
Apple is reportedly launching iOS in the Car with Ferrari, Mercedes, Volvo - nairteashop
http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/28/ios-in-the-car-leak/
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buro9
This is going to influence purchasing decisions in a way that the car
companies may not like.

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.

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.

It's a really bad experience.

The lesson I've learned is that if one is not willing to fully adopt Apple's
world, then one should avoid it altogether.

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.

If the smartphone market is currently 50/50 iPhone/Android... then have the
car companies just halved their market?

~~~
josteink
Yeah. Same here. I'm _not_ buying a car with built-in systems based on iOS.
Never going to happen.

It doesn't have to be _Android_ to please me, but at least something
reasonably open, which lets me work with open data, and regular formats.

Having to submit your entire digital existence to one company and the locked
down gadgets they make is a big nono. A big enough nono to make me back out of
a car-deal.

~~~
redler
_It doesn 't have to be Android to please me, but at least something
reasonably open, which lets me work with open data, and regular formats._

Is there _any_ car with a built-in system that lets you do these things? And
if there were, does that mean you wouldn't consider any other car on the
market?

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davtbaum
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

~~~
shitlord
I'm hoping that there will be some kind of common standard that car
manufacturers can adopt (wrt interacting with mobile devices). That way, users
of both platforms can fully enjoy their vehicles.

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bananas
I can't see this as a good idea. The vehicle will have a longer lifespan than
iOS support resulting in an obsolete unsupported bit of car.

~~~
nostromo
From the article:

> it's still dependent on an iPad or iPhone to work.

I think this is a good thing. You can keep your car for 5 or 10 years and
update some of its software every 2 years with a new phone.

Right now the touchscreen UI of a car is the first thing that looks dated.

~~~
bananas
Assuming that the platform is supported when the manufacturers have sold it.
From experience with owning a few cars that are software driven (Fiat I'm
looking at you), the manufacturer will disown electrical problems the moment
it is sold. Support past a year or two (the warranty) isn't going to happen.

The current touch screen UIs are built as typical embedded systems with long
lifecycles. The new ones are consumer devices. The two don't belong in the
same space.

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danial
This provides a bit more context on the meeting between Elon Musk and Apple's
Adrian Perica a couple of weeks ago.

~~~
loceng
Seems likely now that Elon gave a no thanks as an answer. I'm glad.

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jonknee
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).

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yalogin
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.

~~~
digitalengineer
Well, there are some BMW iOS apps in the App store now:
[http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/bmw_apps/](http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/bmw_apps/)

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beachstartup
45+ comments, and i don't see the word 'option' mentioned anywhere here.

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!

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.

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gcv
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).

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_pmf_
> Apple launching iOS in-car with Ferrari, Mercedes, Volvo

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.

~~~
tinco
The Volvo that's coming out this year runs Android. I know because I have a
friend who drives a prerelease model. So it would seem like weird move from
them.

Perhaps they're doing market segmentation with it?

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kingoflosaltos
Eddy Cue (Apple SVP of Internet Ops) is on the Ferrari board of directors.

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nairteashop
More details from the linked FT article (which is behind a paywall):

\- Official announcement will be made at next week’s Geneva Motor Show

\- Integration includes Siri, phone calls, maps, music and video.

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phelmig
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.

Good Talk on this topic:
[http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5360_-_en_-_...](http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5360_-_en_-
_saal_2_-_201312281600_-_script_your_car_-_felix_tmbinc_domke.html)

~~~
hengheng
I have to disagree with you here, specifically concerning the Script Your Car
talk at 30C3. (In which the speaker had lots of experience in embedded linux
security and no experience in car electronics, so he decided to hack the
linux-driven hands-free set in his Volkswagen car. He was able to send
messages via CAN bus that appeared on the info display on the dash board.)

First of all, the linux PC was firewalled with a CAN transceiver that dropped
any malformed messages to account for bugs in the linux box. Secondly, all
other CAN devices on that bus are designed to withstand any erroneous
messages. Thirdly, this was just the infotainment bus. There are three
separated busses in the car, the first of which has ABS, ESP and the motor
controller talking to each other, the second has semi-important things like
window lifters and probably AC on it while the third and least important is
the infotainment one. The linux box was allowed to be configured so badly
precisely because it couldn't harm anybody.

I sat next to a Volkswagen engineer in that talk, and he wasn't particularly
impressed with what the guy on stage achieved on the car side of things, but
rather with how much he was able to learn so quickly, and how easily he opened
up that random Nokia box. Keep in mind he owned the box, not the car.

Volkswagen tests all of these busses and devices exhaustively. They do have to
pass TÜV certification, but more to the point they don't want any expensive
bugs to happen. You can be sure that IT security is taken very seriously on
that front. (Also consider that once you are inside the car, you by and large
own it already, so discussing further CAN bus attacks would be derailing. The
attack vector here is through a firewalled device on an unimportant bus.)

