Abuse of power problem for Apple?

wco81 said:

So your position is protectionism bad.

But using the DMA, where all the targets are foreign, none European, is good?

OK, got it, love that logical consistency.

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Where the FUCK did I outline my own position as "protectionism is bad"?

STOP DOING THAT.

My position was that your argumentation is bad.

Your claim, since you've apparently lost track in your spin, was this:

wco81 said:

US […] don't pass laws which are pro certain businesses at the expense of the others. There's that 14th amendment again.

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[emphasis mine]

When shown that this is bogus, you later revised this to:

wco81 said:

So no govt. subsidies do not explicitly harm or disadvantage certain domestic industries.

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[Emphasis mine]

Which is a rather interesting flex, since your whole schtick here is that the DMA is nothing but blatant protectionism. And you've just acknowledged that US policies explicitly disadvantage non-domestic industries, which is…protectionism.

And now you're trying to deflect from that by painting MY position as "protectionism bad". STOP IT. I haven't stated my own position at all. I've merely been picking apart your hypocrisy.

So we've established (with your active cooperation) that "protectionism" in various forms is a basic tenet of international trade.

It's also been pointed out that apart from the EU, Japan, Australia, the UK, AND THE FUCKING UNITED STATES are all looking at similar inquiries into Apple's conduct.

Can you please FINALLY drop the irrelevant "protectionism!" schtick and at least try to discuss the actual implications of a law that even Americans can slowly begin to accept as a fact of life?

Still waiting for these entities that Apple killed in the crib.

Lot of accusations of coercive anticompetitive behavior but nobody is able to cite specific victims?

You cited US tariffs which hurt foreign competitors for the benefit of domestic companies. THAT is protectionism.

So you decry American protectionism but don't mind that the DMA only targets foreign competitors to EU companies.

wco81 said:

Disagree. It may advantage certain industries but it doesn't explicitly disadvantage others.

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A nonsensical distinction without a difference. Advantage is compartive, and if a particular segment of an industry (say, energy production) gains an advantage relative to its competitors, those competitors are necessarily disadvantaged relative to that segment.

Be is one. They had been in talks to have BeOS preloaded on PCs from a number of companies only for MS to interfere. Jean-Louis Gassée had wanted to testify about this at MS's antitrust trial, but the DOJ was fixated on browser issues. Here's an archived column from Byte about it.

Anecdotally, there's also MS buying possible competitors just to shut them down. This happened to a friend's employer around ~2003 which had been working on a Lotus Notes style suite. The team got absorbed but dispersed onto unrelated projects. Definitely not an acquihire.

wco81 said:

Still waiting for these entities that Apple killed in the crib.

Lot of accusations of coercive anticompetitive behavior but nobody is able to cite specific victims?

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I think your ask is for something so narrow that it will be impossible to provide. The items that could count as "killed in the crib" fall into a couple broad categories. First would be something that did get some amount of uptake before Apple moved into the market and then either stopped it's growth or reduced it's market size overall. In either case I feel like such examples would be countered with something like "there's no proof Apple had anything to do with that and therefore it doesn't count." Spotify could be one example of an app that has had its growth reduced due to Apple (to the tune of a $2 billion initial penalty). Doing a search shows at least some people think the new features in versions of iOS have a tendency to kill smaller apps as Apple bundles more with the OS directly. Just because the apps don't die completely doesn't mean they haven't been negatively impacted.

Next you have apps that really do die completely. The expected counter argument to this scenario is that a little competition from Apple shouldn't drive them out of business if their app is "good" or they have a "good" business model. I'd probably throw Flash as an early victim into this category.

Finally you have apps that were never created or released and died at the idea stage of development because they weren't supported by restrictions. For example Mozilla's ability to use their own browser engines. There aren't going to be a lot of examples in this category because they most likely aren't going to be known to anyone except the person with the idea.

Pretending that an OS developer can bundle whatever software they want with their product and have no negative impact on any other developer seems like an extreme opinion compared to acknowledging that yes, bundling something and/or restricting others from developing or distributing a similar tool will have a negative impact on third party developers.

wco81 said:

You cited US tariffs which hurt foreign competitors for the benefit of domestic companies. THAT is protectionism.

So you decry American protectionism but don't mind that the DMA only targets foreign competitors to EU companies.

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Where the FUCK did I “decry” it?

Pointing out that some degree of protectionism is a part of international trade — and pointing to American examples TO PROVE YOU FUCKING WRONG — isn’t “decrying” said protectionism.

Or were you confused by the reference to one particular example of stupidly implemented tariffs that backfired badly? Yeah, that particular example I, er, “decried”. I guess. If it helps you get up in the morning.

Throughout Apples history they’ve “Sherlock-ed” many software and services.

They’ve never been prosecuted for it and I don’t think they’re being prosecuted now. They will allow alternate app stores and full browser engines in the EU.

EU would have more credibility if they can show smaller businesses which were killed or struggled to compete.

Instead, Spotify had a lot of influence on them and they’re not struggling, though if they go out of business it will be because they can’t generate profits and that has little to do with what they paid Apple for being on the App Store.

So Apple will integrate a password app on iOS 18. Maybe 1 Password, Last Pass and others will submit complaints with the EU.

or maybe they can still carve out a profitable business even if most iOS users drop their subscriptions.

But people in this thread supporting the DMA should keep their password utility subscriptions or get subscriptions if they already didn’t have them, right? Help out the underdog versus Big Bad Apple?

analogika said:

Where the FUCK did I “decry” it?

Pointing out that some degree of protectionism is a part of international trade — and pointing to American examples TO PROVE YOU FUCKING WRONG — isn’t “decrying” said protectionism.

Or were you confused by the reference to one particular example of stupidly implemented tariffs that backfired badly? Yeah, that particular example I, er, “decried”. I guess. If it helps you get up in the morning.

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Why you so mad bro?

Because I have a different opinion on something so dry as tech industry regulations?

So you’re praising US tariffs or you’re denouncing them? Do you support the US imposing tariffs or not?

Do you think these or any other tariffs are protectionist?

wco81 said:

Throughout Apples history they’ve “Sherlock-ed” many software and services.

They’ve never been prosecuted for it and I don’t think they’re being prosecuted now. They will allow alternate app stores and full browser engines in the EU.

EU would have more credibility if they can show smaller businesses which were killed or struggled to compete.

Instead, Spotify had a lot of influence on them and they’re not struggling, though if they go out of business it will be because they can’t generate profits and that has little to do with what they paid Apple for being on the App Store.

So Apple will integrate a password app on iOS 18. Maybe 1 Password, Last Pass and others will submit complaints with the EU.

or maybe they can still carve out a profitable business even if most iOS users drop their subscriptions.

But people in this thread supporting the DMA should keep their password utility subscriptions or get subscriptions if they already didn’t have them, right? Help out the underdog versus Big Bad Apple?

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So is this a complete reversal of what you said before or am I missing something? You appear to be acknowledging that Apple does have an outsized control of the market and by them simply entering a market the existing competition now needs to "carve out a profitable business even if most iOS users drop their subscriptions". If you can acknowledge that why does the EU need to gain credibility by pursuing that angle too?

You also seem to think that fighting a legal battle against a much larger competitor is free. The reason bigger companies like Spotify and Epic are the ones publicly going against Apple is because they are the ones with the money and lawyers to pursue the matter. If a one person shop is being driven out of business because Apple entered their market what is the financially sound decision? Is it hiring a lawyer to pursue legal action over half a decade or more, include numerous appeals, with the hopes that you get...something? Or is it to just do your best to compete, or fold up shop and move on to something else that the larger company haven't claimed yet?

Echohead2 said:

They do it so much there is a term for it and you doubt it?

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More to the point is the communications from the companies involved.

If Microsoft buys you out in order to kill your product and raid your company for IP and talent or moves into your niche with a product of their own, the principals of those companies might be sad, but they'll be sad all the way to the bank. Then they'll go do something else or re-target the remainder of their product and try to keep going.

