Eyes Free: Apple’s drive to claim the car

While we've all been looking for signs of Apple's move into TVs, it's been stealthily claiming our cars…

OK, so, no TV. At least, not yet…  Apple’s keynote on Monday didn’t bring us a vast number of surprises, but it did suggest that, while we’ve all been looking at TV, it has its eyes on quietly revolutionising another major part of our lives, and the announcements paved the way for that. There are two major changes coming to iOS, the system that runs the iPhone and iPad that betray Apple’s intent.

The first, in a move that lessens Google’s influence on the device, is the completely rebuild of the Maps application. Most significantly for this discussion – it finally brings built-in turn-by-turn driving routes to the iPhone, something Google’s Andriod has had for a while.

With the two major smartphone platforms now supporting turn-by-turn navigation, the prospects for the stand-alone GPS navigation device are looking distinctly ropey. Sandwiched between the built-in GPS system on the high-end and the smartphone on the low-end, those little hardware units are on their way out. The fact that the software is built into the means that, unless they can offer something compelling to make people pay for an app rather than using the free in-built software, phone apps aren’t an escape route, either. Only TomTom seems to have prepared itself for this, doing a deal with Apple to provide its route maps into iOS.

When you couple that news with the evolution of Siri, another picture begins to emerge. Siri, Apple’s speech interface for iOS, gains a mode specifically for use in cars – Eyes Free. And it’s working with nine car manufacturers – BMW, GM, Mercedes, Land Rover, Jaguar, Audi, Toyota, Chevrolet, and Honda –  to integrate this directly with the car itself. Absent from the list are two manufacturers who have their own approaches to in car smart-technology, Renault and Ford, whom we’ve blogged about before.

Siri is the game-changer here. The ability to control aspects of your car simply through a familiar voice interface you trust is both easier and, critically, safer. Your eyes stay on the road and your hand on the steering wheel. Until we’re all in Google’s self-driving cars, voice control and feedback make far more sense than pretty much any other interface to control in-car entertainment, navigation and even other functions, like air-conditioning. As Kevin Fitchard points out, once Siri becomes your major interface for controlling the car, even in-built satnav systems start to look a little redundant…

The more aspects of our life iOS device integrate with, the more essential they become to us. This is a clear land-grab by Apple, quietly making itself an integral part of our driving experience. And, as a habitual podcast listener and phone-based satnav user, I can’t wait…

Back when Steve Jobs announced the very first iPhone, he described it as the “best iPod they’d ever build”. The iPhone is coming to deserve the name iPod more than the music players ever did – it’s an alway-on, always connected pod that connects with the world around you and the internet. Most cars already have “brains” – sophisticated computerised systems that have turned car repair into as much a software task as a hardware one – and Apple clearly has ambitions to be a major point of interface between you and the car’s systems.