/C directly on my face.
> The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back,
But... you don't. Tapping on the home button once more or swiping to the right on the app page reveals the home screen which has navigation and music together:
Our CarPlay car has a small screen, so I prefer to keep navigation full screen most of the time. In split mode, it’s way too tiny for me, but I occasionally leave it there if I know my way around anyways. It’s definitely not a well designed experience.
It sounds like the issue is mostly your CarPlay cars small screen compared to Tesla's large one. This didn't seen to be a CarPlay problem beyond maybr Apple trying their best with the screens most of their customers are given.
I have a Polestar 2, 2022 model even so it's not fresh off the lot.
CarPlay navigation shows on the instrument cluster. The speed, state of charge, etc all move to the side so the map is right in the middle for quick viewing. Then the infotainment screen can show music or the tiled music/navigation view that CarPlay supports.
Basic music controls are on the steering wheel of course, readily accessible.
The lack of multitouch is slightly annoying, but it's not something I ever use. If I ever can't see what I need on the navigation I simply look outside for the road signs, which still exist.
Can’t you do split screen navigation via the home screen (Dashboard View)? At least on cars I’ve rented I could have navigation on one side and music on the other in CarPlay.
Curiously, being herded onto tesla's software is the number one reason I won't buy one. I don't like the navigation or media software and the rest would feel better as a physical control or just seems useless in a car.
I find the media stuff all works just fine - gotta say I control it all almost exclusively by voice, and it Just Works - but the navigation… sucks donkey ass. I hate that it only treats superchargers as possible charging stops - where I live they are few and far between, yet other high speed chargers are common. The routing is often abysmal. It’ll be like “heavy traffic ahead. Taking you into it.” The traffic camera database is incomplete. The behaviour between the mobile and in car app is wildly inconsistent.
You know, I don’t care so much about having CarPlay as I care about having Waze or ABRP or just any routing app other than Tesla’s.
When I first started using CarPlay, the screen that has the music and map showing simultaneously was not obvious and it wasn’t until well into my third long trip with CarPlay that I finally discovered it. I had thought the only display options were app full screen and app list. I think there was a change sometime in the last 3 years that made that the default starting display (or maybe I’m just a little less dumb now).
Quite the contrary, I’ve long thought Tesla should add support for CarPlay to alleviate the concerns of many buyers over it not being supported. I think it would have been starkly worse than Tesla’s interface before they supported multi-touch this past year, but nonetheless they should have supported it by now. Better late than never that they’re finally adding support for it, it’ll especially make Rivian look kinda silly for continuing to be so stubborn about it. I think only a small fraction will actually use CarPlay on their Teslas, but it’s still pretty dumb to let that missing feature hurt their sales.
Most OEM infotainment sucks, and it's taken a while for things to improve. I'd be willing to say your older car has a resistive touchscreen and physically couldn't support multitouch
CarPlay is definitely an improvement if you're comparing it to something like Ford Sync for example
> I’m fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, and I’ve had Teslas for 8 years and we currently also have car that supports CarPlay. The CarPlay interface is overall far inferior, especially with navigation. First of all, searching for destinations is terrible on CarPlay compared to Tesla
Tesla and surprisingly Hyundai are outliers, the vast majority of cars have terrible infotainment systems, and them deciding to suddenly focus on it does not assure me at all.
I find Tesla’s interface to be inferior as soon as you want to use an app they haven’t built. Like my podcasts app. Or receiving / replying to a WhatsApp message. Even the built-in text message support can’t handle replying to a group text.
Personally I’d stick with Tesla’s nav and use CarPlay for media and messaging, and that’s the optionality and user choice I think this post is trying to get at.
I think this is the difference for me - I’ve decided where I’m going before I get in the car. Either I’ve planned a route (on my phone) or got a destination through a message from a friend on LINE. Either way I already have a plan.. on my phone. So having to somehow get that into the car navigation is always going to be worse than just using my phone
One of them lets me send iMessages to groups as well as non-phone recipients like my kids. The other is my Tesla.
I’m glad for you, but if Tesla supported CarPlay I could get what I wanted and you would not be affected at all. I’m baffled why people like you even bother to share your opinion. Nobody is suggesting that you be forced to use CarPlay. See also the entire topic of this discussion.
I’m baffled you think sharing a well-sourced opinion on a discussion thread is a bad thing, or that you think I believe Tesla adding support for CarPlay would somehow force me to use it. As I said in other replies, I’ve long thought Tesla should add support for it, but that few people would actually use it much.
You misunderstand. I am baffled why you would share your opinion in this discussion given that the entire premise is that CarPlay is additive, not a replacement. You made an entire point that was contrasting CarPlay with the built-in infotainment as if it were an either/or proposition
Give me CarPlay on my Tesla, I will use it AND the built-in apps too. Then I get more than I would have with either one by itself.
The author of the original piece is asking for a choice.
Your opinion is not an argument for that. It’s also not an argument against that.
So I’m not terribly sure what it adds to the discussion. I’m not surprised there are people who like Tesla’s UI. I’ve seen plenty of them online over the years.
