Originally Posted by
derbo
My next car is going to have Apple Carplay, but I feel like that maybe overrated and just a novelty...
I have CarPlay in my Golf R and here's my take. It works fine for what it is. But at this point, it's a wired connection only, and hooking up the phone every time you get in/out of the car is tiresome to say the least. It's great if you don't have nav otherwise as Apple Maps is nicely integrated into your big dash display and generally works quite well, if not quite up to the standard set by Google Maps, but they've closed the gap significantly.
But - the stock VW software does everything I need it to do, without using CarPlay, so I don't bother with it. The nav is excellent and utilizes the center display between tach/speedo for the turn-by-turn directions- CarPlay is not (at least currently in this car) capable of that. All my music is on SD card so utilizing iTunes library on the phone is not necessary. Stock Bluetooth is excellent. And I get album artwork with my music, which CarPlay inexplicably does not provide.
I would love to add a CarPlay-capable head unit to the ZHP however. Somebody needs to make an affordable, mechless (no CD transport) shallow-mount unit that supports CarPlay/Android Auto only, and do it at a reasonable price, and come from a reputable company with real support, not one of these flawed Ebay disasters. Doesn't exist yet - at least not at reasonable cost or without limitations (i.e. Alpine option). Seems like it would appeal to a ton of owners of many different car makes/models.
The facelifted Golf 7.5 models, just now going to production, allegedly have wireless charging & CarPlay. Apparently wireless CarPlay utilizes WiFi and doesn't compress the music stream, as Bluetooth does. Now if my VW had these capabilities, I'd be much more likely to use it more often.
'21 M2 Competition
'08 Z4 M Coupé
'19 Golf R