Given Apple’s penchant for creating a walled garden ecosystem, it’s not surprising that the company would choose to use Apple Maps in CarPlay. It makes a lot of sense and also encourages the adoption of the app. However the good news is that in an announcement made at WWDC, Apple will no longer force Apple Maps onto users.
The company has announced that later this year, users of CarPlay will be able to choose from other navigation apps, such as Google Maps, Waze, or whatever navigation app they want. Apple Maps has had a somewhat bad reputation due to its bungled launch and while Apple has definitely made huge improvements over the years that followed, it’s not surprising that there are still plenty of users out there who might prefer apps such as Waze or Google Maps.
Users of CarPlay can still continue to use Apple Maps, but opening it up to different apps could help encourage users to adopt the CarPlay system, especially given the importance of navigation features that one would expect and like to see in an infotainment system. These changes will be part of iOS 12 that was also announced at WWDC 2018 and will be released later this fall, presumably alongside Apple’s new iPhones which is usually the case.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Carplay, Google Maps, Waze, Wwdc and Wwdc 2018.