The IT Nerd

Here’s a question that just hit my inbox:

Good afternoon IT Nerd. My question is if I should buy an aftermarket stereo from Pioneer to get CarPlay, or should I either wait for more options or just get a newer car and have it come with CarPlay installed? What would you do? Any advice that you have is welcome. 

Thanks!

Thanks for the question. Let’s look at your two options:

1. Aftermarket units: Simply put, there’s not a lot of choice right now. Pioneer has a handful of options, none of which are cheap. Plus Alpine just released their offering in this space that is not really all that cheap either. Lack of choice means high prices. So I suspect that if you wait, you’ll have more to choose from at a lower price point. Though you might be waiting into 2015 for more choices to appear.
2. Getting a newer car is only an option if you were planning to get a new car anyway. If that’s the case with you, there still isn’t a lot of choice as most car companies are saying that CarPlay is coming “real soon now.” Thus, you may be waiting well into 2015 before you actually see CarPlay in a showroom near you for the brand or brands that you’re interested in.

So in either case, it looks like you’ll have to wait for CarPlay to appear. In my case my car is paid for and in good shape. So I would wait for more aftermarket options to appear and go that route. But you have to decide based on what is right for you.

Good luck!

This entry was posted on October 27, 2014 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.