Apple Is Worried About CarPlay Safety

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volvo-apple-carplayFSMdotCOM

Apple’s surprise announcement of CarPlay turned a lot of heads. Bizarrely running on Blackberry’s QNX platform, of all things, CarPlay will launch through partnerships with Volvo, Mercedes, and Ferrari. But how hard will it be for other developers to add CarPlay support to their apps?

The good news is the answer is: ‘not very.’ But the bad news is, Apple’s the gatekeeper to when that happens, and they won’t open up access until they are convinced CarPlay is safe.

In an interview over at my other mothership, Fast Company, Brian Lakamp — president of digital for Clear Channel Media — talked a little about the experience of integrating CarPlay into iHeartRadio, which he described as ‘fairly quick.’

Why then is Apple not opening up CarPlay to all devs? According to an Apple employee speaking to Fast Company, Cupertino is primarily worried about driver safety:

“The reasoning behind the limited access, according to an Apple employee with knowledge of the plans who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, is because Apple wants to go “slow and steady” with CarPlay. The employee stressed safety behind the wheel was a major concern, but wouldn’t comment if more developers might get access to CarPlay’s private APIs once iOS 7.1 ships. We may have to wait for WWDC in June to find out.

In other words, Apple doesn’t want to find CarPlay in the headlines for any car crashes. Makes sense to me.

Source: Fast Co. Labs

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