iOS in the car

[edocura]

Keep in mind that the MacOS may have components that are OpenSource (most likely due to low sensitivity and legal requirement since they're not the original authors) but not everything is. In essence, it's still a closed system. When you refer to it being "OpenSource" or not, you're talking about the entire system.. so it's not correct.

The 2 biggest pieces, the kernel and the shell are not open source. A lot of the items that are open source are using a non-standard license (APSL). Clearly, most of their IP is into the WM - they'll never make this open source. You can basically think of it as a (modified) FreeBSD kernel using your typical environment apps with a proprietary WM, all tweaked to provide the experience that Apple wants to sell.

Look at it this way, if it really was OSS, you'd expect a lot of Linux/FreeBSD users to have ported the WM years ago, but this hasn't occurred.

In the case of BMW, they already have a lot of advanced interaction between their media frontend and their ECU. Re-developing this for any platform isn't cheap. If they don't see a need for this in the future they probably wouldn't want to invest in it. Or maybe they want to wait until their new BMW-built OS needs a refresh. Who knows. It's a bet.. some people may think that iOS would be an additional selling feature, while some other companies may not care. Some companies may have had ridiculous contracts to start carrying the apple name in their cars (e.g. Ferrari). You never know. But you can't really assume anything at this point, it's all just numbers to them no matter how cool/uncool a technology would seem to us consumers.

[kuhlka]

Why does anyone give a crap about BMW? I don't. Most BMW drivers I've encountered are horrible drivers, behave like they're entitled to the entire road, do 65 in the fast lane of a 70mph zone, merge into my lane as I'm passing (no blinker, nearly forced my STI into a semi, had to lock-up my brakes to avoid a collision), *****foot around in their SUV in the snow and rain (why the hell did you buy an SUV d-bag?)... The few decent BMW owners I know who aren't ****s do AutoX or motorcycle trackdays and work on their own vehicles.

I couldn't give a shit less about this news. I never intend to buy any of their vehicles, especially after test driving and yawning in luxury. When they make all of their cars self-driving and don't allow the d-bag owners to drive themselves to work, I'll get excited.

[qoncept]

The biggest advantage of all of this, even if you don't care for Apple, is that a company that legitimately knows how to develop for new/weak markets is working on it now. If you ever used an mp3 player that wasn't an ipod and then used an ipod, I think you can imagine what your future car stereo will be like. And that (finally) good product will both drive other companies to do better AND show them some things that actually work.

[2forme]

Originally Posted by qoncept

The biggest advantage of all of this, even if you don't care for Apple, is that a company that legitimately knows how to develop for new/weak markets is working on it now. If you ever used an mp3 player that wasn't an ipod and then used an ipod, I think you can imagine what your future car stereo will be like. And that (finally) good product will both drive other companies to do better AND show them some things that actually work.

Have you ever tried using an iPod classic LOL? I would hope that's not where cars are going...can you imagine having to rotate your finger around a touch sensitive ring just to cycle through anything in the car? I know that wasn't your point, but the example was humorous to me haha.

[qoncept]

Originally Posted by 2forme

Have you ever tried using an iPod classic LOL? I would hope that's not where cars are going...can you imagine having to rotate your finger around a touch sensitive ring just to cycle through anything in the car? I know that wasn't your point, but the example was humorous to me haha.

I use an ipod classic every day. I think it's better than an ipod touch. The 2nd gen was pretty awful but the rest are great.

But anyway, the point is that mp3 players were absolutely miserable to use until the ipod came out. I was resistant to Apple and tried probably half a dozen. None of them were good enough to replace a regular cd player. None of them were good enough that I would rather listen to them than nothing. That's kind of what's going on in my car now. I've completely given up on my dream of get-in-car-music-plays-from-phone. It's pretty efcking simple but not even close to working.

[johnnie]

Originally Posted by kuhlka

Why does anyone give a crap about BMW? I don't. Most BMW drivers I've encountered are horrible drivers, behave like they're entitled to the entire road, do 65 in the fast lane of a 70mph zone, merge into my lane as I'm passing (no blinker, nearly forced my STI into a semi, had to lock-up my brakes to avoid a collision), *****foot around in their SUV in the snow and rain (why the hell did you buy an SUV d-bag?)... The few decent BMW owners I know who aren't ****s do AutoX or motorcycle trackdays and work on their own vehicles.

I couldn't give a shit less about this news. I never intend to buy any of their vehicles, especially after test driving and yawning in luxury. When they make all of their cars self-driving and don't allow the d-bag owners to drive themselves to work, I'll get excited.

Maybe because BMW has an ICE system that's actually not that bad.

[2forme]

Originally Posted by qoncept

I use an ipod classic every day. I think it's better than an ipod touch. The 2nd gen was pretty awful but the rest are great.

But anyway, the point is that mp3 players were absolutely miserable to use until the ipod came out. I was resistant to Apple and tried probably half a dozen. None of them were good enough to replace a regular cd player. None of them were good enough that I would rather listen to them than nothing. That's kind of what's going on in my car now. I've completely given up on my dream of get-in-car-music-plays-from-phone. It's pretty efcking simple but not even close to working.

I have a 160GB and use it every day. Aside from its bi weekly freezing/crashing and god awful wheel rotation gesture, it's not half bad. Most of the time it sits in my glovebox and acts as a portable HD with music haha.

[wparsons]

Originally Posted by s2d4

You have no idea what is open source.

