Photo: autoevolution
Apple officially introduced the Dashboard, a CarPlay feature that allows multiple apps to run side by side in their very own so-called cards, with the release of iOS 13 nearly two years ago, and since then, the company has been working on adding further refinements and polishing.
The debut of iOS 13.4, for example, finally unlocked the navigation card to third-party apps, therefore allowing the likes of Google Maps and Waze to replace Apple Maps on the Dashboard.
The Google-owned Waze is obviously one of the applications that took advantage of this update, and in a recent post, the company explains how it managed to make the whole thing happen and therefore land on the Dashboard with the essential feature package.
The Waze team says it worked together with Apple specifically on optimizing Waze for the Dashboard, though the hardest decision was the one related to the features that would eventually be available in the navigation card.
Because, obviously, not all Waze features could be offered in the navigation card, so the Waze developers tried several approaches before sticking with only the essential capabilities.
“At one point, we thought about adding every Waze feature to the CarPlay experience, but ultimately, we decided against that. Together with Apple, we narrowed our focus to what’s absolutely essential to driving because there’s limited real estate in the CarPlay Dashboard,” Adam Fried, Head of Global Partnerships, explains.
The features currently available on the CarPlay Dashboard include the speedometer, lane guidance, turn-by-turn directions, and map reports, therefore making it easier for users to continue their navigation even without switching to the full app.
It took no less than 10 months for Waze to bring support for the Dashboard to all CarPlay users.
“Design and UX was the most time-consuming element as well as engineering, quality assurance, and testing. Of course, we had to make sure it worked properly for our users actually driving in the real world. We worked with hundreds of beta testers who used the integration on a variety of car types, makes, and models in different countries,” Fried says.
Waze for iPhone and CarPlay requires at least iOS 11, but for Dashboard integration, you need to be running at least iOS 13.
The Google-owned Waze is obviously one of the applications that took advantage of this update, and in a recent post, the company explains how it managed to make the whole thing happen and therefore land on the Dashboard with the essential feature package.
The Waze team says it worked together with Apple specifically on optimizing Waze for the Dashboard, though the hardest decision was the one related to the features that would eventually be available in the navigation card.
Because, obviously, not all Waze features could be offered in the navigation card, so the Waze developers tried several approaches before sticking with only the essential capabilities.
“At one point, we thought about adding every Waze feature to the CarPlay experience, but ultimately, we decided against that. Together with Apple, we narrowed our focus to what’s absolutely essential to driving because there’s limited real estate in the CarPlay Dashboard,” Adam Fried, Head of Global Partnerships, explains.
The features currently available on the CarPlay Dashboard include the speedometer, lane guidance, turn-by-turn directions, and map reports, therefore making it easier for users to continue their navigation even without switching to the full app.
It took no less than 10 months for Waze to bring support for the Dashboard to all CarPlay users.
“Design and UX was the most time-consuming element as well as engineering, quality assurance, and testing. Of course, we had to make sure it worked properly for our users actually driving in the real world. We worked with hundreds of beta testers who used the integration on a variety of car types, makes, and models in different countries,” Fried says.
Waze for iPhone and CarPlay requires at least iOS 11, but for Dashboard integration, you need to be running at least iOS 13.
Google News