CarPlay retrofit

[YYB129]

Just had an email from my local dealer, £80 for CarPlay/Android for my ‘69 plate.

What thoughts on this function, or indeed the tempting offer?

 

Thank you

[ColinBarber]

Definitely worth doing IMO.

[PDM]

Liam,

A couple of things to watch - they may be of absolutely no consequence to you (very dependent on the specific features you use in the vehicle) and AA/carplay may completely outweigh these issues, but just to warn you...

I believe that the voice commands for playing mp3s from a memory stick (e.g. play album <name>) work fine on MM17 systems (that you have at present) but are broken on MM19 systems (which you will have after the Carplay/AA update).  I use these commands a lot (well... I used to...) and after testing in other cars at the dealer, I have not seen voice commands for playing music off memory sticks sticks work properly with any MM19 install.  (Although I have not tried this on an ES... just RX and NX with MM19).  Gracenote has also been removed from the latest patch for MM19 systems (although in my experience this never works very well anyway, but you may be using it if you ever play CDs in the car as it looks up the album/track names for you and displays cover art).  The only other bug I am aware of in MM19 is a very occasional issue where if you select a radio station in the DAB menus, the system actually tunes to one that is one or two higher up in the menu list than the one you clicked on.  This has happened to me two or three times in 3.5k miles.   Finally, MM19 has crashed and rebooted itself on me once in about 3.5k miles.  

These things may not matter at all to you (e.g. you may be planning to play music from your phone with AA/carplay), in which case the upgrade is probably worth it.  It will let you use Google maps on the car's screen, for instance.  My vehicle is an RX with MM19:  and of course the ES may not have these issues.

Paul