(credit:Google)
I've had the, er, pleasure in the last few months of driving in a range of cars, most of which were rentals for various business trips. Every car is different, yet the basics such as how the steering wheel and gears work are very similar. How the lights work, mirror adjustments, the location of the parking brake, and where to find the gas cap -- they tend to fall into a handful of common locations. You can get into a car and within a few minutes drive it without much further thought.
But not its stereo system or navigation system. What a mess! You can expect half-dozen or more unmarked buttons that bear no resemblance to those in the next car, wildly different navigation UIs, and a poor ability to access music libraries from connected mobile devices where our music resides every time you get behind the wheel.
Ford and Microsoft have done a lot of marketing for their joint Sync car stereo system, but after using it on a Focus, let me tell you it's the equivalent of DOS in a Windows 7 world, composed of nine buttons whose purpose is utterly unclear, unintuitive controls, and inconsistent operation with my smartphone. For example, it doesn't work with my smartphone's navigation app and won't play back the driving instructions through its speakers, though it passes through my music. My five-year-old midprice Sony car stereo does all of that better. For a device aimed at young people, Sync's clueless design makes you feel that you should be using eight-track tapes.
A Toyota Prius is little better. The UI is more intuitive, but it also suffers from incomplete integration. Hyundai's system is not bad for music and phone connections, but it really wants you to use its nav system. Based on my highly unscientific sampling, GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Mazda, and Honda seem disinterested, offering run-of-the-mill stereos.
It's clear that most of the auto companies that offer more than a car stereo want to lock you into their interface and services -- as awful as they are. The rest don't care. The aftermarket stereo and nav systems are no better. Stuffed with even more buttons and light-show gewgaws, they're sure to keep your eyes off the road and may not work easily with your stuff. Add to that mix the split focus of also having to use a separate GPS unit in most vehicles, and you have to wonder what keeps our roads so relatively safe.
What did I find myself doing in all these vehicles? Putting on my Bluetooth headset to listen to music and hear my Navigon navigation app's directions from my iPhone, which I set in a cup holder so that I could glance at Navigon's directions screen while driving. It wasn't optimal, but it works much more simply than the built-in or aftermarket equipment, and I have some voice controls.
Which got me to thinking: Why can't cars use my smartphone's music player, nav system, and even communications apps? Each of us who has a smartphone typically uses it as a constant personal assistant, so why should we switch to a different, often inferior one when we get in a car? Why can't the car mirror or subsume what our smartphone does? It's a perfect place for consumerization's "choose your own technology environment" aspect to take root.
They should. But I suspect only Apple would get it right, though that would mean not "choose your own" but "everyone use the best consumer tech (Apple's)," in a replay of the iPad phenomenon.
A proof of concept: The App Radio 2To get an inkling of what I'm talking about, head down to your nearest Best Buy -- as long as they're in business -- or local car stereo shop, and test out the Pioneer App Radio 2 (the original App Radio model is unusable, so be sure you're looking at the 2). You plug your iPhone or Android smartphone into it via a USB cable, and it lets you manage your music playback in a way similar to how those devices do it -- all via a touchscreen. You also can access your phone via a Bluetooth headset or an in-car mic and speaker, as is common in most car stereos these days.
You can also run some apps, such as the MotionX Drive navigation app and the Pandora Radio streaming-music app, from your smartphone. There are even apps for reading email and text messages, as well as dictating them, and for checking your calendar -- this last set makes me nervous, but I know a lot of folks who listen to and dictate their email as they drive, so this may just be the way of the world. I guess it's good that self-driving cars are on the horizon!
Basically, you get a subset of your smartphone's apps that are driving-safe (according to Pioneer) displayed on the App Radio 2's touchscreen, as well as some embedded apps in the device such as for listening to the radio. It's almost as if someone put an iPod Touch into the car stereo.
That put the gears in motion. The App Radio 2 is still kludgy, and the fact it forces me to use a specific navigation app bugs me. I already have an navigation app I paid for and like, and I should be able to use it wherever I am. And I do, by placing the iPhone in a cup holder and using Bluetooth to hear it. Why even have a car stereo or in-car nav system in that case? The car should adapt to me, not force me to change states for these functions.
Why others won't step forward to solve this problemIdeally, stereo makers would do a better version of the App Radio 2, allowing any driving-safe app to be used from an iOS or Android device. (The other mobile platforms have too few users and too few apps to worry about.) For people without these devices, such car stereos would offer basic radio features, Bluetooth phone and music streaming, and perhaps an optional nav service -- increasingly the case today. In other words, the car adapts to you unless you have nothing to adapt to.
I seriously doubt the car makers will drive this, as they're afraid of liability from distracted driving. Never mind that the whole car environment is more distracting when you tack on a separate nav system or do a hack work-around like putting your smartphone in your cup holder (as I do). They figure they're responsible only for what they provide, not for how drivers work around it.
Some car stereo makers are making halting steps in this regard, with the App Radio 2 being the best -- and, frankly, only -- meaningful example. VC has made some strides in better Bluetooth integration, but it hasn't crossed the app threshold yet. Most of the rest are simply clueless about user interface and unconcerned about meaningful integration with mobile devices.
That leaves the mobile platform providers. Google isn't really an option, as it almost always needs someone else to copy, and no one can yet be aped. Plus, its products tend to be ad hoc, inconsistent, and of questionable lifespan -- none of which you want in a vehicle you'll own for three to 15 years. Ironically, Motorola Mobility -- once famed for its car stereos -- could be the right vehicle for merging car stereos and Android, but I just can't see the company as constituted today doing it, especially as Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility gets closer. I would love either company to prove me wrong.
Apple, please invent the iCarWho's left? Apple, of course. Apple is famous for taking broken markets -- MP3 players, then smartphones, then music sales, then tablets, and now perhaps home theaters -- and figuring out a well-integrated, soup-to-nuts experience that it controls. I could sure use that in the cars I drive and rent.
Apple could easily adopt the iPhone to a car stereo -- Pioneer has shown it's more than possible even without Apple's talents to tap into. Of course, Apple would take it much further. For example, its App Store could tag appropriate apps as driving-safe, so only those apps would run in the car, whether they were running in the car stereo (in sort of an iCloud-like download for the currently signed-in driver) or wirelessly mirrored from a driver's iPhone or iPad.
Beyond navigation apps (integrated with your contacts, of course) and phone integration, put Siri into the mix, as well as the Reminders location-aware task manager (as you leave the office, you hear "stop at the grocery to get more cream") and Calendar app ("you're running late to your meeting, shall I call to let the party know?"). That would be revolutionary!
Apple could also take advantage of the HD Radio standard's song tagging to integrate with the iTunes Store: Like a song? Buy it then and there for all your iTunes-based devices.
The car stereo companies would probably suffer the same fate as the laggards in the cellphone business (RIM, Palm, Nokia, and Microsoft) -- but they've had their chance and not used it. As author Jerry Purnelle likes to call it, that's evolution in action. Meanwhile, the car makers would get out of the business of designing or specing devices they clearly aren't comfortable with; it wouldn't be long before it was the standard stereo in most new cars and a popular retrofit option in existing cars. We'd all be able to bring our mobile devices easily into the ultimate mobile context.
Believe me, if Apple put its mind to this problem, we'd have safer driving environments due to the better, holistic user interface design and active management of driver distractions, more meaningfully connected environments, and more personal environments -- no matter whose car we were driving.
We have the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and iCloud. An iTV seems to be in the works(though I suspect it won't be a TV but a souped-up Apple TV-derived media center). It's also time for the iCar.
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(courtesy:infoworld.com)
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