3 major CarPlay issues that Apple really needs to fix

Dropped connections

There's nothing worse than spotty CarPlay connectivity

When using CarPlay, none of the computational processing is actually taking place locally on your car or truck. Rather, the iPhone in your pocket or mounted on your dash is doing the heavy lifting, and a mix of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity is what's casting content onto your vehicle's built-in touch display.

For the most part, this wireless phone-to-vehicle connection is solid and robust, making a wired USB solution redundant for interfacing with CarPlay. Unfortunately, I occasionally run into issues with lags, stutters, and delays that stem from connectivity issues, in addition to sometimes having my audio cut out at inopportune moments.

Most of the time, these issues resolve themselves on their own within a matter of seconds, but they can be a real hindrance when, say, I'm relying on GPS navigation to travel from point A to point B or when I'm listening to audio from a live-streamed media source.

I also sometimes experience issues with my iPhone connecting and remaining paired to my CarPlay-equipped vehicle, which can prove frustrating during short drives when I'm halfway to my destination by the time the system is fully up and running.

I understand Apple is boxed in by the limitations of consumer-grade wireless radio tech, but if the company were to improve stability and setup reliability by even five percent, it would go a long way in making the CarPlay experience a more pleasant and premium-feeling one on the whole.

App organization

Having to rearrange icons using your phone is lame

I love that Apple CarPlay provides the ability to arrange and hide app icons to suit individual preference. One quirk in this system is that you need to customize this layout using your iPhone screen, which feels a bit disjointed. The changes themselves also only take effect after restarting CarPlay, which is a bit of a pain.

I reckon the entire CarPlay experience would be smoother and more user-friendly if Apple were to allow users to manipulate app icons directly via their vehicle's infotainment displays. Most iPhone owners are already familiar with the infamous iOS jiggle mode, and I can't imagine it being too difficult to implement this same user interface flow within the automotive experience.

Hamstrung Siri

Let me switch voice assistants at the system level

We all know about Siri's various quirks. Despite being one of the first mainstream voice assistants to reach users' hands in the early 2010s, the underlying technology powering the feature has fallen far behind the likes of Google Assistant / Gemini, ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Amazon Alexa+, and other competitors in the space.

In a recent earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company is "making good progress" when it comes to its next-generation, AI-infused Siri experience (via 9to5Mac), but I have my doubts about just how performant it'll be when it does finally launch sometime next year.

With Apple CarPlay, voice dictation is an integral part of the system as it allows you to keep your eyes on the road while blurting out commands and the like. As it currently stands, Siri is serviceable but underpowered, and Large Language Models (LLMs) can't hit the product soon enough.

In the meantime, I'd personally love the option to switch default Apple CarPlay voice assistant apps at will. Gemini, Copilot, Alexa, and others are already available on the Apple App Store, and it wouldn't be technically difficult to permit deeper integration with the in-vehicle experience. Knowing Apple, of course, I don't expect to see any such capitulation made in the near future, as it flies in the face of the company's walled garden approach to software and services.