Observations on Upgrade to Apple CarPlay

4529 Views 4 Replies 3 Participants Last post by Rhodes54, Jun 4, 2019

smgarcia

Discussion Starter · May 14, 2019

Have a 2018 Mazda 3, and I recently plunked down $450 to upgrade to Apple Car Play. With it is you get an upgrade to the Mazda3 Connect Infotainment system, and upgrade in the USB slots.

Just some observations, anyone else notice these? Is there possibly an easy fix?

1. Loading my music from the USB stick is now MUCH FASTER than before. Before it would take 3-5 minutes to load 32 GB of music off my USB stick. Now it occurs very quickly...like 30 seconds! This is a bonus.

2. Apple CarPlay is fine...I'm not sure if I'm going to use it all the time. But it's nice to have navigation. Problem is I only use Google Maps for navigation and right now I'm using Apple Maps...I have to upgrade my phone. HOWEVER....there are some buggy things about this:

a. I have a lot of music on my iPhone. If I access it via CarPlay...it says "use SIRI to enable finding more music" and all I have is one page worth of music to access. I DON'T want this. F'ing annoying. Anyway around this?

3. My album art is now messed up. This is caused from the Mazda side of things. The Infotainment section. It used to be that I would get the proper album art, or at least a picture of the artist on the screen. Now it just has Genre stuff like "Electronic" or "Rock". Here is an example. Look at the first image. I'ts "Eyes Without A Face" by Billy Idol. The picture is definitely NOT Billy Idol.

4. Sorting of songs is now messed up too. I play a lot of Grateful Dead music...and I use the track and disc # to sort. It used to sort just fine. But now after upgrade it sorts it differently. Very annoying. See the second image.

5. lastly. I agree with others that they really need to enable touching the screen while driving. For safety reasons...the sooner you can select your option the more time you can spend looking at the road. Using the controller knob...I'm looking at the screen continuously until I select the right option. I almost ran a red light doing that. One would think that not being able to touch is superior than touching for safety, but in reality the application of that falls well short.

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louisbosco

· #2 · May 14, 2019 (Edited)

if you have music on your phone, go into itunes and make sure they are well kept (artist, alubums etc). maybe it's the ocd side in me but i make sure that the info on there are prim and proper and all match up well.

the advantage to that is better navigation no matter where you plug your phone into when selecting music. alternatively, you can also set up playlists however you want it which makes certain songs easier to access.

as an example, i'll have one with nolstalgia songs and the other with songs i mostly listen to so i don't have to worry about looking for a song while driving should i feel the need to listen to it.

with regards to the need for touchscreen, i feel the exact opposite of what you mentioned. i prefer to touchscreen and rotary dial. i can navigate the entire infotainment systems without the need to take my eyes of the road because of the feedback. i'm not sure if this is because i was already used to idrive in bmw before this, but the software is very similiar..

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smgarcia

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 18, 2019

I'm pretty meticulous about how I organize my dead music. Sorting worked perfectly prior to this upgrade, now it doesn't work well at all.

I use Track and Disc to sort my (Grateful Dead) music....Track indicates what number within a set, and Disc is the set. So I have
Track # Disc #
1 1
2 1
3 1
...
1 2
2 2
3 2

and so on

Most albums only have one disc so it's not even used. Quite the shame. Sorting should be an easy function.

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Rhodes54

· #4 · Jun 2, 2019

Before getting my CarPlay upgrade, I used to be able to scrub audio back and forth (iTunes, Podcasts, Stitcher) etc using the Commander Knob. Very handy while driving. Now that feature appears to be gone, unless they put it somewhere else or there's a Setting I'm missing.

Thanks

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Rhodes54

· #5 · Jun 4, 2019

Rhodes54 said:
Before getting my CarPlay upgrade, I used to be able to scrub audio back and forth (iTunes, Podcasts, Stitcher) etc using the Commander Knob. Very handy while driving. Now that feature appears to be gone, unless they put it somewhere else or there's a Setting I'm missing.

The Commander knob still works for scrubbing as long as you're NOT using CarPlay.

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Observations on Upgrade to Apple CarPlay

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