Sure, if you live somewhere with constant cellular connection or you're not sharing a vehicle with someone else. What really irks me is when a connected device is required to do something trivial. My dad's 2021 GMC truck recently got an OTA update that removed the built in map. I discovered this when I was driving in the country and came upon construction with closed roads. I tried to pull up the map and look for a road that would go around and I couldn't, that feature is gone. I would have had to stop, pair my phone with the head unit and then fire up CarPlay and open Google maps - none of which I wanted to do since it just wasn't necessary. Not to mention there was no guarantee after pairing that I would be able to use Maps due to shoddy coverage in the area I was in. Graceful fallbacks used to be a thing but it feels like today if you don't have a connection then everything is just dead and your SOL. The world's population doesn't all live in modern connected cities. Why is it anytime I go off-road I become a QA tester? Kind of sick of it.

Pretty crazy that 5 years ago, many cars went with an offline first approach to maps. You had to manually update the map database every year. I don’t even see that business model ever returning. Companies have figured out there’s way more money in running a map service. Ftr, teslas stream map tiles and if your car loses connectivity, you’re not going to see anything

If you go into data-less areas, you pretty quickly learn to use downloaded maps (from Google Maps or most any other)

But the point is, this is something that used to work out of the box (nav systems came with preloaded offline maps) and now needs extra steps, or doesn’t work at all.

The new online way of doing things is mostly better for most people, but it’s not universally better.

> You had to manually update the map database every year.

Now you have the added bonus of gambling on whether or not the maps are actually updated. My SO wanted to update the maps in their Jeep since all the exit numbers around us had changed. Not only did the install take hours, the exit numbers were still the old ones. Hooray!

Jeep just threw up their hands because the license key had been used; total racket.

> constant cellular connection

This isn't at all required for music or maps. Phones have up to a terabyte of storage now.

It is not theoretically required, but most (all?) phones don't cache all the map tiles between the origin and destination. You'd have to proactively download all the map regions you think you might need.

Google Maps and Here Maps both support offline (Sygic is another).

Google Maps prompts me to do just that when I navigate any kind of distance. Not sure if it's only when driving through areas with poor reception.

I guess I grew up in an era where built-in sat-nav was a luxury good.

> an OTA update

crap, over actual air? I am suspicious of all OS/firmware updates because they tend to move my cheese or just outright disable/nerf features.

I wonder if GM OnStar sneaks firmware updates into your car even when you don't have a subscription.

Role play: I'm a car manufacturer, driving 20-40 billion dollars per quarter in revenue. Why am I using a "open protocol" for anything? Pitch me!

You're a car manufacturer, you suck at software. Right now, it's mainly a cost center for you. There are two options that may be preferable:

1. Bail out of infotainment and let others deal with the software, that way at least you aren't paying for this. If you go for an open source/standard, maybe you can commoditize your complement.

2. Monetize it somehow, with the (dis)advantage of owning your stack as much as possible.

OP suggests (1). GM is choosing (2). Either makes a bit more sense for car manufacturers than the current situation, if they don't worry too much about losing customers while they make the transition, and if they can do (2) without sucking too much.

Another thing to note is that when AV cars arrive, the user (former driver) will have a lot more time for infotainment. It's possible that differentiation will more strongly select for these types of features. So again you have the options of bailing out/doing it yourself. The current situation: Letting Google/Apple own much of the stack is the worst for you, since these companies may prefer their own cars (there are persistent rumors of an Apple car, Google is known for Waymo).

Option 3 is that Google and Apple pay me to take care of this problem. Why wouldn't I just do that?

Are they actually paying? As far as I know, the power in this relationship is the other way around, with the car manufacturer having to pay (to programmers) to build protocol support on their end. Note also what I wrote about AV cars (EDIT: that was an edit a minute or so after, so you may have not noticed).

Probably because software will be the most important criterion for choosing a car and you as a manufacturer won't be replaced by Google and Apple (who both develop their own cars). However, you suck at developing software and people are already using Google and Apple, so you will get replaced by Google and Apple anyway.