While the world is keeping their eyes peeled for the latest and greatest iPhone yet, our mandarin site writer, Kelvin, was on the lookout for the announcement of the new Apple iOS 12 operating system which will (finally) support Apple CarPlay third-party navigation apps like Waze and Google Maps.
Apple first made the announcement to integrate CarPlay with third-party navigation application at the 2018 Apple World Wide Developer Conference in April. Shortly after that, the tech giant rolled out 14 beta versions of the iOS 12 software, the highest number in the history of iOS beta versions.
Curiously, in the beta versions of the iOS 12, there were no signs of Waze on CarPlay, much to Kelvin’s disappointment. There is a reason behind this delay, beta versions of applications are subjected to the “Test Flight” approval from Apple and beta version of Waze for CarPlay was finally made available on iOS 12 for beta testers on 18 September 2018.
Launching the Waze app on Apple CarPlay, the author immediately noticed the cleaner and more minimalistic interface as compared to the ones on Android Auto. On the infotainment screen itself, users can select destinations under Favourite and History but new destination search will require users to key in on the iPhone itself as there is no keypad available on the CarPlay app.
Other functions include the all-important “Send a Report” icon on the bottom left of the screen to report traffic conditions, accidents, police sightings and the rest.
Apple did not disclose the official availability of third-party navigation applications on Apple CarPlay, but the integration of Waze and Google Maps will finally make CarPlay useful other than streaming Spotify. For now, let’s be patient and allow the software developers to iron out the bugs because nothing worse than a buggy application am I right?