If Apple "Sherlocks" a company, typically they're very complimentary to Apple before they die or devolve into a small niche product because they're unwilling to say anything truly negative about Apple publicly. Some might be unwilling because they're terrified of what might happen if they don't keep it positive-- for this and all future ventures within a completely closed ecosystem.

lithven said:

So is this a complete reversal of what you said before or am I missing something? You appear to be acknowledging that Apple does have an outsized control of the market and by them simply entering a market the existing competition now needs to "carve out a profitable business even if most iOS users drop their subscriptions". If you can acknowledge that why does the EU need to gain credibility by pursuing that angle too?

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No I'm saying that no govt. has prosecuted Apple during its history for bundling features which were previously offered by third parties.

I'm not sure the DMA does that. EU made them allow full browser engine installs and third-party app. stores. I believe Apple has also agreed to open up the NFC to third parties as well.

But AFAIK, no authority has required Apple to unbundle any software feature or service. They didn't have to remove Mobile Safari or the App Store. They may have been required to allow bundled apps to be uninstalled though.

In contrast, DOJ and EU made MS offer a version of Windows where IE was optional or not bundled. EU also forced unbundling of WMP.

Obviously MS' market power over OEMs and controlling 95% of personal computers was undeniable or needed to be adjudicated.

lithven said:

You also seem to think that fighting a legal battle against a much larger competitor is free. The reason bigger companies like Spotify and Epic are the ones publicly going against Apple is because they are the ones with the money and lawyers to pursue the matter. If a one person shop is being driven out of business because Apple entered their market what is the financially sound decision? Is it hiring a lawyer to pursue legal action over half a decade or more, include numerous appeals, with the hopes that you get...something? Or is it to just do your best to compete, or fold up shop and move on to something else that the larger company haven't claimed yet?

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Sure, but I asked you and others to name any company, big or small, which was driven out of business or prevented from going into business because of Apple's practices.

The Epic, Spotify and even BaseCamp made at least very good living or in the case of Epic, boffo profits from the App Store. The problem with Sweeney and maybe Ek as well is that they didn't make enough money from the iOS ecosystem, at least compared to the huge profits Apple was making.

So it was a battle of billionaires in the case of Sweeney. Ek is a billionaire too but I don't know how much of Spotify's business comes from iOS as opposed to other platforms.

But Spotify didn't have to launch costly litigation vs. Apple. It simply went to the EU. And supposedly there are other companies who've found a receptive ear in the EC Competition agency, which is why for instance they're now going to get access to iPhone NFC. It will be interesting to see which companies will make apps now to use the NFC. Probably not going to be smaller companies.


As for the developers of 1 Password, Last Pass and other password apps, they might as well go to the EC and the DOJ. Why not, tell them it's an existential threat to their businesses and since those agencies are already predisposed to believe that Apple is guilty of antitrust and anticompetitive behavior, maybe they can get the governments to try to force Apple not to bundle their own password app.

I've used 1 Password for a decade or more. I don't subscribe though. I just use Wifi sync between my mobile devices and Mac. If they got rid of that feature, I'd probably would have switched to KeyPass since I'm leery of taking on any subscriptions.

wco81 said:

No I'm saying that no govt. has prosecuted Apple during its history for bundling features which were previously offered by third parties.

I'm not sure the DMA does that. EU made them allow full browser engine installs and third-party app. stores. I believe Apple has also agreed to open up the NFC to third parties as well.

But AFAIK, no authority has required Apple to unbundle any software feature or service. They didn't have to remove Mobile Safari or the App Store. They may have been required to allow bundled apps to be uninstalled though.

In contrast, DOJ and EU made MS offer a version of Windows where IE was optional or not bundled. EU also forced unbundling of WMP.

Obviously MS' market power over OEMs and controlling 95% of personal computers was undeniable or needed to be adjudicated.

Sure, but I asked you and others to name any company, big or small, which was driven out of business or prevented from going into business because of Apple's practices.

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I think part of where we disagree is I believe the world has moved on a bit and most everyone today realizes that having a browser engine built into the OS to support everything from a first party web browser to basic OS APIs is reasonable. Windows 95 was Microsoft's first "internet ready" operating system and thus the start of a new era that the regulators at the time simply didn't recognize initially. I wouldn't expect any regulator to tell Apple they need to remove their web browser, however, allowing third party alternatives to work as a web browser without replacing or supplanting core OS features and APIs makes sense.

I also think that unbundling in general has fallen a bit out of favor with most regulators taking a softer stance and working more at ensuring others can join the platform too rather than removing a feature from the OS. In this light you may never see Apple (or anyone else) asked to remove a feature again instead the regulators would be working to level the playing field in other ways. In this way, I don't expect that they'll be asked to remove the App Store, instead being asked to support third party app stores and/or side loading.

I still think you aren't be honest about your "driven out of business" standard. For example, Real Networks is still in business. Java is still around and supported. Netscape, through a series of acquisitions and the spin off of the Mozilla Foundation, is technically still in business too. Does that mean we can say Microsoft wasn't abusive since they didn't drive any of these companies out of business? And your, "prevented from going into business" is a laughably dishonest request.

wco81 said:

The Epic, Spotify and even BaseCamp made at least very good living or in the case of Epic, boffo profits from the App Store. The problem with Sweeney and maybe Ek as well is that they didn't make enough money from the iOS ecosystem, at least compared to the huge profits Apple was making.

So it was a battle of billionaires in the case of Sweeney. Ek is a billionaire too but I don't know how much of Spotify's business comes from iOS as opposed to other platforms.

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Right, it is a battle of billionaires because those are who can afford to pursue the issue.

wco81 said:

But Spotify didn't have to launch costly litigation vs. Apple. It simply went to the EU. And supposedly there are other companies who've found a receptive ear in the EC Competition agency, which is why for instance they're now going to get access to iPhone NFC. It will be interesting to see which companies will make apps now to use the NFC. Probably not going to be smaller companies.

Click to expand...

You still seem to think it's free. Even going to the government still has costs. You still need the lawyers to lay out your argument in a legally relevant way that aren't immediately dismissed as "well business harder then". You need to be able to go give depositions and testify. You need to be able to spend significant amount of money to even get them to listen to you. If you think someone could write a single letter to their representative and get significant action to regulate all I can say is you have a way more optimistic outlook on the responsiveness government than I do. I wouldn't expect to get significant action with so little effort if I was protesting my neighbor littering in the local park let alone if I had a problem with a trillion dollar trans-national company.

This tangent of Apple's abuse of their market position may bear a spin off into a different thread as it draws in a few other companies, but my current frustration-- and the frustration of many if you read the Ars' car reviews-- centers around CarPlay.

I know that not everyone has used CarPlay or Android Auto, but for many users-- once you've experienced it, you're hooked. 1/3 of buyers absolutely demand CarPlay/Android Auto in any new car purchase. I'm strongly in that "must have" camp. The value proposition is extremely strong for a phone casting solution if you own multiple cars/share multiple cars among family members or need to rent cars frequently. Your phone knows your preferences, memorizes your routine and your navigation, uses your preferred apps, picks up right where it left off in your podcast or music stream, etc.

CarPlay and Android Auto both work if the car supports the technology and as of now, two different modalities for connectivity can be supported: Wired USB to USB-C or Lightning for CarPlay (or USB-C for AA devices) or Wireless. Wireless connectivity requires that Bluetooth be connected first, and Bluetooth is used to negotiate an ephemeral, ad-hoc WiFi network between the car and the phone. Each modality has different benefits-- wireless means you can keep your phone in your pocket or purse, but connection takes longer when the car starts up and can be (significantly) less reliable in areas with active interference. Wired is great when you want to charge your phone via cable anyway, is more reliable, but of course you have to remember to take your phone out and plug it in--extra steps and extra clutter. Brands can support any combination of the above for each technology-- for example my wife's car supports wired and wireless CarPlay, but when it was new it only supported wired Android Auto. Wireless Android Auto was added via software update later. Some cars only do wired, some only wireless etc.

Car companies already have some ability to customize the experience for users-- rearranging elements to fit within the borders of their larger infotainment (essentially in a window so it doesn't take over the center screen fully) or stretching or rearranging elements for wider or taller screens, but fundamentally the experience is the same and branded to comport with Apple's preferences and of course updating on Apple's schedule-- not tied to the manufacturer at all.