Hint:
Open source - source code- publicly avaliable- alter/collaborate and compile whatever flavour.

I'm well aware of what open source is, other people seem to be confused. There's A LOT more to open source than just having the source code freely available, there's also licensing details about what you can and can't do with anything that derives from an open source project. You can get source code for free for lots of things that aren't open source, but you can't extend or tweak the source and release it as your own work.

Freely available source doesn't automatically mean it's open source, you have to read the licensing details to be sure. Look for GPL/LGPL/BSD licensing stuff for the first clue if it's open source.

Originally Posted by 2forme

If iOS was truly open source, BMW would have run in their vehicle. Think about it. They said no, because they'd have to change all their protocols and interfaces to fit within the confines of iOS. Had iOS been open source, it would quite literally be a job of extending the iOS platform with apps and services that could read/interact with their currently developed protocols and interfaces. It has absolutely nothing to do with running iOS on hacked Apple devices. They aren't sticking an iPad in the car and running the car off it. It would be it's own customized, integrated platform that just happened to be running a customized iOS operating system.

Don't confuse a platform that has an SDK with being open source.

I think you're confused about what you're saying.

BMW already has an existing system, extending iOS to fit what they already have would be a HUGE undertaking, but that doesn't mean anything about iOS being open source or not. Plus they would still have to develop their own GUI to run on top of their modified iOS core.

I don't understand how people are still saying it's not open source when you can freely download the source code. If you want the source code, get it here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/

As for cocoa vs the kernel, cocoa has never been (and probably never will be) open source, but the kernel is (and will always be as long as it's BSD based). Cocoa is nothing more than a UI, similar to KDE, gnome, etc.

[qoncept]

Originally Posted by wparsons

I don't understand how people are still saying it's not open source when you can freely download the source code. If you want the source code, get it here: http://www.opensource.apple.com/

As for cocoa vs the kernel, cocoa has never been (and probably never will be) open source, but the kernel is (and will always be as long as it's BSD based). Cocoa is nothing more than a UI, similar to KDE, gnome, etc.

Important as it is, the kernel is an incredibly small part of iOS. iOS's selling points are all the software that runs on top of the kernel.

I think iOS for cars is going to be a whole lot less branded than people seem to be implying in this thread. I don't think Apple won't LET them make custom GUIs. Maybe a few graphics. They probably won't even let anyone change the font. BMWs investment would be the relatively small effort of getting the right hardware in place and then writing custom apps for it.

IMO, unless BMW is holding out for Android or something else, they're probably making a mistake. I haven't used whatever BMW's thing is called but I'm almost positive it's probably not very good. Ford My Touch is supposed to be the best thing ever, and it gets plenty of negative reviews.

[olorin]

Technically the kernel is open source since it is based on Darwin ( which is open source). The core iOS platform (api) isn't open source and that makes it without a doubt a closed system.

[wparsons]

Originally Posted by qoncept

Important as it is, the kernel is an incredibly small part of iOS. iOS's selling points are all the software that runs on top of the kernel.

I think iOS for cars is going to be a whole lot less branded than people seem to be implying in this thread. I don't think Apple won't LET them make custom GUIs. Maybe a few graphics. They probably won't even let anyone change the font. BMWs investment would be the relatively small effort of getting the right hardware in place and then writing custom apps for it.

IMO, unless BMW is holding out for Android or something else, they're probably making a mistake. I haven't used whatever BMW's thing is called but I'm almost positive it's probably not very good. Ford My Touch is supposed to be the best thing ever, and it gets plenty of negative reviews.

QNX is slowly taking over the OEM market, including BMW. Sync and MyFord Touch are based on windows embedded, and I believe Ford is the only manufacturer working with MS at all. A lot of Toyota's run QNX based systems as well.

[chadstyle]

What ever happened to the OPs original question? I saw the pics on Apple's site for the new iOS 7 features and I thought the same thing...what manufacturers are actually implementing this interface and in which vehicles and finally, what model year? I like the integration between smartphone and car (whether it be iOS or android) and lately I've been doing more with my Nexus 7 than just using it for torque. I create a wifi hotspot for the tablet and I still run torque via Bluetooth and I'm always impressed by all of the little things that Android is doing without me setting it up to do so...ex. The other morning I was reading some news articles on the Nexus and at 7:45 an alert came up and said "time to go to work" and gave 3 route options and traffic for each. I've never programmed "work" into my tablet and it just picked up on my daily pattern of dropping the kids at school and heading into the office. It also has been keeping tabs on the news I read and selecting articles that I may be interested in and other cool little things. My point is that these "cool little things" are the future of how we interact with our technology and our cars and whether you use Apple or Android the technology becomes even cooler when seamlessly integrated into the car.
@2forme and I have had many discussions on tablets and mobile OS in cars and I think we both agree on the end goals...its only a matter of time before all cars have some sort of mobile OS integrated. The aftermarket is already producing many HUs and that is a sure sign that the OEMs aren't far behind.

If anyone has links to a list of manufactures working with Apple on this project then please post them!

[qoncept]

Originally Posted by chadstyle

The other morning I was reading some news articles on the Nexus and at 7:45 an alert came up and said "time to go to work" and gave 3 route options and traffic for each.
...
My point is that these "cool little things"

You knew it was time for work. And you obviously know how to get to work. Why would you need your phone to tell you?

These "cool little things" are just that. Google has great at coming up with them, but not very good at doing anything useful.

[xjohnx]

Back on topic please?