First Road Trip, Apple CarPlay trial by fire

Took my first real road trip this weekend in the new GTI Sport. I'm very happy with my decision save some dough and opt for the Sport over the Autobahn. CarPlay worked flawlessly and the Apple Maps was good. Yes, like everyone on the planet, I'd rather that there was an option to use Google Maps, but that's not going to happen.

Trip consisted of a 7 hour drive to Snowshoe Ski Resort in WV from Cincinnati, OH. If there ever was a pretty good test of a navigation system this drive would be it. There is no easy direct way to Snowshoe and you end up taking a lot of state routes and back roads. There are several ways to go and any GPS is horrible at getting you there cleanly. I've never been there so I was relying on a combination of some directions (provided by my brother who has been there several times) and the GPS. Being in the mountains of backwater WV means bad cell coverage, etc. I also had to drive at night during the rain/ice (I arrived at 2AM). Snowshoe was just finishing up with Winterstorm Stella and the last two hours are really twisting turns.

Needless to say I was putting a lot of faith in the fact the CarPlay GPS would function as needed. Not just to help with directions, but help on which way the road was turning and how hard of a turn.

I didn't have a single issue with CarPlay. Navigation worked great and even when I lost my cell signal it continued to operate and show the road. Sometimes some of the terrain detail around the road would disappear, but the road and important stuff was there. Music played along and sometimes podcasts... all with GPS instructions, never missing a beat.

Full disclosure... I did have a Garmin GPS tucked in the glove box just in case. I'm not crazy and I had my 13 year old son with me. Getting lost at night in the middle of nowhere WV would not have gone well.

End result was a great weekend of skiing. CarPlay worked just as well on the way back. In the end I'll take this over the in car Navigation... even with Apple Maps as the option.

Truth be told CarPlay just mirrors your iPhone to a certain point and the map app (Apple and google) when loading up a route will store a best guess of what's to come up ahead. If you were to go much longer you would notice that the car or arrow would drift off the road on the screen. And Apple maps is backed by tomtom and google maps is backed by google.
But I agree with you Apple CarPlay works really well I use it every day. When you get the update for Apple iOS 10.3 in a few weeks you'll notice CarPlay got a slight bump in usability.


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e3syler said:

And Apple maps is backed by tomtom and google maps is backed by google.

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Say what? Apple / TomTom? Source for that info? I thought Apple had been doing their own mapping for some time now.

I've had similar results with CarPlay and Apple Maps, but I also like the factory nav in MIB2. It's absolutely horrid on MIB1 but was upgraded substantially on MIB2. Having the turn-by-turn instructions integrated into the center instrument cluster display is huge.

Tomtom is one of the base map info providers, or atleast they were. They also pull from some other sources.

Open maps on your iPhone and top right is (i) tap it and you will see tomtom at the bottom. Apple may say that they are doing their own maps but what they mean is they have their own app for maps. The data on the other hand is provided by 3rd party for a price. And yes tomtom and garmin like to charge for map updates which is why I use google maps and Apple maps.




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Great feature of Google maps and not sure if part of Apple maps is you can download a whole area or areas to your phone so if no coverage, you still have full maps.

So if you're planning on getting obd11, you'll have to get an android phone that you can use for both and just tether of your iPhone

The google map allows you to do the same on iPhone.


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Integration with Waze would perfect IMO.

How were the slopes at snowshoe??

My biggest want from CarPlay (besides Waze/Google Maps integration) is if it would allow me to see the current song in the MFI (under the audio screen). I just want to see what song is playing without switching off the navigation screen.

kmarriner said:

My biggest want from CarPlay (besides Waze/Google Maps integration) is if it would allow me to see the current song in the MFI (under the audio screen). I just want to see what song is playing without switching off the navigation screen.

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I agree with you. Apple made a few upgrades to CarPlay in iOS 10.3. They added short cuts to the last three apps you use on CarPlay located above the home button. I've been using it for a while now and find that trying not to hit the wrong app is difficult.
I'm almost convinced that I should be able to watch videos from my iPhone using CarPlay but either Apple has that feature disabled or they never wrote the code for it.


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New as of yesterday: Amazon Music support in CarPlay. That should be useful to some who use Amazon as their music source/repository.

e3syler said:

I agree with you. Apple made a few upgrades to CarPlay in iOS 10.3. They added short cuts to the last three apps you use on CarPlay located above the home button. I've been using it for a while now and find that trying not to hit the wrong app is difficult.
I'm almost convinced that I should be able to watch videos from my iPhone using CarPlay but either Apple has that feature disabled or they never wrote the code for it.


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Yeah the 10.3 upgrades look good, but its mostly just adding 2 extra quick switch icons (so now there is one for maps, one for audio, and one for communication) AFAIK.

I believe it is up to VW to actually display the songs in MFI, but I haven't actually looked at the CarPlay code capabilities so I am not sure if it is even possible. The reason I believe it is possible is because if you switch the MFI to the "Phone" screen it says something to the effect of "Apple CarPlay - *Carrier*" Where it shows your phones carrier and signal bars, so it is getting at least that data via the CarPlay communication. Whereas on the MFI's "Audio" screen it just says "Apple CarPlay", if they could just add the Name of the song and the Artist that would be golden. Assuming it is possible of course.

As far as playing video is concerned, Apple actually has the code for that disabled, in the name of safety (CarPlay is designed to be safer than using your phone to do things in theory and make it so you keep your eyes on the road). The only abilities open for 3rd party devs currently is communication and audio.

Edit: Looking at the MFi videos for developing incar systems for CarPlay, it seems that yes VW could have the MFI show the currently playing track: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/723/?time=153

They need to get on that.

If I can get my hands on the developer program application for CarPlay I'm sure I change the restrictions. I have a paid developer subscription from Apple but as it turned out I have to be MFi certified and in order to do that I have to use a company domain email.

This is not over Apple! Lol


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IBFreeman said:

Integration with Waze would perfect IMO.

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I'll start using CarPlay when that happens. Until then, it's a useless feature of my car and I'll continue running Waze separately on my phone.