Also-- and this would have been pretty well into legacy technology at this point if not for touchscreen shortages during COVID,--both CarPlay and AA operate in a touchscreen mode or in a non-touchscreen mode where they can be operated by a vehicle's rotary control (for example). It just bears mentioning as a side note because that experience can vary as well.

Keep in mind this is an overlay app over the car's Infotainment on the center screen only. Optionally (again manufacturers have a lot of customization options here) things like turn by turn nav can be cast to a different screen, like the instrument cluster screen, but the core functions of the car run on a discrete computer probably running a RTOS for reliability--a different computer from whatever OS the infotainment screen is using. IOW, you can lose or reboot the infotainment but don't risk losing the speedometer, fuel gague, etc.

Well, that was the case. CarPlay 2.0 has been announced and details are getting pretty concrete.

Apple's plan is to take over every screen in the car, but their concession is to allow manufacturers "some branding" options, but branding that would still be distinct from the included infotainment and instrumentation to contain a "hybrid Apple + manufacturer flavor". Note that this would not only take over the driver's primary display in addition to the infotainment display, but in some cars would also encompass things like the HVAC controls or frankly anything that doesn't have a physical button.

Apple's vision statement is here, if you scroll down to the bottom of their CarPlay page:




The US DoJ complaint references this CarPlay 2.0 problem, but that tends to get lost among all the other complaints surfaced by the DoJ:


pp 48-49

(to be continued)

(part 2, too long for a single post)

Per Apple's own marketing the first cars supporting the technology will be released this autumn with Aston Martin supposedly doing the first model on sale (how many cars do they sell per month anyway?) and Porsche as the likely 2nd model on sale as early adopters. The confirmed manufacturers to support the technology at present are:

• Acura
• Aston Martin
• Audi
• Ford
• Honda
• Infiniti
• Jaguar
• Land Rover
• Lincoln
• Mercedes-Benz
• Nissan
• Polestar
• Porsche
• Renault
• Volvo

You can see that skews towards premium and luxury brands now -- playing well into that stereotype that if you're rich you must have an iPhone because Androids are for "the poors"-- but it's likely to hit wider acceptance among some brands. Here's the catch:

If you want any CarPlay 2.0 feature, you need to support all the CarPlay 2.0 features. You must go wireless only, I believe touchscreen/Siri-only, and you must allow Apple access to every screen in the car and almost every sensor in the car. Apple will have your tire pressure readings under 2.0 -- Apple is stating that this type of data won't be used for monetization, but it would be the kind of data that's an absolute gold mine-- oh your tire pressure is suddenly low? Let Siri find you the nearest tire store...

CarPlay 2.0 will require a hardware upgrade and cars will be compatible with one specification or the other-- CarPlay 1 or CarPlay 2, but not both. It can run on top of any compliant infotainment hardware, including, ironically, ones that run Android Automotive (reminder: Android Automotive is a completely different thing than Android Auto). The argument is that this would allow Apple all of the current integrations Android Automotive has and much more, but store all of it "on the phone" instead of the car. An iPhone will still be required to use CarPlay 2.0 features, they will not be accessible using just the car itself.

A likely list of car functions to be controlled by Apple's Apps is here:


There will be a phase in over a couple of years as all this shakes out and frankly we don't know exactly what the future is going to look like until some of these cars hit the market (and probably something more along the lines of Honda would be more representative than Aston Martin.) Mercedes is on the support list but has already pushed back publicly about CarPlay 2.0 taking over the gague cluster entirely. It's not clear yet what concessions would look like in this case, but Mercedes is claiming that they will retain control over the driver's gagues. Apple representatives have publicly tried to put a positive spin about how the options are "options" and the car manufacturers will still have the ability to customize.

Bloomberg has an article that covers some of the history and finances behind this decision:


Key among these is that Apple isn't charging manufacturers anything for CarPlay 2.0, apparently including all of the customization work-- and not just a per-vehicle fee. The manufacturer is only on the hook for providing the hooks into CarPlay 2.0. The one point of monetization at present is that even though some hardware will be built in, to use it, you need to buy an iPhone where Android Automotive features built into the car are phone-agnostic. The whole economics around this revolve around further lock-in to their iPhone platform, now to be more tightly integrated with your $$$ car purchase. All of the money that Apple is expending right now appears to boil down to those two key motivations: Acquire and retain iPhone users, and exclude Android from the automotive market to the extent possible. Apple will have access to LOTS of other monetizable data and services. For now, the additional monetiziation that will be offered doesn't look much different from CarPlay 1.0 with the over the top services being things like Apple Music, but that could certainly change in the future. That said even if you don't trust your car manufacturer to handle this monetizable data ethically, and you do trust Apple, it's still an additional party that will have access to a lot of information about you.

Because of this tight lock in, companies like Tesla and Rivian have always rejected full CarPlay/Android Auto integration. Rivian has edged towards limited casting support for some iPhone applications but no CarPlay. Lucid had originally planned on preventing CarPlay access, but now allows it only within a small window of their infotainment. The problem is not just among EV startups-- it's causing battle lines to be drawn across the industry.

GM was the first to completely reject Apple. Their motivations are not altrusitic: they want to sell you subscriptions and monetize your data. In order to retain control of that data and prevent Apple from gaining access to their cars and all that data. Going forward all GM models will not support CarPlay of any specification (or Android Auto). They'll use Android Automotive as the sole OS and users will need to sign into their apps on the car itself. Although I'm unlikely to purchase a GM vehicle, the problem here is the fallout. Apple owns the US market, and in thumbing their nose at Apple, GM has figured they might as well disallow Android Auto as well. Apple's heavy handed actions have the effect of hurting every Android Auto user's choice in GM cars as well. That may not be true for every manufacturer, but if they have to do work to integrate CarPlay 2.0 and all of a sudden Android Auto works differently (they're currently very similar), there may be less motivation to accomodate both. This is obviously more likely for cars sold primarily in N. America that AA support could be an afterthought.

We'll see how that works for GM, and I suspect it will work badly. If a large percentage of new car buyers absolutely demand CarPlay/Android Auto, then they will probably reject those cars outright before even trying their infotainment solution. Other manufacturers have taken a less proactive approach than the list above but have noted that "CarPlay will be supported in the future" without giving any specific promises about CarPlay 2.0 adoption-- eg. Stellantis (Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/RAM) has gone on the record saying they would not follow the GM example despite not announcing 2.0 support. It's not clear how easy it is to thread that particular needle. Cars can still be sold with CarPlay 1.0 but I'm not privy to the point at which Apple will stop allowing CarPlay 1.0 only in new cars. Certainly that's the plan at some point.

Frankly, I'm afraid that my needs won't be supported in the future. Even if I were an iPhone user, I'm not sure I'd want or trust Apple to own my speedometer or HVAC controls over whatever the OEM supplies. This is ironic, since CarPlay/AA are some of the strongest future-proofing options for car purchases possible and tie strongly into car resale value today as many used cars are on the bubble for wich technologies they support if any-- having AA/CarPlay support increases resale and it's important to have both as I need to support my anti-Android family and statistically it's more likely that when I sell the car in the US, the buyer will have an iPhone. My infotainment has discontinued features it offered when the car was new, but since I'm using a phone casting technology, it doesn't really hurt me much and any future buyers can still use the AA/CarPlay functions. My nav never falls out of date. It's a good deal and with a 5 year old car, my user experience has not significantly degraded from what it was prior. Are we heading towards a future where if you buy a car your choice is to use an iPhone or have a vastly inferior experience? Google has been putting their effort into the now market-leading Android Automotive and because they partner with some of the car companies on that, they can't really turn around and undercut those companies by introducing an Android Auto "2.0" that takes over all the screens. It's a conflict of interest. There's no obvious future for AA that doesn't look a lot like the current one.

This isn't necessarily a great deal for automotive manufacturers either. The painfully diverse infotainment and display options introduced in recent years have been largely tailored to each car's branding/personality/design and they're probably not enthusiastic about giving vehicle data to Apple either. They don't want to immediately lose a large chunk of their customer base either.

Well if you don't want CarPlay to control the instrument clusters, don't pair your iPhone to it.

