Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Robotbeat·

If it’s that dominant I wonder if there needs to be some anti-trust action done with Apple?

View on HN

On what grounds? Because people like it too much?

Apple isn’t forcing anything. They don’t have exclusive contacts. Almost every car with CarPlay supports Android Auto.

Customers are just demanding it.

Apple does restrict access to much of their platform for only Apple-based access. There's exactly one company stopping Google or anyone else from building a compatible car system that runs for both Android and ios, and that's Apple. The use of private APIs and preventing competitors from using them, to secure another market (car infotainment systems) certainly should run afoul of anticompetitive laws in spirit, even if it doesn't to the army of lobbyists and lawyers the most valuable company in the world can muster.

By comparison, nothing (not even Google) is stopping Apple from producing CarPlay for Android. All the APIs are there. They could even distribute it in the Play store.

Compare the PhoneLink capabilities between iPhone and Android, vs the macOS integration Apple offers iOS.

Are you comparing the car infotainment OS with the CarPlay feature running on the phone?

I was not talking about the infotainment OS. No one has an Apple OS running on a car so I don’t know how they could dominate the market.

Uh, my Honda's factory radio is literally an Android device.

It happily allows CarPlay from my iPhone.

CarPlay is (very roughly) the phone pushing video to the car's head unit like it's an external monitor (with a UI tailored for the size/location/usage of a typical car display).

I have a ~$175 Android head unit that offers CarPlay functionality in one of our daily drivers. There's nothing stopping car makers or head unit/car infotainment systems makers from creating CarPlay compatibility in their devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com