I’m so tired of people stealing my ideas. I had this idea literally 2 weeks ago. I thought, the iPad is pure magic, and would probably be better at car infotainment than most systems available. Think about it, 3G roaming internet, all of your music in one place, SatNav, Skype, FaceTime, and I’m sure there are apps that will link to your iPhone and let you make phonecalls. Genius, I thought.
Well here it is. Harman, a company that specialises in car audio and infotainment, has built a dashboard docking station for your ipad. To be honest it doesn’t look like the iPad comes out too easily, which is not great for on-street parking like we face in Cape Town, but nevertheless, it’s pretty much my vision realised. Which is annoying.
Harman have integrated gesture sensing as well, so you can just wave your hand over the interface to activate certain functions.
From my experience in touch-screen enabled cars, VW is getting it right more than anyone. The interface is finger-friendly and dead-simple to navigate. Jaguar’s is not too bad, and is getting better, but they underestimated how hard it is to hit a digital little button when the car is moving.
Regardless, the touch screen will become more and more common in cars, and I can’t wait. The more it is like an iPad, the better.