Shrug.

I have CarPlay, wired only. I tried it once but when I enter and exit the car, I have wireless buds on already.

The handoff between car and the buds are not smooth.

So I don't connect and I don't even pair it to the car's audio system. I don't know if the speakers are good, don't care to find out.

So people may swear by CarPlay but what percentage of people actually connect and regularly use it?

Fortunately my commute used to be short. Now I barely drive any more.

It doesn't drive my car purchasing decision.

wco81 said:

Well if you don't want CarPlay to control the instrument clusters, don't pair your iPhone to it.

Shrug.

I have CarPlay, wired only. I tried it once but when I enter and exit the car, I have wireless buds on already.

The handoff between car and the buds are not smooth.

So I don't connect and I don't even pair it to the car's audio system. I don't know if the speakers are good, don't care to find out.

So people may swear by CarPlay but what percentage of people actually connect and regularly use it?

Fortunately my commute used to be short. Now I barely drive any more.

It doesn't drive my car purchasing decision.

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Thank you for being a rare counter-argument, that came as no surprise.

98% of cars sold in the US as of last year had CarPlay. Retrofit kits exist. Clearly people care. The iPhone specific surveys are older and somewhat contradictory but as of 2018, iPhone users with CarPlay as an option used it always about 1/3 of the time and sometimes another 1/3 and that's stale data with an older implementation.

People also pay lots of money for premium car stereos and in many cases, it's the nicest stereo they own. Driving with one or two earbuds in is illegal in 15 states (depending on a state per state basis, and obviously legal in the other 35) so that's not a reality that applies to everyone equally either.

The 33% Must Have rates are somewhat low--probably more like 50% according to some studies but I erred on the side of caution. The numbers have a little bit of a skew depending on whether you're an EV buyer or not:


Tesla in particular has done a lot to convince the Tesla True Believers that their system is better than any phone-based system. Granted I can't play Doom on CarPlay or Android Auto, but the inherent value of my settings following me from car to car is undermined by any system that's tied to a specific car even if it is better. For some people they only have one car and almost never rent cars-- so that doesn't apply to them. There are definitely variables in play.

That's fine and I'm saying if you don't want your auto OEM UI to be overwritten with Car Play, YOU have some agency.

BTW, replacing the awful OEM UI in cars isn't the worst thing in the world.

Now if Apple screws up with important things like information about the things like engine temperature, fuel tank status, etc., then they will justly get flak for it.

I've rented a lot of cars and each time, it's a chore to figure out the HVAC, cruise control, etc.

Hey if they standardize these things, maybe I will start using CarPlay more, though I don't know about pairing my phone to a rental car, what if it leaves digital trails behind.

I never bought into the nanny state arguments but it's absurd now that people want the government to take care of things which are within their power to change themselves, rather easily in this case.

wco81 said:

In contrast, DOJ and EU made MS offer a version of Windows where IE was optional or not bundled. EU also forced unbundling of WMP.

Obviously MS' market power over OEMs and controlling 95% of personal computers was undeniable or needed to be adjudicated.

Click to expand...

Maybe the IE ones, becasue they did play a few tricks and was somewhat underhanded with what they did. The WMP case was Real networks, who made complete and utter shit audio/video player for ages, was never able to go back to their glory days of real streaming video and decided to use the EU to go after Microsoft..

Funny thing is that no one can tell you why gimping windows was better for the consumer and it didn't helo real at all and actually caused people to go out and buy anything other then the windows N edition, which was dubbed "no sell" by vendors as no one wanted it They would import a windows machine from non EU countries just to get wmp, even though you could go download a pack from Microsoft that re-added wmp

wco81 said:

That's fine and I'm saying if you don't want your auto OEM UI to be overwritten with Car Play, YOU have some agency.

Click to expand...

Or to say it another way, you have agency to choose the screen casting of your choice over the manufacturer's UI, until the point that the manufacturer has to make some really tough choices based on Apple's Terms and Conditions and either fails to implement CarPlay (or AA) or removes the previous functionality of being able to run CarPlay. At that point all of your agency has been taken away.

In GM's case, as a non-Apple-iPhone-user, my agency got taken away as a mere side effect of Apple putting pressure on the market. iPhone users' agency has been taken away there as well of course. They have the choice of no CarPlay or no CarPlay in a car that implemented it a year before. That CarPlay function was intentionally left absent from many EV companies' products for multiple reasons including at least in part, Apple licesning requirements.

You can choose the stock UI. For now they'll probably still be at least no worse than they were before. If car companies lean too much on the assumption that almost every driver has an iPhone and almost every driver uses CarPlay 2.0, do you think they'll be much more than bare bones/legal minimums if the market hits that point? At that point, letting Apple do all the heavy lifting is tempting, especially for smaller companies.

OR companies will do what GM did and what Tesla and Rivian do. Turn CarPlay and AA off, and go all-in on their own infotainment. They'll try to convince you the customer it's better and hope for the best.

wco81 said:

BTW, replacing the awful OEM UI in cars isn't the worst thing in the world.

Click to expand...

See above on longevity. Some OEM infotainment systems are awesome when they're first introduced, some were always garbage, but the one constant is that they will always age and eventually age out of support. Your phone casting experience is only as old as your phone. If you bought say a 2014 model year car with some proprietary system-- it's almost certainly been orphaned now 10 years later. Whatever it does now is all it will ever do, and its tech is really old. If you bought a car just a few years later-- CarPlay was pretty common by about 2017/2018, that car will still have a valid user experience in 2028 because you're just using the OEM software to bootstrap you into CarPlay and nothing more. That would hold true even if you're using an iPhone 16 or 17 or whatever to run in "legacy CarPlay 1.0 mode".

wco81 said:

Now if Apple screws up with important things like information about the things like engine temperature, fuel tank status, etc., then they will justly get flak for it.

Click to expand...

Not just "flak" but intense regulatory pressure. The law says all of that has to work and work without fail. That's much of the reason for custom hardware and the reason why regardless of the infotainment stack's underlying OS, most of the gauge clusters run on some RTOS on a separate computer built for reliability above all other concerns.

Apple says this is 'solved' by CarPlay 2.0 and I have no reason to disbelieve them at this point-- but it points to the fact that this is not a simple update, but completely different hardware for cars that will need to support those hooks into iOS. They've had to spend significant engineering cycles making this work and testing it-- and figuring out how fallbacks work if your phone has problems, etc. Doing this all wirelessly is just not reliable enough, so some of the hardware must be on-board and the iPhone just unlocks the underlying capability. I doubt that the iPhone itself is in the loop for any safety-oriented functions.

wco81 said:

I've rented a lot of cars and each time, it's a chore to figure out the HVAC, cruise control, etc.

Hey if they standardize these things, maybe I will start using CarPlay more, though I don't know about pairing my phone to a rental car, what if it leaves digital trails behind.

Click to expand...

As of CarPlay 1.0, just unplug your phone (wired) or un-pair it from Bluetooth. The risk is virtually nonexistent if you do that, but the pairing/unpairing process is not always clear. The car's information stays with the car (which presumably the rental company is using to judge heavy braking, etc.) and the phone's info stays with the phone. The car would generate telemetry no matter what you did, anyway.

For 2.0 the risk is presumably similar for wireless CarPlay 1.0, but I'd let researchers try to break it before I would commit to that statement.

wco81 said:

I never bought into the nanny state arguments but it's absurd now that people want the government to take care of things which are within their power to change themselves, rather easily in this case.

Click to expand...

I didn't bring the government into this other than to state that the DoJ finds fault with the CarPlay 2.0 product is anticompetitive. I agree with the DoJ's complaint but at this point, it's just part of their complaint and one that gets lost with all of the other complaints about Apple abusing their various market positions.

The reality is that much of the automotive market in the US is shaped by laws and regulation and to market forces, to an ironically much higher degree than many other countries. The kinds of vehicles I want to buy are almost completely regulated out of the US market due to the both explicit regulation and regulatory loopholes that promote certain choices (like vehicles that comply with the Chicken Tax), but that's not germane for what Apple is doing here. The phone casting software is universal across every vehicle and the risk to consumers is potentially universal because of their dominant market position.

