Apple CarPlay Ports iOS Over to Luxury Car Dashboards

By Prarthito

| Published: Tuesday, March 4, 2014, 12:38 [IST]

It was not long ago when it was rumored that Apple is looking forward to introducing a certain something called "iOS in the car" for a number of luxury car brands currently in the market. Now it seems like all those rumors were indeed true as Apple is now officially ready to launch a new iPhone integration setup for car infotainment system called CarPlay.

Apple claims that the new CarPlay experience gives iPhone users an "incredibly intuitive way to make calls, use Maps, listen to music and access messages with just a word or a touch." Also, users can now easily control CarPlay from the car's native interface or even push-and-hold the voice control button on the steering wheel to activate Siri without any distraction while driving.

Apple CarPlay Ports iOS Over to Luxury Car Dashboards

As of now, vehicles from Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo will initially premiere CarPlay to their rides this week. Additional auto manufacturers also set to bring CarPlay to their vehicles down the road include the likes of BMW Group, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai Motor Company, Jaguar Land Rover, Kia Motors, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan Motor Company, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Subaru, Suzuki and Toyota Motor Corp.

"CarPlay has been designed from the ground up to provide drivers with an incredible experience using their iPhone in the car," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of iPhone and iOS Product Marketing.

"iPhone users always want their content at their fingertips and CarPlay lets drivers use their iPhone in the car with minimized distraction. We have an amazing lineup of auto partners rolling out CarPlay, and we're thrilled it will make its debut this week in Geneva."

As far as the technology is concerned, the entire idea here is to bring your car and iPhone together for a smarter and safer experience for drivers to only concentrate on driving. Once the iPhone is connected to a vehicle with CarPlay integration, Siri helps the user access his or her contacts, make calls, return missed calls or listen to voicemails.

In case of incoming messages or notifications, Siri offers an eyes-free experience by responding to requests through voice commands, by reading drivers' messages and letting them dictate responses or simply make a call.

As revealed, Apple CarPlay is available as an update to iOS 7 and works with Lightning-enabled iPhones. These handsets include the likes of iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5.

CarPlay is currently set to be available in select cars shipping in 2014.