Alongside the announcement of iOS 7 this summer, Apple announced an interface for select cars accessible through connecting your iPhone with your vehicle. In the preview, they showed some screenshots and spoke of basic functionality and now a developer has managed to uncover the hidden interface within the iOS SDK simulator and demo it in video for the first time.
Steven Troughton-Smith posted the video on youtube today, which shows the software within iOS 7.0.3. It has not been enabled by Apple yet, and from the state of the interface, as well as the version of iOS it has been found in, we can assume it"s an early build, and far from release.
In fact, another developer posted a screenshot of the same feature in iOS 7.1 beta, presenting a heavily tweaked version of the software - there is no video of this, however.
@stroughtonsmith looks different in 7.1 beta :) pic.twitter.com/sANTrdzrmc
— Denis Stas (@zyafa) January 28, 2014
iOS in the Car, when made public, will allow drivers to use Siri to navigate, read messages or play music. The car"s display becomes a sat-nav system powered by Apple Maps, or can show album artwork, notifications and more. In addition, it will show call status with large buttons to prevent drivers getting too distracted from the road.
While acceptable in the US, there is still much controversy over the reliability and usefulness of Apple maps internationally, so this feature may come under some heat if navigation is inaccurate. Improvements may come in iOS 8, but the "in the Car" features are set to be launched before such tweaks when Apple release iOS 7.1 later this year.
Source: Steven Troughton-Smith