I have rented one though, so I know enough about the software experience to know that there's (currently) only one reason why I might wish for CarPlay over the integrated software experience, and that's Waze. Maybe.
I own two (petrol) cars. One has CarPlay, the other has a rigid phone mount between the steering wheel and centre console. While I appreciate the former for its nice large widescreen map, I still prefer the latter. Waze in CarPlay mode (due to the restrictions on what can be shown on the phone screen) is simply more annoying to operate. So if was in the market for a Tesla, and I had the choice between CarPlay support or a nice phone mount between the centre console and steering wheel, I'd probably choose the latter.
(I would still campaign for Tesla to support CarPlay, because why not.)
"The final major downside is having to switch apps out of navigation to control music then switch back". That's no longer true for CarPlay. It now has a mode where you see Maps and Music at the same time.
All of this nonsense critique is massively outweighed by 1. having a HUD (your tesla will never get one because Elon is an idiot) and 2. having carplay/android auto sync your turn-by-turn directions into that HUD.
I honestly cannot believe how bad CarPlay is — I can't believe how many rave reviews it gets, I think it's absolutely awful compared to Rivian or Tesla software.
Ghost in the Wires is one of all time favorite reads, and I still hope to see it as a dramatized film. It would be a fun “period piece” taking the audience through the 80’s and early 90’s, with some hilarious social engineering scenes (kinda like Catch Me If You Can) and tense moments where the audience roots for Kevin. I really think a film adaptation would help introduce his story to a new generation and be a nice tribute to his legacy.
Having read and enjoyed ghost in the wires (and at some point all of mitnicks books) - I still enjoy the infamous takedown movie. I think it still shows a lot of mindset around social engineering - and realistic holes in security measures. I do understand why a lot of people were pissed off, though.
> even if all the chimpanzees in the world were given the entire lifespan of the universe
Seems to me like a flawed “study” if the baseline assumption is that chimpanzees would type randomly even when given lifespans through the heat death of the universe, which is estimated at 10^100 (googol) years!
This is so freakin’ cool! Love the animated screenshots and whole retro vibe. I hope the tech behind this will enable you or (through licensing or open source) others to build more immediately playable, cross platform games.
Tesla leases those parking spots to only be used by Tesla owners. Your non-Tesla vehicle can legitimately be towed away if you park there. They aren’t merely a convenience, but are in fact an essential piece of infrastructure for some Tesla owners who count on being able to charge there. While some Tesla owners enjoy free supercharging, most need to pay for it. In fact, they charge Tesla owners idle fees if they block a supercharging spot after being done charging.
Thanks. I looked for reference to this but couldn't find any. I did see an article saying that Tesla pays for the installation of the gear but doesn't pay for the spot. I also saw an older post saying that T posts signs inviting non-tesla drivers to park there (presumably if no other spots are available).
Imagine the sphere’s surface is divided into one million little rectangles. Their total area is meant to approximate the surface area of the sphere. If each one of those were projected onto the cylinder, and we showed that each of those projected rectangles has the same area and that they don’t overlap, then the total area of all million of the projected rectangles would be there same as those on the sphere. Therefore, the cylinder has the same area, since it is comprised of all those projected rectangles.
Thanks, so it's the overlapping issue I'm left struggling with (sorry, I elaborated on this in an edit after you'd already started replying, by the looks of it). It's not obvious to me they don't overlap, if the 'light' is at a different point for each one.
You're intuition is correct that the rectangles would overlap if projected by a light like shadow puppets. Instead, imagine a series of lasers up and down the vertical axis positioned so that their beams are parallel to the plane that contains the sphere's equator. And imagine that the lasers spin 360 degrees around the vertical axis but their beams always stay parallel to the plane of the sphere's equator. That's the projection being described here.
Right. Effectively, we're projecting every horizontal slice of the sphere laterally to a fixed distance from the vertical axis. It's a stack of 1D projections, not a single 2D projection.
I realized after the fact that the more useful terms would be “orthogonal projection” and “perspective projection”. The novelty of the orthogonal projection at hand is that it’s projecting (flattening) in a cylindrical space.
With an orthogonal projection, you can usually think of it as taking two planes and squashing whatever object your want to project between them. In the scenario here, the ambient space has been wrapped up, so one of these squashing planes has been wrapped into a cylinder, and the other has been wrapped into a line (the degenerate case).
In either event, an orthogonal projection is indeed a collection of orthogonal projections of one dimension less. But that’s not really the whole picture.
Well said. I've used and depended on Dash almost every day for years, and I've followed its development closely. I know the developer has absolutely no reason to manipulate reviews, and that this allegation is false and unsupportable. I also know from firsthand experience how impenetrable the App Store review system can be, and unfortunately was forced to leverage a connection to get my Mac app unstuck and onto the Store. I sincerely hope Apple does right by this developer and the many others I'm sure who are being wronged. This has got to change.
That would be really neat, but the core technology of Realm is written in native code. Somebody in the community could certainly create a Realm-like API for web local storage. If you (or anyone else reading this) is interested in building it, I would suggest building it on top of localForage (https://github.com/mozilla/localforage), and definitely hit me up if you'd like to further discuss implementation details!
