This is Technology Bytes, Episode 120, for June 22, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go. So last week I told you that WWDC, Apple’s Developer Conference, was going to provide fodder or information for a few, if not quite a number of podcasts on this channel over the next weeks.
And so that is still true today.
Obviously this is only the second week after the WWDC.
And today I want to talk about iOS 26, and in a specific sense, just looking at CarPlay. So the first thing I want to talk about is not necessarily related to iOS 26, because Apple kind of announced this before the WWDC happened, and that’s CarPlay Ultra.
And they showed it off in just one car.
I can’t remember which one it was, but pretty high-end car.
But they also said at the time that many other manufacturers have kind of signed up to bring CarPlay Ultra to their vehicles as well.
So what is CarPlay Ultra?
Well, it really is a collaboration between Apple and the car manufacturer to make their interactive screens and their informational screens something that is a tie between what the car manufacturer wants to show and what Apple’s able to show, and using Apple’s technology to do a better job of managing the screens, I think.
I think that that interface, Apple’s really good at interfaces, and so they’re working with car manufacturers.
So I have a Kia EV6, as you know, because I’ve talked about it kind of endlessly in this podcast in weeks past.
And so while I don’t have CarPlay Ultra, I do have CarPlay.
And Kia is one of the manufacturers that they talked about that would be implementing CarPlay Ultra.
And so my question is, can we do that in a retro fashion?
Are they willing to go back and say, this is the way we want these interfaces to work?
While the main interface behind the steering wheel on an EV6 is all Kia, the screen to the right has a mix of Kia that you may want or Apple CarPlay, which is where I live most of the time.
But it’d be real nice to have those two integrated.
And I don’t know, I don’t think I need to hold my breath, and I don’t hold out a lot of hope, but man, I wish they would go backwards and just give you a software update and say, now you have CarPlay Ultra, because I think that would be awesome in my car. So now let’s talk about CarPlay Ultra in, I’m sorry, CarPlay in relationship to iOS 26.
And this is just CarPlay.
So it has a new look because everything has a new look.
We talked about it last week where everything went to this, what Apple is calling liquid glass type of environment.
And I told you last week how much that I kind of liked what they’re doing, and I like the layers of what they’re doing.
I like the smoothness of the interaction or the picture that’s there on the screen, the display and how they’re doing that.
And CarPlay is no different.
You know, my wife and daughter were in my car with me the other day, and I said, look, this is new CarPlay and iOS 26, and they’re like, what’s different?
So they don’t really see that the minor things that Apple’s done, but I really like the layers that is there and the fact that the menu interactions that you have are on top of the actual map that’s behind it.
And while it does hide parts of the map, it still lets you know that there’s a map back there.
And when it’s giving you directions and those kind of things, it’s just a super, super clean interface.
And I really think it looks very nice.
And then there are a few other things that Apple has done with CarPlay and iOS 26.
And one of those things is to have live activities on that screen.
So if you have something on your phone that has live activities, they just pop up as a layer on your Apple CarPlay.
And that’s pretty cool.
I was driving home the other night and one of the baseball teams that I follow was playing.
And so I only have it show me scores when it changes.
And so on the drive home, it pops up and you get a new score of the game.
So-and-so hit a single and somebody scored from third or whatever it is.
And it was kind of neat.
It just popped up, not really in the way of anything, and then disappears.
And the same thing happens with phone calls.
Phone calls used to take over all of CarPlay.
And now it just pops up at the bottom of the screen and says who’s calling, lets you interact with the screen and answer the phone call or answer it from the buttons on your steering wheel if that is allowed.
And again, it just doesn’t take over the whole interface.
It’s just a layer on top and it allows your map to stay active in the background.
All of those interface things I think are really very nice and it’s just a clean way to present information to the driver without being distracting.
So one of the major things that Apple did in the CarPlay interface is allow for widgets.
You know, we have those on our phones.
We have those on our iPads.
We can put them on our Macs.
And so many people were talking about how cool that was.
And so I watched a couple videos, you know, just to try to learn some of what that implementation looked like.
And that was through the evening last night.
And then I thought, well, this morning I’m going to the car wash and then I’m doing this or that.
And so I’ll spend a minute in my car at some point and look at the new CarPlay and what we can do or not do with it.
Prior to that, I went to my phone under CarPlay, under settings, and I could see where you could set up the widgets.
So that was pretty cool.
And so then when I was in my car at some point, I’m like, okay, how do you get to those?
So I went to settings to set up the widgets and there was nothing there.
And I’m kind of struggling with where are the widgets?
How do I get them?
What does it look like?
How do you interact with them?
How do you even get to that screen?
And then I noticed on the bottom of the screen, which is similar for lots of different Apple environments, I saw four dots on the bottom, which basically means I have four screens that I can swipe between.
So one of them is just the interface of the apps that you have on your CarPlay.
And so just those grid of apps that you can then open whatever one you’re interested in.
And then when I swiped to the right, I got my map.
And if I swiped again, I got my map with two other pictures like the audio that was playing and then a detail of the directions.
And that’s just something that has been normal.
That’s been there all the time.
And then I was done.
And then I’m like, oh, it’s the other direction.
So I swiped all the way back to the very first screen and there were the widgets.
Now I didn’t change anything that Apple did as the default, which is really three widgets on the screen, all stacks.
So on the first one, it was like the phone and the calendar and events.
The second one was weather and a couple other things.
And the third one was a picture for the day, a sunset thing and something else.
Anyway, they were all pretty informative.
And so it’s kind of interesting because I was driving home.
I pretty much know where I’m going.
But I like to have the directions on Apple Maps because if something happens, if there’s some traffic accident, if there’s anything that occurs, I like to have that running so that I’m aware of it and notified of it.
And yet I put it on the widget screen, which is kind of cool.
It just was a clock in the left-hand side.
I had the weather in the middle, which showed me high and low temperatures, the last time there was precipitation, the wind speed, and then what the actual temperature feels like, those kind of things, and then a picture on the far right.
And it was really cool to see that.
And then I just left it on that screen.
And as I was going through different interactions with the map, it would say, OK, in one mile you’re getting off on this street, and then you turn left on this street.
And they would just pop up on the bottom of the screen with the directions.
It was all pretty cool.
So all in all, I think you have a lot of control over the widgets that you want.
Just set those up on your iPhone.
They aren’t set up in the car, so you don’t have to be doing that while you’re sitting in the car or while you’re driving, of course.
And then you have those available to you however you want, and you can interact with them.
Oh, yeah, the one behind the clock was my audio as well, and it was an interactive widget, so I could pause my music or continue to play or skip tracks and those kind of things.
So overall, I really like what Apple’s done.
I think it looks really neat.
I think the widgets are going to be useful, and I look forward to using it as we go into the future.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at marriedfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
