Alex on Autos reviews the Infotainment system
 

Too bad the touch pad doesn't work the way it was designed to when paired with Apple Carplay... Hopefully that could be changed with an update down the road unless Apple's API is just too stubborn to allow it to ever work that way.

Gotta say, my head almost exploded watching him try to enter an address in the nav system. Car makers should just leave maps and navigation to Google and focus on other things.

100% agree. That's why I was disappointed by the clunky way to interface with Apple Carplay, I rather just use my phone's nav, music, etc.

That's unfortunate. Acura's system has a built-in deterrent to using CarPlay, reinforcing my opinion that all infotainment systems are better with a touchscreen interface -- even if it's just a secondary option. Hopefully they'll take Alex's advice and add touchscreen capability at some point in the future.

Still (WAY) better than what I have right now (which was better than what I had before it). What's this called -- progress? lol

Even with my touchscreen I don't use CarPlay much myself, but I know a lot of people that won't buy a car without it. For devout CarPlay users, the interface matters. It's why a lot of people started using Apple products in the first place.

Actually not bad at all. Except the Carplay. I am okay with it :)

I don't understand why Acura couldn't make this both touchscreen and touchpad to handle both consumer needs. I felt like going back 10 years when Alex navigated through carplay. Unacceptable! The simple solution was make it touch screen as well

I'm not buying it. It's more likely about cost. BMW and Mazda have redundant touch interfaces with high-mounted screens. Better to have the option to reach a bit than to have to fiddle with an inexact cursor input.

I've been lurking on this forum for quite some time due to my excitement over the 2019 RDX. This thread made me finally log in and post. I'm very disappointed with the Apple Car Play integration. I can't imagine I'd want to use Car Play with those limitations. I agree that having backup touch implementation on the screen itself would make a lot of sense. You wouldn't have to touch it all the time, but when using Car Play, the longer reach to the screen seems safer to me than the slow mouse-like cursor scroll on the touch pad.

I'm still excited about the car but this is a turn-off, albeit perhaps an irrational one since I've never used Car Play -- my 2016 Maxima doesn't have it at all. It's just a feature i'm excited about finally having when this lease ends shortly and I get a new vehicle, but this doesn't seem like a good way to finally be introduced to it. .

We have such First World problems...lol. :tantrum:

Completely! lol

LOL!

Another way to think about this is...where is part 2 of all of this? (Yes, Apple, I'm talking to you.) For once, Apple has something to catch up on. Now that Acura has innovated away from a computer mouse-like touchscreen system in a car with its industry-first 1:1 True Touchpad Interface invention, perhaps Apple can fix ITS CarPlay to make it work with TTI. Maybe? :wish:

You're blaming Apple? Sorry, but I don't see it. The whole point of CarPlay is to mimic the interface of the phone itself, which a touchscreen does perfectly.

I can't remember where I read it, but the 2019 RDX has the ability to do over the air updates without visiting a dealer, yes? If so, hopefully the 1:1 mapping for CarPlay can be added at a later time.

This is a clumsy integration for sure. However, my use of CarPlay has also shown the benefit of the native Siri voice recognition which is the best part of the system and allows you to skip all this nonsense. For example, if you want to use Apple Maps then you just hold down the voice command for about 2 seconds, activate Siri, and ask for directions. The Maps app in CarPlay will automatically open and directions will begin. Switching apps is easier with voice commands also. Works very simply with just using Siri and is safer anyway.

The side by side viewing windows if beautiful and should lend itself to navigation through maps and listening to music BOTH driven by CarPlay. This advantage is excellent and one you don't normally see in a CarPlay system.

Apple Maps has really improved and there are aspects of it that I prefer to Google Maps. This is coming from an avowed Google Maps user. But TBH Apple has really upped their Maps app from their initial disastrous release.

My 2 cents....

Acura spent the last 4 years or so trying to figure out how to make interfacing with a car's infotainment system much easier, safer, intuitive, and, yes, better. They came up with True Touchpad interface, which has pretty much been very highly received by everyone who has had the chance to spend some time with it. Even Alex (on Autos) has stated TTI is "MUCH" better than Lexus' non-1:1 interface system.

I don't see Acura doing both a touchscreen and TTI when the whole point of TTI is to jettison the computer mouse-like interface of the old touchscreen technology that's more appropriate for a a laptop computer on your desk in your home office and less appropriate for when you're driving a 4K-pound machine at 70 MPH or in who knows what crowded traffic or crazy weather conditions.

The entire re-do of the infotainment system and interface, starting with the 2019 RDX, is way more about a different way and paradigm than about CarPlay, per se. That they packaged CarPlay compatibility in spite of its non-1:1 way of doing things is something I'm glad about because I do like the idea of mimicking some of what we do with our iPhones. I do hope Apple will catch up with 1:1 soon. That would be awesome.

I'm OK, meanwhile, navigating CarPlay with the dial as a necessary compromise (I have no choice for now!), coupled with what we can do on the HUD (and Siri - thanks, r1ckster!)...

The reason Apple CarPlay works the way it does on the new RDX is because Apple has not fully developed the software to make its program work with the 1:1 True TouchPad. No one is blaming Apple, but they need to develop the correct software to fully integrate their system with Acura's. That is Apple's responsibility as a software company. I am positive that when Acura gives us Android Auto in the coming months, that system will work with the 1:1 positioning. Acura and Android has done their parts, Apple now needs to do theirs.

......and there it is:) At least I know I'm on the Acura forum:)...like an old shoe. You will be able to update the navigation system online, and also receive updates regarding android auto and car play, as I understand from what I have read over the past months. Personally, I don't consider the change in how the touch pad works with Car Play to be a significant issue. Hell, I navigate easily through my "old" two screens. Once again, it's nice to hear a reviewer who focuses on the facts, rather than someone who has a pre-ordained bias and arrives at his/her conclusion with little or no substantiating details.

