"Trust us," I whisper, as I condemn yet another product to the planned obsolescence graveyard.

I had a 2012 Toyota Camry once that I upgraded the stereo system so I could use CarPlay. Huge improvement. I think this is a really terrible move by GM considering all the people who have android and iPhones, why would you want this vehicle? It's a step backwards.

I am so glad that I insisted on buying a car with CarPlay five years ago. At the time a number of our options did not have CarPlay, but were otherwise quite solid cars. If I'd gone with any of them I'd likely be a lot less happy than I am now: given that I use CarPlay on literally every drive, it's probably the single most important feature to have.

I get that GM doesn't want to cede the important center console to third parties because it feels like giving up their control, but man, is it ever going to be the wrong choice for them.

After market stereos were always the norm for actual technology. Crutchfield made it super accessible.

Automakers moved into it to try and capture more of that stream.

And generally they can’t keep up.

Cars don’t seem to change much except for the dash tech.

So mane it’s time to own the smarts yourself.

You could get any car and get a big android screen (some have tesla size screens) for your vehicle like those made by phoenix android radio. Only mentioning them as an example not the only choice.

All the built in car screens and graphics continue to work, plus put whatever you like on it.

Was it removing or has it been removed? Seems like a while ago they announced it.

Anyway, no way I was buying a GM car because of that. I don't believe a car manufacturer can create a better software experience than a software company.

I don’t understand why anyone would buy a GM car. This is just frosting on the cake.

What's stopping someone from spending a few hundred bucks at their local custom stereo shop and replacing the head unit with something else that is less user hostile? If everything else in the car is what you need, just replace the part you don't like if it's not available as an option.

It’s not as “integrated” into the car, but if you just want CarPlay, there are cheap single-purpose “tablets” that mount to your dashboard and either pair to your car’s Bluetooth or plug into the Aux port and just do CarPlay/Android Auto. Amazon is full of them. Ultimately it’s just a video and touch transport protocol, with some additional channels like illumination and I hear speed on some models.

I rule them out because of the lack of quality in their vehicles. Too unreliable and impossible to repair.

The infotainment only adds to reasons to not buy GM.

The problem is that the car manufacturers need a way to extract more money to "grow" and pay for their execs. This won't solve this problem for them, just create another one.

Now this is the problem. Money on a large scale just becomes a huge conflict of interest. This is where regulation should come in, but real regulation, not the bs of the crooked business man that manages the country in the same way.

Excuse me if I'm snarky.

Leas than zero sales is still zero? I don’t see the issue

Carplay, not Airplay, but yes.

Wall Street, by all accounts. For an unsexy old-school company like GM, the slightest possibility of achieving a recurring revenue stream and control of customer data flow is worth risking everything. It's all they have to offer their stockholders at this point.

At the same time, it's not really a question of "risking everything." After 2008-2009, GM understands that there is no way they will ever be allowed to fail as a company. They don't see much downside in alienating large swaths of their customer base, simply because there isn't much downside. They think they're in a good position to take stupid chances, and unfortunately they are not wrong.

I agree with you that it's the wrong choice, but it's not just about ceding control. It's also about ceding the revenue.

For example, to connect their system to the internet, that'll be $20/mo. I'd guess GM gets a large portion of that revenue. If you're using CarPlay, there's no reason for you to buy their service.

It looks like GM makes around $1,000 in profit per vehicle. If half of their customers give them $20/mo for a decade, that's $1,200 in additional revenue. If AT&T takes half of that, it's still $600 which is a solid boost to their profits.

Now, you might say that fewer people would buy their cars and I'd agree - but companies make short sighted plays all the time that backfire. Someone does the kind of back of the envelope math that I did above and says "omg, I can increase our profits by 60% with this one easy trick" and it's wrong because the world doesn't work like that, but you put together some consultants and consumer surveys that are favorable and you get the green light.

I know: GM is just killing their relationship with consumers. I agree with you. But think about what Unity did to their developers. Unity saw the chance to charge a fee every time a game was installed and all the money that would bring - and didn't think about the predictable developer backlash. Companies do these types of things.

They wanted to demonstrate why their move away from Apple CarPlay and Android Auto is a bad idea and why people shouldn't buy their cars (if they care about them still functioning after 4-6 years).

I have one of these cars, the last model year before they switched to carplay. The bluetooth implementation is dogshit...randomly speeding up songs, audio skipping, cutting out, etc. Occasionally forgets connections and has to be set up from scratch. Can't handle music and navigation at the same time...will turn down volume on music to handle navigation instructions, only to forget to turn the music back up for 5 minutes, by which time you've already turned up the volume to compensate and get blasted by the unexpected volume increase. And from what I can tell, my car does it better than most other manufacturers from the same era.

I think the only reason why the car makers switched to carplay/android auto is because they knew they sucked at infotainment systems and software and nobody wanted their bullshit, so they just outsourced it so they wouldn't have to try anymore.

I think it drives the instrument cluster too. Maybe instead of a new head unit, what we will need in the future is an open version of Android Automotive OS, like Lineage for our cars.

We use CarPlay with our Mazda. The heads up display on the windshield displays the next turn information from Apple Maps.

