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Comment by morganvachon | Hacker News Reader

Wait, so this works with the iPhone 5, yet you have to plug in your phone to make it work? What is this, 2003? I get in my car, the radio syncs up to my WP8 phone via Bluetooth, and if I get a text message I can have the car read it to me. I can dictate the response, or choose to ignore it, or call back the person, all with my voice. It can play music from my phone, including internet radio. I can call up an address search, and the Maps app will give me voice guided turn by turn directions.

All of this on a Windows Phone device that stays in my pocket, connected to a single-DIN aftermarket stereo without a fancy LCD, in a 2000 model Toyota. Recent cars with advanced navigation head units can do much, much more than mine. I think Apple is a bit behind the curve here.

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There is not a phone on the market that will project an interface over Bluetooth to a display in the car. What curve are they behind exactly?

Do you really think it's mirroring the phone's display onto the car's screen? That would be pointless, as you don't want dozens of irrelevant app icons cluttering your car's display. You want the basic controls that are useful in a car, with large targets that can be hit with a glance and later with muscle memory.

If you really think they are just mirroring the display, then you didn't even look at the linked Apple page.

My guess is that the iOS SDK has been expanded to allow for a second screen that is output over lightning. So no, it's not mirroring the phone screen, but displaying another screen powered by the phone. This would seem to fit with it being iPhone5 and above only as lightning is designed to have these sorts of custom digital output.

That makes a lot of sense, thank you.

Yes, this is the case. External screen support was added a few years ago.

Correct. At a minimum, it's a secondary display. But it's also deep integration into both ends over the Lightning cable (hence the iPhone 5 requirement).

I'm sure you can do all that with bluetooth on the iPhone too.

The point here is the touchscreen appears to be an extension of the phone.

Again, I don't see why that needs USB tethering, apart from keeping the phone charged. If it's just an extension screen, with a sensibly small number of large icons relative to driving, it can be done (and has been done in the past) via wireless links. Much like the Sony Smartwatch, Pebble, or Galaxy Gear, the external screen is just a remote control for certain specific functions.

But this is Apple, so perhaps they want to make sure the interface only works with their phones. That makes sense as they are designing the in-car interface in the first place.

Bluetooth doesn't support enough application throughput to enable streaming things like maps (the map solution you're referring to uses on-board maps, not Apple's native iOS maps). Everyone would love to not require a physically connected phone, but it's not possible right now.

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