Quote Originally Posted by BestRadarDetectors View Post
Providing CarPlay takes off... Remember the Beta Max vs. VHS, Or first HD DVD vs BluRay? Its too early to waste engineering money and time on a platform that might disappear quickly. Android Auto is also coming next year so the future will be very interesting.

Unless something happens and Google and/or Apple go bankrupt tomorrow, both initiatives are likely to succeed as they have backing from dozens and dozens of manufacturers. The platforms are unlikely to displace each other in any significant fashion. The bigger question is which platform will get the most support the soonest and provide sufficient support and marketshare for it to be worth the development effort.

Apple is only allowing CarPlay development on an opt-in/approved basis only, meaning you have to apply, Apple has to accept, and like your final app in order to integrate. Other than audio (music/radio) apps (and their own self-made apps), Apple hasn't approved any other type of App for Carplay. Google has only approved two types of apps in the initial version, audio (music/radio like Apple) and text message apps (with very limited functionality, e.g. read texts aloud and respond via voice command). The types of integration an app like ALP would need (essentially, to interrupt the screen and audio with an alert and allow dismiss, display own UI otherwise) don't even exist yet. Until they develop the type of "hooks" (application programming interfaces) into Android and Apple iOS that these new experiences require, you can't even begin to modify an existing app to integrate.

Then we have to consider how many people buy these systems. How many ALP owners have a smartphone? Quite a bit, probably, given the ALPConnect module and apps for both platform. Now how many people have these platforms AND have a radio that support it? Other than a couple very new Pioneer and Alpine aftermarket radios, Hyundai is the only manufacturer I'm aware of with Carplay in a car at present, in one model. That really limits the potential. Unless manufacturers take a lot of initiative to update existing models with newer software capable of the new experiences, the market is going to be quite small for some time for ALP Owners with these experiences.

The good thing is that neither requires the app developer to develop an entirely separate app or re-develop most of the logic - you just need to add some code at specific portions to try to interact with displays.

However, this discussion is really premature at this point, and should be visited when more details/flexibility in app integration is available, plus it's available in many more cars.