~~~
phelmig
It depends. If you hack the box, overwrite the CAN-ID (and therefore
impersonating other devices in the car) by rewriting the boxes' CAN-
Controller-Firmware you can circumvent all ID based security. As long as CAN
doesn't implement a private/public key auth it's possible to own the car by
owning a box.

On the other hand one could try to separate the CAN-Controller from the box
(entertainment system in this case) physically and only allow a serial
connection to push/pull CAN messages. But from my understanding right now the
entertainment system could overwrite the firmware of the CAN -Controller and
inject malicious packages. AFAIR the the 30c3 talk pointed that out as well.

The different CAN busses are not (always) separated physically.

~~~
hengheng
The attacks you describe have not been demonstrated. A CAN-ID attack requires
that you'd get access to the bus from a programmable device that isn't
firewalled from the bus, which doesn't exist. Malicious packages are also
filtered out. Packet filters are tested exhaustively (which is possible
because CAN isn't too complex). There is a router between the busses, but that
is tested exhaustively as well before production. (Again, relying on personal
information by a VW engineer. I hope he had no reason to make up stuff.)

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bharatFNS
If you still have to use iPhones and iPads with it to work, this all seems
pointless. Only hacker anticipation to hack into Ferrari and Merc.

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Zigurd
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.

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.

Intel has been a GENIVI participant since they were a Meego partner, and there
is a GENIVI-compliant Tizen IVI variant.

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.

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level09
I think it is a good step forward, while iOS might not be the greatest OS, I
think it is pretty good and stable.

Having Apple screens/iOS inside the car is definitely better than those
existing screens that look really primitive.

~~~
Numberwang
Just as long as I don't have to get an ITunes account to operate my car, I
guess it's OK.

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frik
Some observations from the screenshot:

* The screen resolution of iOS Car is 800x480 px - a lower resolution than the iPhone 4 (960x640 px).

* The "home" button is part of the touch screen like on Android (tablets).

~~~
crishoj
Would you expect to see the same resolution on a secondary, externally
connected screen? Obviously, this design has to be able to accommodate to a
wide range of screen resolutions and formats.

~~~
frik
For historical reasons iOS was very inflexible in regards to the screen
resolution. To increase the resolution they had to double the resolution
(known as retina).

So iOS Car will not support all iOS apps. Well you don't want to play e.g.
"Flappy Bird" while driving a car anyway ;)

As the bottom "info/command bar" is part of the screen, maybe the remaining
area that is available for apps has the same ratio as older iPhone devices.

~~~
gonzo
"Had to"? No. Chose to.

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kaivi
Do I have to jailbreak it in order to drive faster than limit?

But really, this is great if true, because current car OSes and interfaces are
horrible, as they have always been deliberately made so.

~~~
gojomo
No, but the geolocation in the phone will be used to send you after-the-fact
speeding tickets.

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sirkneeland
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.

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.

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cclogg
Man that mockup image reminded me how much I wish Apple would just go back to
using Google Maps...

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melvinmt
Now the rumored Elon Musk talks with AAPL make more sense.

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kayoone
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

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jatorre
Poor Nokia...

~~~
bertil
It’s funny because in the mind of Finnish people, Nokia is still a brand of
tires.

~~~
zenojevski
Isn't that _Nokian_?

~~~
bertil
Yup. Well: it _was_ Nokia, a paper pulp mill named after the nearby
river/town, that diverged into tires and then electronics (pivoting appears to
be a very Finnish practice). When they focused on cellphones, they sold the
tire division as ‘Nokian’ (the genitive of Nokia, as in: ‘of Nokia’) but the
main valuable brand is now apparently ‘Hakkapeliitta’ for winter tires. The
name ‘Nokia’ however remains associated to a company that made tires in the
XXth century, like ‘Ma Bell’ might not exist anymore in the US, but still
means something.

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joshdance
Not Tesla?

