This is going to influence purchasing decisions in a way that the car companies may not like.<p>I'm in the market for a new car at the end of this year, and have been eyeing a Volvo in the first case, but would consider a Merc if the financing isn't quite there.<p>My experience of living outside of the Apple ecosystem is that Apple stuff is all or nothing. One can't choose to have some Apple gear without fully embracing it. The advertised benefits require one to buy into everything. Things like iPods and Ubuntu aren't seamless, and an iPad when your phone is an Android just means that you buy everything twice, have different versions of things running sometimes with different data profiles.<p>It's a really bad experience.<p>The lesson I've learned is that if one is not willing to fully adopt Apple's world, then one should avoid it altogether.<p>Which means, bluntly... if a Volvo did not offer the same level of interoperability with my Android, the Volvo is no longer on my list of cars to buy.<p>If the smartphone market is currently 50/50 iPhone/Android... then have the car companies just halved their market?
I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for the auto industry to adopt mobile platforms as part of the in-car experience. This is a great move though, hopefully it will force other manufacturers to dump their lacking proprietary platforms in favor of Android/iOS
I can think of few things more frustrating that Apple Maps and Siri built into my car. I'd prefer one of the lame DVD based nav systems because I can always use Apple Maps on my own if I want to get lost, but the existing systems work without data access (useful for rural situations which is usually when I find myself needing navigation).
Looks like there is going to a divide in the car companies. BMW and some others are adopting Android I believe. Wish it weren't like this but looks inevitable with deeper integration.
45+ comments, and i don't see the word 'option' mentioned anywhere here.<p>when buying luxury cars, option is the word you need to keep in mind. option, option, option, option. everything is an option, and everything costs money. no way on earth will a european carmaker charge less than $2000 for an apple dashboard. i mean, come on, that kind of money just prints itself!<p>this is not going to be standard, and you will not have your choice of car constrained to the choice of phone you bought. furthermore, with bluetooth and other technologies, compatability isn't going to be an issue. my mercedes has a weird barely-useable german software interface and works just fine with my apple iphone.
That sound you hear is the collective gasp of iOS developers who just learned they have to support another display resolution (and the second sound is the unsympathetic snort of Android people).
> Apple launching iOS in-car with Ferrari, Mercedes, Volvo<p>I can with certainty rule out Mercedes, and I highly dispute that any manufacturer will be shortsighted enough to enter any kind of exclusive deal with a technologically isolated company.
More details from the linked FT article (which is behind a paywall):<p>- Official announcement will be made at next week’s Geneva Motor Show<p>- Integration includes Siri, phone calls, maps, music and video.
From a security point of view this could become interesting. Regarding how terrible (IT-)security is in CAN Systems a jailbreaked Radio could lead to major annoyances.<p>Good Talk on this topic: <a href="http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5360_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201312281600_-_script_your_car_-_felix_tmbinc_domke.html" rel="nofollow">http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5360_-_en_-_...</a>
This is an interesting defensive play. Blackberry's QNX and Microsoft's Windows Embedded are the incumbents. Both of these have suffered from neglect and are losing share.<p>Many IVI developers are developing Android-based products. Android provides a great, zero-cost platform with a rich UI and communications stack for interactive embedded systems.<p>Intel has been a GENIVI participant since they were a Meego partner, and there is a GENIVI-compliant Tizen IVI variant.<p>Apple needed to defend the position they have acquired with all those iPod car integrations on the market. They had to move forward or lose those conquests. I keep an iPod touch just because one of my cars has iPod integration.
I think it is a good step forward, while iOS might not be the greatest OS, I think it is pretty good and stable.<p>Having Apple screens/iOS inside the car is definitely better than those existing screens that look really primitive.
Some observations from the screenshot:<p>* The screen resolution of iOS Car is 800x480 px - a lower resolution than the iPhone 4 (960x640 px).<p>* The "home" button is part of the touch screen like on Android (tablets).
Do I have to jailbreak it in order to drive faster than limit?<p>But really, this is great if true, because current car OSes and interfaces are horrible, as they have always been deliberately made so.
I don't know how car manufacturers would agree to this if they didn't strong-arm Apple into promising to support Android as well.<p>Apple has supported non-Apple platforms when market logic compelled them to. If there was no iTunes for Windows, the iPod would not have been nearly as seismic a shift.
since this is still dependent on a ios mobile device (which is good) i hope there will be something similar for android. However i fear car manufacturers will instead use Android to completely replace their own systems which would lock out users of other platforms