William Gallagher
As Apple continues to work with manufacturers to make CarPlay integral to cars, new apps including EV battery level, a trip counter, and more have been found in the iOS 17.4 beta.
Apple originally gave a quite rare sneak peek at WWDC 2022 of its future plans for an improved CarPlay. Then in December 2023, it showed how adaptable CarPlay will be for different car makers, specifically Porsche and Aston Martin.
Now that the beta of iOS 17 has been released, most of the attention it's had has been focused on all of the App Store changes that are coming for users in the European Union. However, two developers examining the beta's source code have uncovered a total of eight entirely new CarPlay apps.
CarPlay app and alert icons found in the iOS 17.4 beta (Source: Steve Moser)In alphabetical order, they are:
- Auto Settings — a System Settings for the car
- Car Camera — displaying a feed from the car's rear camera (if it has one)
- Charge — battery level and charging status for EVs
- Climate — A/C, heating and so on
- Closures — notification that one or more doors are open
- Media — radio stations and others including SiriusXM
- Tire Pressure — including low pressure warnings
- Trips
Calling some of these apps is generous, since the driver is never going to launch the Closures app, for instance. So instead it's practically just a notification, which presumably could be just part of CarPlay instead of a separate app.
The last one, however, is potentially something a driver will use more often. The Trips app works to replace a car's usual display of fuel or battery usage, average speed, plus acting as a trip counter measuring distance travelled.
This data will still be gathered by the car's systems, but this all fits with the aim that CarPlay provides a driver with all of the car's details as well as all of its entertainment and navigation options.
The eight apps were uncovered by Steve Moser and Aaron Perris, of MacRumors.
-m.jpg)
Wesley Hilliard
Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
Sponsored Content
Christine McKee
Thomas Sibilly
9 Comments
That Media app will be a godsend. The UI for SiriusXM, on every car I have ever seen, is incredibly awful. Having another way to control SiriusXM would be a huge improvement.
So will this work on any car that uses CarPlay? Or only new cars that integrate some sort of API going forward?
I truly appreciate all the effort Apple is putting into CarPlay. Now if Apple could only convince automakers to use CarPlay as their native infotainment system we'd all be much better off. Until Apple makes its own car, if they ever do, we will always be at the twisted mercy of the automakers and their own highly convoluted homegrown infotainment systems. Not only are the ones I've used all horrible when it comes to user experience (UX), they distribute the horror far and wide by slicing up functionality across trim lines, option packages, and car models.
Adding Apple CarPlay as an option on certain manufacturer's automobiles provides a little island of semi-sanity in middle of the automakers garbage dump of infotainment confusion. However, in some cases the CarPlay functionality is fully redundant with native functionality and confusion can arise. Also, there are many aspects of the automobile's infotainment system, e.g., maintenance information and system settings, that are outside the touch of CarPlay. From the above article it seems like Apple is trying to fill some of those gaps. At the very least Apple would put everything in one UI space rather than splitting the automobile's functions and controls across hardware buttons, in-dash displays, any number of steering wheel buttons whose location and function varies between car models, even those from a single manufacturer, and then the automaker's own infotainment system. It's a mess that CarPlay current cannot cover up completely.
I'm sure there are exceptions, perhaps Tesla and the more expensive luxury brands have more cohesiveness and coherent infotainment systems and controls with much better user experiences. Until there is some common model for what information should be provided and how that information should be presented and acted upon it's going to remain a mess as long as the automakers are free to express themselves in so many terrible ways. I'd be happy if they all agreed on the location of the steering wheel, gear shifter, foot pedals, mirrors, starter actuator, gauges, etc. Nope. They couldn't even agree on those simple and fundamental things. Left to their own devices it's hard to imagine that anything will improve. They need Apple to save
themus.