Maybe it’s cause I’ve never actually used it, but I really only care about a stable / well supported Bluetooth connection.

I have a holder for my phone for when I use GPS and basically never interact with it directly after it’s set. Only real interactions are media controls via the steering wheel.

The only use cases I can see car play helping with are those who take a lot of calls/texts in their car while driving and those who listen to music and want to listen to specific songs.

For me it’s about the waste. Engineers have taken the time to build a screen into the car with a good viewing angle, that works well with glare, doesn’t obstruct the drivers view.

Then the software side just makes the whole thing useless with a terrible UX that will never be updated.

CarPlay is a great solution because the non safety critical stuff (music, navigation) gets offloaded to a competent software company.

Plus it improves every year.

On my previous car it never changed from the day I bought it, other than navigation getting more and more out of date.

On my current car I get software updates occasionally. I’m not sure that function ever changed though.

Meanwhile my iPhone gets better every year. And if I buy a new phone? CarPlay can get faster. My car never will even if I wanted to pay them.

Not to mention that car dealerships seem to resist providing software updates. You have to beg them and even show them proof an update exists.

So, I fully recognize this is dumb, but humans (like me!) are dumb and lazy.

The ability to just get in your car and have the phone-powered interface right there without having to take your phone out of your pocket and mount it in the holder is something I didn’t ‘niceness’ of before experiencing it.

I was super bought into carplay and android auto until I actually owned a car that had it. Oh great, it requires USB. Well my phone is 4 years old and the port is toast, so that doesn't work for me. Okay, wireless then. Car doesn't support that. Lovely. Bluetooth implementation is half-assed and the pairing process is Byzantine. Terrific stuff.

That car ended up sucking in other ways too. I quickly sold it and went back to buying old Lexuses. Wireless charging phone holder, and off you go. The siren call of infotainment is powerful, but actually living with it is just more fiddly bullshit I don't need in my life.

It doesn't negate the problems you are pointing out, but there are several devices that bridge the USB wireless gap. (Aawireless, etc)

That take is stupid - I tried to use a feature with broken equipment so it must be the feature’s fault it didn’t work.

I've used it in other cars and the experience just wasn't great. I've had plenty of rentals with Android Auto.

Honda is the worst. In two different Hondas, I had to make sure I didn't plug my phone into the blessed USB port to charge, otherwise the wireless AA connection would drop 20 minutes into the drive and I'd have to re-pair manually. And wireless would crap out every hour or so.

Mazda was wired-only, which was fine since my phone was new at the time. But Android Auto was clearly not designed for Mazda's otherwise very good non-touchscreen HMI.

Both Hyundai/Kias I've rented took a solid 90 seconds to pair every time I got in the car.

In a Chevy I rented, it would either pair up instantly and work perfectly or it wouldn't pair at all, depending on the alignment of the stars or something.

BMW's implementation worked great, too bad the rest of the controls in a modern BMW are idiotic. And also I can't afford one.

I've had several Toyota/Lexus loaner cars. Those worked fine, to my recollection.

Maybe I'm cursed, but at this point I don't particularly care. My real, honest-to-god experience with smartphone connectivity in cars is this: the most reliable, user-friendly, brand-agnostic experience is a bluetooth adapter shoved in the cigarette lighter, and a phone holder on the dash.

Working on a cross platform podcast app. Server client but with full* offline support. Written with Dioxus + Axum and targets web and mobile. Hopping to get most of the features of antenna pod and a less bugs weirdness than Podverse (currently using iOS). Hoping to to release the code / deploy to the App Store once I dog food it a bit more.

I host my entire homelab in my home and use tailscale to access it. You just connect your nextcloud instance to tailscale. Then you connect each client to tailscale. Works on iOS and android (and of course any desktop). When you're on you're home network (LAN), tailscale _should_ use the LAN IP for routing. And then when away, you'll route over derp servers usually.

You could also use tailscale for auth, but i like to enforce separate authentication so that you have to be authenticated to the tailnet and have to go through the normal authentication to app.

That works okay if you are the only user.

I use quite a few Nextcloud features where access via tailscale is either inconvenient or impossible. My whole family uses the calendar on their phones and other devices, which means they would have to either learn about VPNs, or I would be the one managing all their devices for them. (Neither are likely to happen.)

I also often share individual files or folders with external contacts as a more private alternative to dropbox or google drive.

Move it behind a random string (i.e. https://yourdomain.com/gd5mka93) and leave something simple and inoccuoua at the root.

Cloudflare tunnel instead ?

That's a good setup. Tailscale, or wire guard like apps, are kindda the future. We're moving towards this more private internet where access is invite only.