CarPlay in GM Trucks
GM made the decision to drop Apple CarPlay and Android Auto phone casting from its newer EVs, and it’s one we’ve been pretty critical of. Although the automaker told us it made that decision in order to offer a better, more unified experience to its customers, that may well have changed: here, customers still have the choice to just cast their phone to the center screen.
And it has done a better job of integrating CarPlay and Android Auto into the experience, putting the casting apps in a large window or tile that takes up most but not all of the infotainment screen. To the left is another card that allows you to access other native apps, like towing or music (although you can still have CarPlay as the source for that native music app, should you start feeling a little Inceptionish). Porsche took a similar approach to working with, rather than against, users who enjoy CarPlay, and this looks like a welcome step from GM.
GM’s spokesperson wouldn’t be drawn on whether this means we’re going to see a corporate retreat from the previous stance on EVs, but I will note that the press release it sent Ars does say that the system was built “as a single scalable foundation across electric, gas and diesel-powered vehicles, it transforms time spent behind the wheel into an effortless, personalized journey,”—emphasis mine.
Matthew Haughey (via John Gruber):
The car industry accidentally did something I’ve always wanted to see, which was to release basically the same car under two brands and models, with one major consumer-facing difference. It’s kind of remarkable how good of a experimental design this is, since the performance and driving characteristics of both cars are identical, but drivers in one model get a major phone integration the others do not.
[…]
For the years these cars were sold together, the Honda outsold the Blazer by 43%, 73%, and 166% in each time period. Today in 2026, people are buying a Honda Prologue over one and a half times more often than the Chevy Blazer EV the Prologue is based on.
My favorite CarPlay feature is when it’s reading a text message to me and I go to tap the “Done” button and it suddenly turns into a “Call” button underneath my finger and I have to wait for all of the animations to finish before I can actually end the call and then I wonder (a) did the person notice that I called them for a few seconds and (b) do I need to explain that now and (c) are they going to call me back now and (d) HOW DID THIS INTERFACE EVER SHIP oh my god
Previously:
Update (2026-09-22): Joe Rossignol:
All in all, GM really wants you to know that it is committed to ditching the extremely popular feature that you probably want in your next EV.
It will only offer the choice in gas vehicles.
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I always wondered why the Prologue is so uncharacteristically ugly for a Honda.
Seriously, Marco's complaint is very true and is one major, hideous design flaw across all the recent operating systems.
Once an element is in place on a screen that can be interacted with, that button should NEVER MOVE unless the user does something to move it.
What absolute fucking morons are signing off on these interfaces where things jump around all over the place and replace each other?
"For the years these cars were sold together, the Honda outsold the Blazer by 43%, 73%, and 166% in each time period"
I feel like this would have been more interesting if the brands had been reversed. If CarPlay actually got people to prefer Chevy over Honda, that would be compelling evidence. As it stands, these are about the numbers I would have expected with or without the CarPlay difference.
@Bart, my personal conspiracy theory (which obviously doesn’t apply here) is that the buttons that move around after load are done intentionally to get more users to click on some new feature so the team can claim higher interactions or something. I don’t know about anybody else, but for me, the Gemini button in every Google webpage does this. The normal icons load, and then in the exact right amount of time it takes me to go and click on a button, that I click on every day, they part and the Gemini button appears exactly where I was planning to click. I swear it has to be on purpose.
I’m sure this is like a well-known thing or a dark pattern or something, but it just feels like a conspiracy theory to me, so I call it that 😂
@Joseph you're right. I call them morons out of frustration. But they're not doing it because they genuinely think it's a good idea.
Which makes them evil, not stupid, because they're doing what they know to be wrong on purpose.
In the specific case of this carplay interface, I can't tell if it's malice or stupidity. That one actually seems more like stupidity.
Or more likely, the people who "designed" it never actually use it. That also seems to be a very common problem.