Re: CarPlay

I have never used a single OEM infotainment system that was actually good, and am having a difficult time recalling one that was even alright. They're pretty universally junk and seem mostly designed to serve the car OEM rather than me, the buyer and user.

I wish I had spent the money and put in a replacement head unit on my car when I picked it up in early Feb 2018, but at this point 6+ years in I'm kind of just dealing with having my phone plugged into the USB port (with a lovely "iPod connected" splash when it handshakes) mounted in a cd-slot holder so it's in a reasonable center position but out of the sightline of the windshield.

Re: lock-in

I suppose? I think most cars that support CarPlay also support Android Auto, so should be a wash if you want to switch phone platforms. I don't know enough about the details of CarPlay 2.0 to know if you are unable to also ship Android Auto alongside it for non-iPhone users, but I would be rather surprised if that was the deal. I kind of get the "if you want 2.0, you have to use all of 2.0", mostly because I believe that the car OEMs are pretty universally bad actors and would make terrible choices about what to grab and what to leave (primary current example: GM). I don't believe for a second that GM's decision was based on Apple putting pressure on the market, but rather GM looking for "areas of opportunity for growth" and thinking they can squeeze subscription revenue from buyers with their OnStar / network / etc packages. I think (hope?) the market brutally punishes them for it and they have to backtrack.

Re: DoJ

Seems like a silly thing to include. I understand it from the spaghetti strategy standpoint, but on the other hand including weak examples that get blown away kind of serves to reduce the impact for the potent portions of the argument. I find most of the DoJ argument to be rather... silly, and including CarPlay as part of the complaint is definitely a contributor.

Nevarre said:

Or to say it another way, you have agency to choose the screen casting of your choice over the manufacturer's UI, until the point that the manufacturer has to make some really tough choices based on Apple's Terms and Conditions and either fails to implement CarPlay (or AA) or removes the previous functionality of being able to run CarPlay. At that point all of your agency has been taken away.

In GM's case, as a non-Apple-iPhone-user, my agency got taken away as a mere side effect of Apple putting pressure on the market. iPhone users' agency has been taken away there as well of course. They have the choice of no CarPlay or no CarPlay in a car that implemented it a year before. That CarPlay function was intentionally left absent from many EV companies' products for multiple reasons including at least in part, Apple licesning requirements.

Click to expand...

OK then, we have a fundamentally different opinion of what kind of choices consumers can make.

You yourself noted that the CarPlay 2.0 licensees are all upscale brands. Well they're not, Honda and Ford are there among others.

But it's not the whole market so car buyers have options whether to get involved with CarPlay when they make their purchasing decision and after purchase, whether they actually use CarPlay.

If you want to die on this particular hill as proof of Apple coercing car makers to certain decisions or car drivers to look or not look at CarPlay screens, go right ahead.

I just don't see some big outrage one way or another.

If for some reason you don't like the CarPlay display of the instrument cluster, I would presume you can choose not to use CarPlay. If for some inexplicable reason that isn't allowed, word will spread and people will decide whether to avoid cars with such systems.

And I've seen some awful instrument panel displays with all kinds of wacky themes. But usually you could choose to switch them. I just find it unlikely that any car maker will force some rigid UI on their customers.

In any event, these are all theoretical right, there are no actual CarPlay 2.0 systems where the driver can't change the instrument display colors or designs?

ant1pathy said:

Re: lock-in

I suppose? I think most cars that support CarPlay also support Android Auto, so should be a wash if you want to switch phone platforms. I don't know enough about the details of CarPlay 2.0 to know if you are unable to also ship Android Auto alongside it for non-iPhone users, but I would be rather surprised if that was the deal.

Click to expand...

Going back ~5 years, what cars supported what phone platforms using what connectivity methods was pretty chaotic and you needed to understand what options you had. It's pretty universal now to have both CarPlay 1.0 and Android Auto. There's nothing preventing an auto manufacturer from offering Android Auto, but if they implement CarPlay 2.0, then they can't extend the extra functionality to Android Auto.

If you want your phone/car interaction to do anything beyond infotainment, then a CarPlay 2.0 car supports iPhones, period, for that additional functionality.

Android isn't losing functionality in all cases that are not GM cars, so far, but once the hardware of the car is locked in, Android is locked out.

Ironically some of these CarPlay 2.0 systems will run on top of (at least partially) Android Automotive. Google doesn't have the leverage to demand these hooks into the car be universal/standards-compliant so they can offer a full AA experience very easily, and because Google is bad at divisions competing with one another, the Android Automotive division may be willing to sacrifice Android Auto's needs to sell more Android Automotive. Even though they're the #1 supplier of infotainment, Android Automotive is a mere plurality of around 30% of the market (e.g. Honda, Volvo, Ford, some mainstream brands but far from the majority.)

ant1pathy said:

I kind of get the "if you want 2.0, you have to use all of 2.0", mostly because I believe that the car OEMs are pretty universally bad actors and would make terrible choices about what to grab and what to leave (primary current example: GM). I don't believe for a second that GM's decision was based on Apple putting pressure on the market, but rather GM looking for "areas of opportunity for growth" and thinking they can squeeze subscription revenue from buyers with their OnStar / network / etc packages. I think (hope?) the market brutally punishes them for it and they have to backtrack.

Click to expand...

I don't think all bad actors are equal here, but behind the scenes there has absolutely been hand-wringing about a lot of the aspects of CarPlay 2.0. Losing the control of your branding and design has been a big concern and brands have to weigh this against "we spent a ton of money building our own infotainment and everyone hates it, why continue doing that?"

For non-GM brands, you see a lot of big companies keeping their proverbial heads down rather than jumping on the CarPlay 2.0 bandwagon and that's telling that it isn't just a cash grab. If the decision to adopt CarPlay 2.0 came with no real downsides in terms of licensing and data sharing and companies retained a strong ability to control and brand their cars, then we might not see the reluctance we're seeing from brands like Toyota, BMW, Hyundai/Kia etc. Or those brands would also tell Apple and Google to shove off and start monetizing their customers hard like GM wants to do. I think all of those brands are more than happy to let GM look like the crazy reactionary and potentially make some horrible mistakes, but they're watching this carefully.

I think a lot of the details have yet to become clear and if companies with sufficient leverage implement CarPlay 2.0 in such a way that it looks and feels just like CarPlay 1.0 but with a few extra functions (like what Mercedes-Benz has hinted at) then at least some of GM's public complaints are moot.

For GM, they didn't have to cut out AA-- but the power of Apple in the US market would result in really bad optics in 2024 if they had only excluded CarPlay and retained AA functionality. It would also undermine their claims that their infotainment will be sooo great (insert eyeroll here.)

I suspect and hope that the market brutally punishes GM, even the segment of the market who uses AA and gets hurt just for being on the sidelines of two corporations fighting.

ant1pathy said:

Re: DoJ

Seems like a silly thing to include. I understand it from the spaghetti strategy standpoint, but on the other hand including weak examples that get blown away kind of serves to reduce the impact for the potent portions of the argument. I find most of the DoJ argument to be rather... silly, and including CarPlay as part of the complaint is definitely a contributor.

Click to expand...

To me, it's obviously one of the stronger arguments once you build a linkage between your car (expensive to buy and replace and not all cars are fungible for any other arbitrary car) and your phone (buying a different phone is one thing, disentangling yourself from an ecosystem is another.) As a consumer this is going to have market effects and the path of least resistance tips just that much farther towards buying an iPhone.

The problem with the DoJ complaint is not that they're necessarily wrong, but they're taking all of these strong arguments, all of these weak arguments and just throwing them out there without any focus in the original complaint. Not all points in the DoJ memo against Apple are equivalently strong.

That said, even though the few paragraphs about CarPlay 2.0 are terse, they're not fundamentally wrong. Apple is using their dominant market position in the US. Apple is influencing car companies to make changes to cars that their competitors cannot use. They've been doing this quietly enough that it's a fait accompli and cars will hit showrooms soon. I mean, in a different universe, Google could have done that first, or a different competitor like Windows Phone might have survived long enough to try to get deeper hooks into your car, but it's gone past the point where "business harder, Apple competitors!" is a remedy-- especially since Google has that inherent conflict of interest and has spent significant effort trying to convince less-tech-savvy iPhone users that getting a car with Android Automotive is harmless to them.

wco81 said:

OK then, we have a fundamentally different opinion of what kind of choices consumers can make.

