Hey GM: If You Want to Beat Apple, Give People the Buttons CarPlay Can’t

General Motors' big bet to jettison Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from its cars hasn't yet paid off—especially not after problems with its new Ultifi infotainment platform forced a two-month stop sale of the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV. Still, GM adamantly believes ditching CarPlay is the right move, and that's partially to do with the automaker's deteriorating relationship with Apple, as Bloomberg reported this week. The power struggle over the logo on your car's biggest screen is nothing new of course, but in retrospect, maybe manufacturers wouldn't stand to lose the war if they didn't give tech companies a big LCD battleground to beat them on.

As long as automakers insist on putting features behind a touchscreen, they will always be vying for control against companies that run circles around them when it comes to infotainment. The industry has only itself to blame for the prevalence of CarPlay, which has basically become the default interface for millions of drivers. Legacy manufacturers haven't done themselves any favors by removing physical controls for functions that people expect and want buttons for, instead burying these features deep inside touchscreen menus—the kind Apple and Google have considerably more experience optimizing.

Yet GM seems nevertheless shocked and indignant that Apple has taken residence on prime real estate in their cabins, even though they were the ones who put the screens there and handed Big Tech the keys years ago. In one exchange that Bloomberg describes, Apple and GM leaders go tit for tat arguing whose skills are more valuable:

In a meeting with Greg Joswiak, now Apple’s senior vice president for worldwide marketing, one exec tried to impress upon him GM’s deep automotive expertise as if to suggest Apple was out of its depth, emphasizing the complexity of cars and how they can require four years to develop, according to a person familiar with the interaction, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the private meeting. Joswiak replied, “How long do you think it takes us to build an iPhone?”

Prior to the advent of CarPlay, most automakers were too careless or unprepared (or both) to