Kolenka

By baking it in as a protocol in the OS, and documenting it for their partners, Apple is trying to make it harder for bugs like that to happen. I agree it will be bad publicity, but I'm not really sure it is iOS 8 related.

When a company refers to a season, it is safe to assume they are referring to the astronomical season. It is at least partly a legal thing, to remove ambiguity in contracts and the like. PR tends to get scrubbed by lawyers in the same way. Doesn't mean they will meet their dates, but it is what it is.

To quickly get the second point out of the way, I agree that there is value in a simple head unit with phone connectivity. Pioneer seems to agree with the AppRadio as well. The catch is that I think they painted themselves into a corner with the hardware on the current models wrt CarPlay. CarPlay is very likely sending MPEG-4 down the wire (like AirPlay), and the one thing that the AppRadio was never designed to do was handle compressed video. It all comes in over HDMI or some other raw video signal. So they are either stuck trying to do real-time MPEG-4 playback in software, or waiting until

Even the 991HD is painful? I remember some folks gushing about how Kenwood was going to solve world hunger the performance problem with the 991, versus the 990. A shame, since having Garmin nav was a definite plus at times.

Huh, I missed that. I assume the tilt mechanism is entirely part of the detachable screen? It is a bit weird that the 4000 manual mentions nothing about the screen being tiltable, you'd think they'd advertise that! (Found it) It's one of the reasons I didn't like the DNX890 much, and it wasn't a detachable screen. The 8000 in comparison is like a rock when tilted. Sony's 7" head units are very stable as well.

I suspect that it is the tilt mechanism that poses the problem. Making it tiltable, rigid, and detachable is tough. Basically a "pick any two" situation. Other brands have similar issues where adding a tilt mechanism removes the ability to detatch the faceplate. And depending on your car, it may not be as easy to steal as the radio itself. Chipped keys add to the difficulty. But stereos are still just as easy to take these days as they were before immobilizers and other anti-theft measures.

For Waze to answer any differently, there has to be APIs for them to integrate into CarPlay. Right now, there isn't, nor is there anything in iOS 8. Anything beyond music is on Apple to provide an API at this point.

USB Supports - iPod Playback - Pandora - Aha - CarPlay "Soon" USB + HDMI Supports - App Radio - Mirroring iPhone Display This applies to the iPhone. For the iPod, you are really just looking at USB for iPod playback. The iPhone should probably be hooked up to USB1, while the iPod i hooked up to USB2.

It isn't the water, per se. It's all the stuff in the water that you find in waster that hasn't been distilled. The minerals in particular can conduct electricity and cause shorts. As the water dries, the minerals get left behind, deposited on the electronics and can help corrode the metals used in the PCB. None of this is terribly good for the electronics, but the shorts themselves are pretty bad, and you don't need a lot to cause shorts with how close things are on PCBs these days. (EDIT: Note that the water in this case got into the buttons just below the screen, and shorted those out.)

Assuming an Android user is already using Maps in their car, Google is collecting that data already. This so far isn't new data, but they may get more Android users using their services in the car, which would give them more data. If you aren't an android user, then this doesn't give them data on you, even if you have a car that supports it. That's all. If you don't like Google, you can avoid this. Much like CarPlay/AppRadio/Etc, everything is running on the phone. The HU is just a connected touch display for your phone in this mode. I'm not a fan of Google's business model either, but

If you are using Android, this isn't going to add any new data you aren't already giving Google to be mined. If you aren't using Android, this won't apply to you anyway. It isn't about the car itself, it is a way for the phone to be more accessible from the car.

Yup, I have seen the same behavior in the Seattle/Portland areas as well. Any traffic at all and it tries to divert you around it as if the zombie apocalypse is happening. The time estimates are all pessimistic, as well. It seems like the navigation in general is using a very "glass is half empty" sort of algorithm.

