Apple’s CarPlay is barely out in the wild, and only on display at the Geneva Auto Show with select partners including Ferrari. Our friends over at Engadget got to go hands-on with the in-car infotainment system replacement created by Apple, and are one of the few lucky outlets to have captured the experience on video.
In the video above, you can see Engadget’s Matt Brian taking CarPlay for a test ride in a gorgeous new Ferrari FF. It’s a bit strange to see the Ferrari take a back seat to the software running in its dash, but there’s a lot of interest in Apple’s brand new move into the vehicle information and entertainment software market.
During the demo, an Apple rep takes Brian through operating the system, which really does look like a complete reimagining of how iOS operates designed specifically for the car. As you can tell from the language used by the rep, the interface is intended to minimize distractions and make navigation easy.
Some of the more interesting features include Maps culling potential destinations from your email and your calendar, to try to make it so that you don’t have to dig down multiple levels or run complicated searches just to find out where you’re going. The music app also focuses heavily on the iTunes Radio experience it seems, to enable users to select something quickly and not have to fuss much after the fact. Siri offers hands-free control and the ability to interact with the various CarPlay features throughout the interface, and throughout Ferrari’s own in-car interface as well.
The Apple rep also gave a brief demo of third-party app iHeartRadio in action, and gave this succinct description of how third-party software will be made available for CarPlay in the future:
As the app gets updated to support CarPlay, it will just get updated on your phone and magically show up on your car
It remains unclear whether the API will be made open to all devs, or made available to select partners only.