You yourself noted that the CarPlay 2.0 licensees are all upscale brands. Well they're not, Honda and Ford are there among others.

Click to expand...

I didn't. I said they skewed in that direction. There are premium or luxury brands who are not participating as well as a large number of mainstream brands not participating.

Having the product launch with Aston Martin and Porsche is a smart marketing move, but most consumers probably care more about what mainstream brands (and premium/near-luxury like Acura) do.

The three legacy US carmakers are interesting here. Ford is in-- at least willing to try CarPlay 2.0 in some models. GM is hard out-- like middle finger in the air to Tim Cook out, and wants nothing to do with CarPlay 2.0. Stellantis is just trying to keep their heads down and not get caught in the crossfire.

wco81 said:

But it's not the whole market so car buyers have options whether to get involved with CarPlay when they make their purchasing decision and after purchase, whether they actually use CarPlay.

Click to expand...

The majority of new car buyers are going to care about phone casting as one of their top priorities. Some may not -- assuming most of those are going to be coming from older cars that don't have it and aren't yet accustomed to using it-- but the market demand for phone casting won't go away and will probably never decrease even if you can find some customers who don't care.

Again, speaking broadly, customers aren't just buying a car and deciding to use or not use CarPlay after the fact. They're increasingly demanding it as a must-have feature.

If you're already all-in on the Apple ecosystem and use CarPlay 1.0 now, then CarPlay 2.0 may sound absolutely awesome to you. That's not my core conention. My contention is that the path from CarPlay 1.0 to CarPlay 2.0 is more coercive than CarPlay 1.0 alone, and because of knock-on effects, it's going to affect the market overall for both cars and phones.

wco81 said:

If for some reason you don't like the CarPlay display of the instrument cluster, I would presume you can choose not to use CarPlay. If for some inexplicable reason that isn't allowed, word will spread and people will decide whether to avoid cars with such systems.\

Click to expand...

Because the hardware choice between CarPlay 1.0 and CarPlay 2.0 are binary, your choice with a CarPlay 2.0 car is to use it or not. You can't use it in 1.0 mode and whatever options your car manufacturer has negotiated with Apple will be the options you'll have. Consumers really don't have the free choice to pick and choose. Apple has not yet cut off CarPlay 1.0 from manufacturers but is stating that if they want CarPlay at all, they're going to have to make it be version 2.0.

Consumers have the choice starting later this year, but cars are not universally funigible.

wco81 said:

And I've seen some awful instrument panel displays with all kinds of wacky themes. But usually you could choose to switch them. I just find it unlikely that any car maker will force some rigid UI on their customers.

Click to expand...

It's as much about branding as anything else. A car company's gauges are part of its brand identity and design. Ford, for example, has put a lot of emphasis on being able to swtich between the current car's supplied gauges and gauges that look like they came out of a vintage 1960's Mustang or an '80's Mustang GT or whatever part of their legacy the customer wants to use. Companies may not love the idea of infotainment systems being different in appearance and functionality while running CarPlay or AA, but they hate it when their core branding is involved.

wco81 said:

In any event, these are all theoretical right, there are no actual CarPlay 2.0 systems where the driver can't change the instrument display colors or designs?

Click to expand...

Apple is promising that CarPlay 2.0 will change the gauge cluster to a system that is different from what the manufacturer provides as the default. They have promised that they will work with manufacturers to allow a hybrid design that incorporates some of their branding alongside the Apple features. It's likely that while a car is in CarPlay 2.0 mode you can customize the display to look more like the rainbow of default CarPlay or more like the brand's design, but you apparently cannot exit out of CarPlay 2.0 for the instruments and just use the manufacturer's design only.

Mercedes is so far the only brand promising that you can go back to the original display. How this will work in practice is not yet fully known.

There's a lot of information to integrate here as well-- it's not just speedometer/tachometer/fuel anymore, and while I think Apple could do a "now playing" panel that's not worse than the OEM default, I don't know that they'll do a great job at integrating things like the G-force enevelope meter or the advanced overlay of the parking sensors and 360-degree cameras. If I use CarPlay 2.0, will it do "car wash mode" -- yes that's a thing-- or other advanced features well? OEMs may be only so-so on infotainment but there are core and optional functions with deep integration that need to be accounted for and some OEMs do pretty well now.

Nevarre said:

Frankly, I'm afraid that my needs won't be supported in the future. Even if I were an iPhone user, I'm not sure I'd want or trust Apple to own my speedometer or HVAC controls over whatever the OEM supplies.

Click to expand...

Nevarre said:

Going back ~5 years, what cars supported what phone platforms using what connectivity methods was pretty chaotic and you needed to understand what options you had. It's pretty universal now to have both CarPlay 1.0 and Android Auto. There's nothing preventing an auto manufacturer from offering Android Auto, but if they implement CarPlay 2.0, then they can't extend the extra functionality to Android Auto.

If you want your phone/car interaction to do anything beyond infotainment, then a CarPlay 2.0 car supports iPhones, period, for that additional functionality.

Android isn't losing functionality in all cases that are not GM cars, so far, but once the hardware of the car is locked in, Android is locked out.

Ironically some of these CarPlay 2.0 systems will run on top of (at least partially) Android Automotive. Google doesn't have the leverage to demand these hooks into the car be universal/standards-compliant so they can offer a full AA experience very easily, and because Google is bad at divisions competing with one another, the Android Automotive division may be willing to sacrifice Android Auto's needs to sell more Android Automotive. Even though they're the #1 supplier of infotainment, Android Automotive is a mere plurality of around 30% of the market (e.g. Honda, Volvo, Ford, some mainstream brands but far from the majority.)

Click to expand...

As someone with some experience in this field (not specifically with infotainment integration, but with programming/interacting with the CAN bus), this will likely be much, much easier than you are speculating. All of the data that you're talking about (vehicle speed, tire pressures, stability control accelerometer readings, coolant temperatures, and on and on) are just fields in data frames on the CAN bus (or whatever newer version of vehicle networking they're using). All they'd need to display this kind of data is an approved CAN interface as part of the hardware (which the infotainment system will necessarily already have in order to display that data natively), and an API to expose those data streams to the CarPlay/AA interface. Similarly for the (extremely tiny number of) parameters these interfaces would be allowed to control, they're mostly just flipping a bit or setting a value on the CAN bus again. Having worked with the OEM tools for developing this stuff, this is how basically everything on a modern vehicle operates, and simply allowing some pass-through data streams and access to specific control fields is trivially easy and safe.

Similarly, I don't believe at all that implementing CarPlay 2.0 in any way necessarily locks out Android Auto from offering similar functionality. Again, this data is not something that's being collected specially for CarPlay, it's there in every CAN frame, and it would be trivial to allow access to the same data and controls through a separate Android Auto API. Far, FAR easier, in fact, than all the existing integrations with current CarPlay 1.0 and Android Auto, where you have to worry about screen handoff, audio overlays, microphone integration, and all the actual nuts and bolts of making these systems communicate and work in the first place. By integrating CarPlay 2.0, you've already done the work of implementing a system to hand off screen control of various additional displays, so again there's no reason that you can't add another client to that system for Android Auto. The only question there is if Google wants to put in the time and effort to make Android Auto comparable in this regard. That Android Auto and Android Automotive are somewhat in competition with each other is a problem entirely of Google's own creation.

Nevarre said:

Going back ~5 years, what cars supported what phone platforms using what connectivity methods was pretty chaotic and you needed to understand what options you had. It's pretty universal now to have both CarPlay 1.0 and Android Auto. There's nothing preventing an auto manufacturer from offering Android Auto, but if they implement CarPlay 2.0, then they can't extend the extra functionality to Android Auto.

If you want your phone/car interaction to do anything beyond infotainment, then a CarPlay 2.0 car supports iPhones, period, for that additional functionality.

