Although many who cover technology expect Apple's Vision Pro to be one of the biggest Apple products in 2024, it’s by no means the only Apple product on their radar. For instance, according to a story in GQ magazine (UK), CarPlay, which is Apple's voice-activated system for your car, is getting a new look. GQ says this “first major redesign first teased in 2022 for the company’s car operating system is finally set to meet with concrete courtesy of two of the world’s most-storied luxury car manufacturers.” And those two brands are Porsche and Aston Martin.
GQ notes that Apple said back at WWDC 2022, “CarPlay has fundamentally changed the way people interact with their vehicles, and the next generation of CarPlay goes even further by deeply integrating with a car’s hardware," Apple stated. "CarPlay will be able to provide content for multiple screens within the vehicle, creating an experience that is unified and consistent.”
While Porsche hasn't said which cars will get next-gen CarPlay, Aston Martin confirmed to Car & Driver that its DB12 coupe and DB12 Volante will be the first cars in its lineup to support it.
In 2024, the redesign of CarPlay is expected to be customized to each carmaker Apple partners with. “We’ve designed a complete system of controls that allows for seamless interactions,” says Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of human interface design, in the story, “between vehicle functions alongside the features of iPhone.”
GQ also points out an intriguing data point about the popularity of CarPlay, which was introduced in 2014: “According to Apple, 80 percent of new cars currently sold worldwide support CarPlay."
Will CarPlay be adopted by more or less cars manufacturers in 2024?
But CarPlay, either in its current iteration or in its future redesign, isn't popular with every car manufacturer. For instance, earlier this year, one of the biggest U.S. car manufacturers, General Motors, decided that they were going to remove Apple CarPlay from future vehicles. The reason? Tim Babbit, GM head of product for infotainment, informed (MotorTrend magazine) that GM is removing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto due to safety concerns. And according to our story on December 13, Babbit claimed that “CarPlay and Android Auto have stability issues that manifest themselves as bad connections, poor rendering, slow responses, and dropped connections.”
