Next-gen CarPlay is the broken Apple promise that foreshadowed the Siri fiasco

Apple announced next-generation CarPlay three years ago, and there is still no sign of it. Sound familiar?

- BY JASON CROSS

By now, we're all familiar with an embarrassing slip-up from the leadership at Apple. At the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference, the company promised advanced new Siri features in an update to iOS 18. Then it created mainstream TV ads showcasing the feature (which wasn't out yet). Finally, this spring, it admitted it couldn't deliver these features as promised (fave. co/4cPAFD1). They would only come in the next year—meaning likely as an update to iOS 19—and some are questioning whether even that date is possible (fave.co/433UKIE).

Naturally, that brought to mind AirPower (fave.co/3OqWMox), another product Apple demonstrated on stage but axed when it couldn't deliver the feature. Some likened it to Apple's long struggle to develop its own 5G cellular modem, which eventually ended in the C1 modem (fave.co/4i1ejPY) shipping in the iPhone 16e—but the company never got on stage and promised one.

I think there's a better parallel: next-gen CarPlay.

IT’S BEEN HOW LONG?

Apple first publicly unveiled the “next generation of CarPlay” (fave.co/3uM3lvf) back at WWDC in June 2022—that’s right, nearly three years ago.