Edit: it looks like Lineage has support for Android Automotive: https://lineageos.org/Changelog-30/

HDMI is first and foremost (and at times, almost exclusively) designed to serve the needs of TVs and related devices. Its presence on PCs and other devices outside the home theater space is largely a consequence of the fact that HDMI until recently was just a new connector carrying DVI signals plus some extensions.

The more relevant connector here would be USB-C, which can readily carry a mix of DisplayPort video signals, USB (including HID), and power, over a connector that is now universal for smartphones. A phone today connected over USB-C could handle all the processing for a very "dumb" car head unit. Aftermarket head units are mostly Android devices already, albeit not literally using USB-C internally.

These days the head unit has its tendrils wrapped around many parts of the car besides just infotainment, and wiring harnesses are a lot more proprietary. Does the aftermarket head unit support your car's parking sensors? How about the backup camera? Even the Homelink button that opens your garage door has migrated to the touchscreen in a lot of newer cars, never mind forehead-slapping features like the climate control settings.

The days of single- and double-DIN stereo swapping are slipping away fast. You're pretty much stuck with what you get when you buy the car, so it had better be what you want.

I've got one of those in my 2004 Mazda. It even came with a backup camera. Best 50 Euros ever spent. :)

I know I'm slippery sloping but I wonder if they won't get rid of bluetooth and aux ports in the future. Letting people play spotify on their phone's data connection is money on the table when they could be selling their own data plans, getting a cut from their own app stores etc.

Which kinda make sense if it results in more revenue. The right move here for consumers is to punish this behavior by not buying GM cars until they put Android Auto/Apple Carplay back, giving consumers that option.

If they offered to enable CarPlay/AA for $20/mo... would they sell more cars and increase profits? Or would the result be even more annoyed buyers?

People actually pay for that? I would rather pay for a phone holder and use the phone in loudspeaker.

Or simply not buy the car to begin with

It's about GM and Google getting the data (https://www.motortrend.com/features/apple-carplay-android-au...). Switching from Android Auto and CarPlay to the Android Automotive OS (AAOS) means the auto manufacturer gets the data that was going through the phone.

CarPlay is a purchasing factor for me personally. I've always liked Volvo, but now that they all run AAOS the last few times I rented one I had to reboot the head unit when I got in the car to get CarPlay to work. Funny how vehicles running AAOS don't really integrate well with a competitor...

Those cars connect to WiFi, so you just need to tether them to your phone after the 8 years of free data ends. No $20/month necessary.

GM has a unique customer base of people willing to buy bad cars

> why people shouldn't buy their cars (if they care about them still functioning after 4-6 years).

People have had 45 years to get the message. My Michigan parents' lives changed[0] when they got their first Toyota after a lifetime of Big 3 vehicles. Too bad it took so long to get out from under the indoctrination.

[0] Okay I exaggerate but really nice having a vehicle without something constantly broken and/or leaking

That situation is ridiculous, my 15 year old diesel has an extremely bare bones touchscreen radio/info dashboard. The Bluetooth, old as it is, works fine.

> The bluetooth implementation is dogshit...randomly speeding up songs, audio skipping, cutting out, etc. Occasionally forgets connections and has to be set up from scratch.

We need to go back to the days of headphone jacks and analog AUX ports. Seriously. Something simple, reliable, and extremely well-understood.

Cars should be a lot more modular, but the market is consumer-hostile in general and it won't happen without regulation. There should probably be some standardized car-infotainment interface, and consumers be required to buy the infotainment system aftermarket to get more competition and quality in that area.

USB-C can't readily carry everything. There are specific and expensive electronic switch things on host side that has to be handled with gloves by experienced mixed signal experts. It's standardized and allowed, but you're on your own in terms of making it work.

Getting HID through HDMI is nothing compared to that. Just Arduino level stuff. It only has to be standardized for interoperability. Car brands that seek to disinfect cars of Apple/Google disease will benefit a lot from that.

Wish there was rules around interoperability. Having to buy a whole new car to get your apps back is terrible.

I got one too... the camera is still up on my bookshelf a year later.

This isn't actually true. You just need a module to interface with the car in place of the original head unit. For example the iDatalink Maestro can connect HVAC controls, engine diagnostics, tire pressure, etc to compatible head units. And there are a lot of compatible head units, basically all the worthwhile ones have Maestro support.

Corvette?? Tahoe??

My manual Spark is pretty fun and beats Civic Sis and other fast cars in rallycross. I have done 100+ redline clutch dumps in that car. It still drives fine.

That's good to hear, I wasn't familiar with Maestro at all. But it doesn't do anything to address the proliferation in form factors. I can get nice aftermarket head units from a couple of different Chinese vendors for one of my cars, but they had to be specifically designed for that exact application. I ended up adding wireless CarPlay to that car's original head unit with an ugly internal/external adapter solution. It works well enough, but it was a pain to install. Hopefully similar hardware can be made available to GM customers in the future.

For the other car, though... no way, no how. It is stuck with what it has. Its touchscreen is a nonstandard size, seamlessly integrated into the dashboard, and not used by any other cars AFAIK. Fortunately it's also pretty good. It supported wireless CarPlay from day one, and it isn't from a manufacturer that relies on fracking its own customer base for $20/month. Safe to say nobody will be building an aftermarket replacement for it.

Does it have CarPlay?

You just need a dash kit, which someone probably makes for your specific make/model. If not you could 3d print something. Any good stereo shop can help you out too. Its kind of hard to find a good one though.