That's still a year from now, but that would be great! I'd love to see a native Spotify App running inside the car to play my music. Currently I never use the browser, but Chrome would be an improvement, since the current one is slow and sluggish. Youtube would be nice while at a charger! If they would install WiFi at some charging stations you wouldn't need to use your 3G data connection for playing a video and it would be a lot faster.
Please refrain from playing Asphalt 8 while driving lol I wonder if with it they will include entertainment systems in the back as well?
I always wondered why the infotainment system wasn't setup with apps from the get go. Just seems like it's what everyone is used to these days anyway. That would be fantastic though - just think of the possibilities! (Netflix, Hulu?)
2014? That's like an eternity... :smile: With that large screen the possibilities are awesome. I'm thinking of all the useful apps on my phone that would be great to have in the car, like Waze, weather, calendar, etc
Not so thrilled about an android emulator being shoehorned in. They don't need high volume, so why make it simple for folks to port over crappy apps instead of purpose-built ones?
I'm hoping they can enable when the car is in "Park". It would be great to watch videos when stopped and charging, for instance. My last car could play DVDs on the front screen with the car in Park and a rental Ford Fusion I had came with A/V inputs in the center console. Of all cars, the Model S most needs this feature because people will be sitting for some time while the car charges if there is nothing else to do nearby.
Yes, playing in park appears to be legal. And hiding the Android sandbox when the car is not in park should be trivial. But decent HTML 5 support would be much easier and about as useful.
Because then they don't have to convince/pay people to develop apps for the car, owners can simply utilize ones already developed. There's essentially no business case for developing a custom app for use with a (current) maximum of 25k people, unless you're the app developer and you also happen to own a Tesla. Take the Spotify example above, which I also seriously want. It took them forever to simply get an Android app, and at the time Android had orders of magnitude more users than there are Model Ss. The hope would be that Tesla follows this up with a mechanism for writing native apps, and Android apps that see success on the Model S could be ported.
Yes, but still. A ported spotify app? Designed to run on a phone... on your 17" screen? Hardly ideal unless they take the time to optimize it -- and if what you say is true: why bother with a 25k install base... why bother porting at all? IMO Tesla SHOULD pay to have apps developed, or develop them in-house to maintain a level of quality (both in usability and stability within the code).
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. Developers won't bother to create a native port given the small install base, that was exactly my point. With an Android Emulator, you can run existing Android apps without modification. Many Android apps have tablet versions, which would probably work pretty well on the Tesla's touchscreen without requiring any tinkering at all by the developers. If the developers see a lot of usage on the Tesla platform, then they might decide to port/rewrite the app natively.
My point is that I don't want ported android apps running in my car. In general, I find android apps to be poorly-written and unstable to begin with (not to mention unsecured). Sandbox or not, that just doesn't seem like a great thing to have on the 17" dash -- especially when Tesla has put a lot of effort into the usability and UI of the current apps. Have you experienced ported android apps on BB10? Just like the current apps, I'd prefer it if Tesla either paid companies to build specific apps for their platform or built a new wave of apps in-house. Sure, that may mean fewer apps, but I'll talk quality over quantity any day.
Nobody's going to be forcing you to use them. Sure, we'd all prefer native apps, but since that's not going to be an option for everything I'll take the emulator and a wide selection over nothing at all.
I prefer a native SDK regardless of what they do with emulation. I don't want to write my Tesla apps for an android emulator.
There might only be an installed base of 25k users, but who says native Tesla apps would have the Android pricepoint? If the apps cost $25 or $50 instead of $1, would that change a developers thinking? Based on what I have observed from owners on this Board, I consider it likely that some of us would pay those amounts for some well-executed native apps (like Spotify or Waze).
Chrome... What about support for chrome native client for apps instead of an android emulator? The hardware on the Model S isn't beefy... I cannot imagine an android emulator running well.