Android isn't losing functionality in all cases that are not GM cars, so far, but once the hardware of the car is locked in, Android is locked out.

Ironically some of these CarPlay 2.0 systems will run on top of (at least partially) Android Automotive. Google doesn't have the leverage to demand these hooks into the car be universal/standards-compliant so they can offer a full AA experience very easily, and because Google is bad at divisions competing with one another, the Android Automotive division may be willing to sacrifice Android Auto's needs to sell more Android Automotive. Even though they're the #1 supplier of infotainment, Android Automotive is a mere plurality of around 30% of the market (e.g. Honda, Volvo, Ford, some mainstream brands but far from the majority.)

Click to expand...

Ok, help me out here to understand exactly what's possible / prevented.

Ford (to pick from the list) implements CarPlay 2.0. They have to take the whole stack, they work with Apple on some cross-branding, whatever. If I went to buy a car with this CarPlay 2.0 functionality, would there be no way I'd have current-gen Android Auto if I plug in an Android phone? I fully understand that Android users wouldn't get any of the CarPlay 2.0 features (kind of... duh?)

Nevarre said:

I don't think all bad actors are equal here, but behind the scenes there has absolutely been hand-wringing about a lot of the aspects of CarPlay 2.0. Losing the control of your branding and design has been a big concern and brands have to weigh this against "we spent a ton of money building our own infotainment and everyone hates it, why continue doing that?"

For non-GM brands, you see a lot of big companies keeping their proverbial heads down rather than jumping on the CarPlay 2.0 bandwagon and that's telling that it isn't just a cash grab. If the decision to adopt CarPlay 2.0 came with no real downsides in terms of licensing and data sharing and companies retained a strong ability to control and brand their cars, then we might not see the reluctance we're seeing from brands like Toyota, BMW, Hyundai/Kia etc. Or those brands would also tell Apple and Google to shove off and start monetizing their customers hard like GM wants to do. I think all of those brands are more than happy to let GM look like the crazy reactionary and potentially make some horrible mistakes, but they're watching this carefully.

I think a lot of the details have yet to become clear and if companies with sufficient leverage implement CarPlay 2.0 in such a way that it looks and feels just like CarPlay 1.0 but with a few extra functions (like what Mercedes-Benz has hinted at) then at least some of GM's public complaints are moot.

For GM, they didn't have to cut out AA-- but the power of Apple in the US market would result in really bad optics in 2024 if they had only excluded CarPlay and retained AA functionality. It would also undermine their claims that their infotainment will be sooo great (insert eyeroll here.)

I suspect and hope that the market brutally punishes GM, even the segment of the market who uses AA and gets hurt just for being on the sidelines of two corporations fighting.

Click to expand...

Emphasis mine in the above quote. The car OEMs can fuck right off with data sharing. I bought the car, that should be the end of our relationship unless there's a warranty or recall concern. I trust Apple not to do anything shady with data flowing through their platform; to eliminate any transmission possible and to go through their anonymizing processes for anything that's a true need.

Nevarre said:

To me, it's obviously one of the stronger arguments once you build a linkage between your car (expensive to buy and replace and not all cars are fungible for any other arbitrary car) and your phone (buying a different phone is one thing, disentangling yourself from an ecosystem is another.) As a consumer this is going to have market effects and the path of least resistance tips just that much farther towards buying an iPhone.

The problem with the DoJ complaint is not that they're necessarily wrong, but they're taking all of these strong arguments, all of these weak arguments and just throwing them out there without any focus in the original complaint. Not all points in the DoJ memo against Apple are equivalently strong.

That said, even though the few paragraphs about CarPlay 2.0 are terse, they're not fundamentally wrong. Apple is using their dominant market position in the US. Apple is influencing car companies to make changes to cars that their competitors cannot use. They've been doing this quietly enough that it's a fait accompli and cars will hit showrooms soon. I mean, in a different universe, Google could have done that first, or a different competitor like Windows Phone might have survived long enough to try to get deeper hooks into your car, but it's gone past the point where "business harder, Apple competitors!" is a remedy-- especially since Google has that inherent conflict of interest and has spent significant effort trying to convince less-tech-savvy iPhone users that getting a car with Android Automotive is harmless to them.

Click to expand...

Is this 100% factual or just rumor / fear mongering? Does including 2.0 support preclude Android Auto entirely, or is it "also Google will need to roll out something if they want a feature competitive product"?

Apple has not yet cut off CarPlay 1.0 from manufacturers but is stating that if they want CarPlay at all, they're going to have to make it be version 2.0.

Click to expand...

Again, is this firmly reported or just a nebulous "well, they might in the future!" kind of thing? I can see the logic behind "if you want CarPlay 2.0 you have to take it all", but that does not immediately exclude "or you can continue to roll out the 1.0 infotainment only stuff".

I think the stronger argument against CarPlay is that it uses hooks that no other developer could use. Want to create a CarPlay competitor on iPhone? Nope.

Theoretically Apple and Google could participate in a standards body that standardizes how cars talk to phones (including making it rock solid secure) and then Apple could provide third party developers the tools they need to make their own dashboard takeover apps. Honda could make an app that allows the setting on one of your Honda cars to transfer to another Honda car encouraging multi-car families to stick with them for all their needs. But Apple would never allow that.

I loved CarPlay the few times I’ve used it on rentals and my next car will definitely have it. But I can also detect the whiff of anticompetitiveness.

wrylachlan said:

I think the stronger argument against CarPlay is that it uses hooks that no other developer could use. Want to create a CarPlay competitor on iPhone? Nope.

Theoretically Apple and Google could participate in a standards body that standardizes how cars talk to phones (including making it rock solid secure) and then Apple could provide third party developers the tools they need to make their own dashboard takeover apps. Honda could make an app that allows the setting on one of your Honda cars to transfer to another Honda car encouraging multi-car families to stick with them for all their needs. But Apple would never allow that.

I loved CarPlay the few times I’ve used it on rentals and my next car will definitely have it. But I can also detect the whiff of anticompetitiveness.

Click to expand...

I don't think there's anything that precludes Honda from doing a better job syncing driver settings between their own cars. Seems like something that all the pieces are in place for, considering what kind of remote start / car status capabilities already exist.

Agree on Apple not really being in the business of 3rd party devs doing full dashboard takeover... but I'm not too mad at that? We're in really high stakes territory once you start fiddling with UI in multi-ton high velocity machines. 3rd party CarPlay apps can already take over nearly the whole infotainment, with just the UI navigation chrome around the edges. If you want to use Wave, or Google Maps, or whatever there is nothing preventing that currently and I can't imagine that would change with 2.0.

The CarPlay "problem" is largely because of the automotive industry, and not Apple or Android.

The auto industry wants to use everything as a competitive advantage and special feature add-on they can line item on the sales floor.

If they could they'd line item the power window switches requiring an upward motion as an "enhanced safety feature" and use it to upsell parents to get the premium car that puts their budget into the red zone. (They can't, because it's a mandated requirement).

Personally I dislike both of these interfaces, my car was the last (if it's model) to feature just Bluetooth and I'm much happier with it than those people I know with CarPlay or Android. A re-think would be good, and basing it on an industry standard would be a bonus to everyone.

These are $50k devices being used to effectively hobble your future choice of phones.

Mark086 said:

These are $50k devices being used to effectively hobble your future choice of phones.

Click to expand...

What does this mean? Unless I've missed it, and there's something in the CarPlay 2.0 portion that means that an auto OEM cannot also roll out Android Auto, then that's up to Google and the car maker to figure it out between them. Big time "not Apple's problem".

Schpyder said:

As someone with some experience in this field (not specifically with infotainment integration, but with programming/interacting with the CAN bus), this will likely be much, much easier than you are speculating. All of the data that you're talking about (vehicle speed, tire pressures, stability control accelerometer readings, coolant temperatures, and on and on) are just fields in data frames on the CAN bus (or whatever newer version of vehicle networking they're using).

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It's not the reading from the CAN bus that's technically infeasible, in this case the data acquisition from the CAN bus breaks more of an agreed-upon segmentation that CarPlay would stay within the infotainment-y range of capabilities. The difference here is writing to the CAN bus in more ways-- like exposing HVAC or seat heaters being a trivial example. Still do-able but it's a change in how the car companies would agree to allow Apple to interface with the data.