Except I doubt Apple cares about anything in the update beyond the CarPlay support. They will be looking at disconnects/etc, but I doubt they will be giving Pioneer hell anywhere else. Even the random reboots I get sometimes connecting my iPhone for iPod playback.

I think the answer is a little simpler than you suggest with your questions. It is "awaiting final certification" by Apple. This is not a terribly new thing in the electronics industry, especially when you are partnering with another company for a project such as this. This statement confirms that Apple required that partners get their implementations certified before releasing them. That means testing, including tests against certain quality bars (MTTF/MTBF numbers for example). Issues found are reported, and usually required to be fixed before launch. Once it meets that bar, it is certified

I have yet to find anything better than a good microfiber cloth for cleaning finger oils and the like off glass of any kind.

And that's a limitation of the API itself. Apps cannot present UI, they just provide access to their content. CarPlay itself gets the organized content and displays it with its own UI. I haven't seen any hints that iOS 8 is any different, unfortunately. So it isn't just that they are only approving music apps (which is true), but it is the only type of app CarPlay talks to currently.

Wait, Apple is proudly showing off all sorts of buggy stuff at WWDC. The audience is mostly developers (and press there for the keynote), where you can actually demo that sort of stuff without the audience going nuts when there's a bug. "Demo-ready" has never meant "ready to ship" during my time in the industry. Huh, you can restrict CarPlay use with specific devices. Nice touch. But since it is supposed to be automatic, I'm not terribly surprised that it isn't anywhere else.

Summer doesn't start until June 21st, so we aren't in early Summer yet.

You are right that cars are not tablets and phones. But then again, they are not tablets and phones. I don't have choice when it comes to nav in a head unit, really. I can't swap that piece out when something better comes along. I don't have the ability to leverage my cell phone to access music from services unless the manufacturer already sees a market for it like Pandora. The whole point of App Mode and CarPlay is flexibility. Rdio, Spotify and Beats can all duke it out for my business while I don't have to pick and choose which I can use in the car without resorting to mounting a small

Sony has created a control app sure, but that's not integrated with Siri or CarPlay. Apple has demonstrated at WWDC that while they are more willing to allow integration than in the past, it is still going to be on their terms. That means APIs for specific tasks, much like CarPlay's API where you give it access to your app's audio files, rather and presenting UI. So Apple would need to provide a generic Siri API (doesn't seem likely if they are doing task-focused things), or actually care about this scenario enough to do something about it, which makes no sense to me. iHeartRadio is a

The problem Waze faces is that there just isn't any API for them to use in iOS 7. The only API CarPlay has right now in their dev documentation is how to provide CarPlay with music items in a structured way, and a means to let CarPlay tell you to start playing an item. Nothing to display any sort of UI yourself. Hacks could change this, as I'd wager Maps is using a private API to do its work, but it may take some time to get it working reliably. Even if Waze wanted to jump in here, they can't until Apple widens the APIs around CarPlay that third parties can use. And that's ignoring the fac

Music playback. Pandora. Aha. Those all work with the 1-wire setup. You don't get video or anything like that.

To be fair, with a couple exceptions Kenwood wasn't relying on the analog audio out from the dock connector to pull audio across. Pioneer was. Which is weird, since Pioneer was using the iPod over USB protocol to control the iPhone, but wasn't pulling the uncompressed audio which has been supported for years and years. Agreed, it doesn't make sense to ditch AppRadio. Not when it works with Android + iOS, and they can lure devs like Waze who can't yet integrate into CarPlay.

Getting buildings (and terrain) around Seattle.

While a price thread is helpful, I am wondering why the quoted part is news. What is news is that Pioneer doesn't seem to enforcing MSRP on retailers or enforcing a MAP. Those margins were/are meant for B&M retailers to cover sales labor and owning/leasing a physical presence. Of course, the era of internet mail order throws a wrench in all that, but so long as we still have B&M stores, MSRP margins will remain at those levels. Especially for "luxury" goods like these head units.