Apple seems to have solved or claims to have solved the ultra-critical aspects of this-- like reading the raw speed and drawing a speedometer on the screen is one thing, but if an auto-braking alert comes in, that needs to be processed, displayed and acted upon regardless of what the phone is doing and with no added lag-- that has to work with the Apple overlay somehow.

Schpyder said:

The only question there is if Google wants to put in the time and effort to make Android Auto comparable in this regard. That Android Auto and Android Automotive are somewhat in competition with each other is a problem entirely of Google's own creation.

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It is ironically a problem of Google's making-- they stepped in to a market that was served by all kinds of differently problematic infotainment software that was all bespoke per brand, sometimes multiples per brand. Microsoft fumbled this ball a decade ago with Sync and nobody else stepped up.

ant1pathy said:

Ok, help me out here to understand exactly what's possible / prevented.

Ford (to pick from the list) implements CarPlay 2.0. They have to take the whole stack, they work with Apple on some cross-branding, whatever. If I went to buy a car with this CarPlay 2.0 functionality, would there be no way I'd have current-gen Android Auto if I plug in an Android phone? I fully understand that Android users wouldn't get any of the CarPlay 2.0 features (kind of... duh?)

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Ford could choose to implement existing Android Auto specifications with an SUV or truck running CarPlay 2.0 (since Ford is pretty much out of the car business.)

ant1pathy said:

Emphasis mine in the above quote. The car OEMs can fuck right off with data sharing. I bought the car, that should be the end of our relationship unless there's a warranty or recall concern. I trust Apple not to do anything shady with data flowing through their platform; to eliminate any transmission possible and to go through their anonymizing processes for anything that's a true need.

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That's a separate Battlefront topic, and clearly some car companies are much, MUCH worse than others about monetizing your data against your will and not just using that data in ways that are generally helpful (e.g. your car is due for service, let's make an appointment) type stuff or other services and tools you may opt into.

Why does Apple need access to that data? Apple users tend to have inherent trust about every bit of their data Apple holds, but just as the car companies probably shouldn't collect the data, Apple probably shouldn't either. Google shouldn't. Nobody should be collecting the data. Whether you trust Apple more than XYZ party is up to you, but this represents a change over CarPlay 1.0 where Apple simply didn't have access to any information that wasn't already on your phone.

At least the potential for a new problem exists. I don't think Apple's going to immediately rat you out to your insurance company if they catch you speeding-- and they already have a lot of personal mapping data on where your iPhone goes-- but it's just more data to collect.

ant1pathy said:

Is this 100% factual or just rumor / fear mongering? Does including 2.0 support preclude Android Auto entirely, or is it "also Google will need to roll out something if they want a feature competitive product"?

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CarPlay 2.0 support does not preclude Android Auto support. The problem is OEMs sorting themselves into "willing to allow Apple run CarPlay 2.0" and "somewhere between cautious and terrified of Apple running CarPlay 2.0" and that causes chaos in the market just as we finally hit a level of stability where consumers can expect every new car to support both platforms essentially equally. We've already seen reduced choice for Android Auto users caught in the squabble between Apple and GM. Other unpredictable changes are likely, with Android Automotive being the unfortunate enabler in some of those cases.

The risk is going backwards where the car tries to have all of the software stack implemented on the car itself, and Google Assitant and Siri get replaced by either a bespoke voice assitant or (more likely) Alexa.

ant1pathy said:

Again, is this firmly reported or just a nebulous "well, they might in the future!" kind of thing? I can see the logic behind "if you want CarPlay 2.0 you have to take it all", but that does not immediately exclude "or you can continue to roll out the 1.0 infotainment only stuff".

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Indications are that CarPlay 1.0 will be sunset in new cars. Since 2.0 isn't out yet and the launch this autumn will be limited, this is clearly not a now problem. Any Arsian on the inside privy to the contract and want to talk further? The implementation of CarPlay in general is well-definted in terms of legal agreements. Older cars will still have 1.0 which works with future iPhones of course with probably very few cars if any seeing an in-place upgrade (Polestar/Volvo have floated this as a "maybe" but Polestar is super motivated to get the EV charging mapping in CarPlay 2.0) This will take maybe 2-3 years to phase in since it requires changes to the cars themselves.

Nevarre said:

Ford could choose to implement existing Android Auto specifications with an SUV or truck running CarPlay 2.0 (since Ford is pretty much out of the car business.)

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Perfect, glad you are willing to drill down like that with me . So that objection is solved, the "Apple lock-in!!!" fear does not exist (for technical reasons at least, and I haven't seen any indication of arm-twisting for "you'll implement 2.0 and not do AA or we, Apple, will give you mean eyebrows").

Nevarre said:

That's a separate Battlefront topic, and clearly some car companies are much, MUCH worse than others about monetizing your data against your will and not just using that data in ways that are generally helpful (e.g. your car is due for service, let's make an appointment) type stuff or other services and tools you may opt into.

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I have yet to see anything "helpful" that needs my car to send data to the OEM for. My old car without all the fancy technology already tells me when I need an oil change or if sensors are out, no need to transmit every scrap of data it's collected back to the mothership.

Nevarre said:

Why does Apple need access to that data? Apple users tend to have inherent trust about every bit of their data Apple holds, but just as the car companies probably shouldn't collect the data, Apple probably shouldn't either. Google shouldn't. Nobody should be collecting the data. Whether you trust Apple more than XYZ party is up to you, but this represents a change over CarPlay 1.0 where Apple simply didn't have access to any information that wasn't already on your phone.

At least the potential for a new problem exists. I don't think Apple's going to immediately rat you out to your insurance company if they catch you speeding-- and they already have a lot of personal mapping data on where your iPhone goes-- but it's just more data to collect.

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I both trust Apple to be a good steward of the data they do collect, and also to not collect things they don't need. I have no concerns about my phone over-collecting, and I trust that Apple will only scoop up to themselves data that is truly needed, and even for that it would be anonymized to the extent possible. The "but maybe in the future they'll start doing shady stuff!!!" argument carries exactly zero weight with me. Remember that tempest-in-a-teapot about Apple collecting way too much location data history, and it turned out that some cache was set to something reasonable (few megabytes or whatever) but that ended up being a ton of locations? Immediate clarification and addressed the issue, absolutely nothing nefarious hiding behind the mask. Apple has earned my trust and they'll hold it until they break it. I cannot say the same about many other companies period, much less large and "important" ones.

Nevarre said:

CarPlay 2.0 support does not preclude Android Auto support. The problem is OEMs sorting themselves into "willing to allow Apple run CarPlay 2.0" and "somewhere between cautious and terrified of Apple running CarPlay 2.0" and that causes chaos in the market just as we finally hit a level of stability where consumers can expect every new car to support both platforms essentially equally. We've already seen reduced choice for Android Auto users caught in the squabble between Apple and GM. Other unpredictable changes are likely, with Android Automotive being the unfortunate enabler in some of those cases.

The risk is going backwards where the car tries to have all of the software stack implemented on the car itself, and Google Assitant and Siri get replaced by either a bespoke voice assitant or (more likely) Alexa.

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The "cautious but terrified" seems to derive from 1.) fear of losing their branding (which I understand, but personally could not care less about), 2.) fear of losing juicy analytics data, and 3.) a smaller surface to sell subscriptions against. Not a lot of sympathy for those concerns.

Nevarre said:

Indications are that CarPlay 1.0 will be sunset in new cars. Since 2.0 isn't out yet and the launch this autumn will be limited, this is clearly not a now problem. Any Arsian on the inside privy to the contract and want to talk further? The implementation of CarPlay in general is well-definted in terms of legal agreements. Older cars will still have 1.0 which works with future iPhones of course with probably very few cars if any seeing an in-place upgrade (Polestar/Volvo have floated this as a "maybe" but Polestar is super motivated to get the EV charging mapping in CarPlay 2.0) This will take maybe 2-3 years to phase in since it requires changes to the cars themselves.

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When "indications" turn into reality I'll be interested. Until then it's just another round of rumor / fear mongering.