If you are not getting thie new RDX because you have to do some more scrolling with Car Play, I would humble submit that you were likely never getting the RDX.

When you enter the luxury SUV world, you expect the little things to be done right. I feel Acura is dropping the ball on this infotainment touchpad system meaning they all fell in love and are all eager to convince the potential consumer market how grandiose this system is, yet the simple way of navigating through carplay was neglected. I honest believe that nothing will be done about carplay navigation any time soon simply because nothing is done about it today. How long was this infotainment in development? How many people at Acura have looked repeatedly at the carplay system and said "this is perfect?"

The touchscreen technology has been around for years and parts are cheaper than ever before, so, why was this left out? I don't feel apple really cares about making any change to assist Acura because apple is apple. This isn't a problem for apple because carplay is working as it was designed to and that is to mimic the tablet / cell phone interface with "touch". Expect nothing coming from apple and since Acura didn't feel a touchscreen was important, it will be a tedious and painful system for a long time. We shall see.

I think other posters already mentioned that this is something Apple has to work on to get the 1:1 True Touchpad working properly. It's Apple software so I don't know if Acura can do much about it. I understand your idea is to have the screen to be also a touch screen. However, given where the screen is mounted, the driver would need to reach quite far in order to touch the screen. The screen would need to be moved forward and lower to be within easy reach. But then that's not ideal because the driver would need to look down and away from the road to see what's going on in the screen.

If the 1:1 Touchpad works with Carplay, then it's sort of like a touch screen. In fact, the idea of this new touch pad is to mimic the phone, but to separate the "touch layer" and the "screen layer." On your phone, the touch layer and screen layer all right on top of each other, In the Acura system, one layer is close to your hand, and the other layer is perfect for your eyesight.

I think the BMW/Mazda system is a bit different since you control it via a knob rather than a pad. It seems a bit more difficult to use Apple Carplay with a knob than a pad.

At this point, yes, it is up to Apple to update CarPlay to work with the 1:1 touchpad interface. When Acura was designing their infotainment system, they were never going to build it around CarPlay, they designed it for their own system and based on what I've seen done a great job at it. It's certainly possible Apple and Acura work together to improve integration. iOS 11.3 for example finally got contact photo syncing to work between my iPhone and 2014 MDX, which was a nice surprise.

There is a built in conflict between Acura's Truetouch and Apple Car Plays interface. Everyone agrees the Car Play interface belongs to Apple, so why the heck would Apple want to change their interface to the TrueTouch? Last I checked Apple has like a billion users? Acura has.. well exactly 0 TrueTouch users at the moment. Apple may have provided some sort of driver that lets TrueTouch interface get processed by CarPlay but changing their user interface to meet Acura's interface may not be in Apple's interest. Apple might be wondering why Acura doesn't want their wonderful touch screen that a billion users have selected over the last decade. After all Acura pretty much abandoned their last interface because it was so bad. Apple can't make their products fast enough. Why should Apple dumb down their interface to Acuras?

Dumb down?? The fatal flaw in your logic is that someone (Acura) has come up with a MUCH BETTER WAY to interface with a car's audio and infotainment system, so it's likely not a matter of if, but when, the rest of the auto industry will begin to implement their own versions of True Touchpad Interface (TTI). Contrary to "dumbing down" anything, engineers and automobile ergonomic experts who are way smarter than you and me developed this new absolute positioning technology and 1:1 mapping technology because it simply is time to treat a car differently than a static home office where you can sit in front of your computer and write a term paper or search away on Wikipedia about the idyllic charms of North Korea and planning your next vacation getaway there.

The early reaction by famously finicky car bloggers and reviewers who were given the chance to use TTI before anybody else have been just about universally positive, confirming what Acura already knew from their testing with regular people in their focus group experiments with this thing over the last several years.

Nobody is suggesting that Apple should stop what their doing on a dime in regards to the widely-adapted, current non-1:1 interface of CarPlay -- but Apple is not stupid, either (that's the last thing Apple is). They're not going to just sit there idly, twittling their thumbs, while the other elephant in the room (Google) is busy updating their also enormously popular car interface system -- you know, that thing called "Android Auto" -- to make it 1:1-capable and work with Acura's new TTI with an over-the-air update, which Acura said is almost ready to provide in the near future.

Honestly unless a car company wants to give up on infotainment completely and leave it up to Android Auto/Car Play none of them are going to build their system around them. Acura designed the TTI around their own infotainment and it happens to include CarPlay, something many users probably won't even end up using.

A car cockpit is not an iphone. If it does the job on an iphone doesn't mean it does the job in a car. If Acura really designed a better and safer interface, the logic says Apple should adapt to this interface, not the other way around.

The aspect we don't know anything about is the synergy/collaboration between Apple Car Play division and car manufacturers. Does Apple even accept customization requests from car manufacturers? My guess is that those requests are not very welcome by Apple.

@ ultramart, mcrompton

:agree:

Straight from the lead designer at Acura, paraphrased, this infotainment system has been in development for years. So, if Apple was working with Acura then surely, a solution would be seen today.

If you understand apple business clearly, they will not accommodate a change in their products or software "unless" some compensation is involved or to evolve more their name. Apple has an ego, it must be fed but clearly Acura will not feed it so this system will not be updated for carplay. What you see now is likely forever until the following happens.

1) All infotainment systems of all car makers incorporate this 1:1 touch pad interface. This would force apple's hand more to get it done.
2) Acura feed Apple's ego with monetary compensation or some agreement on both sides to work together because today they are not.

Honestly, all Acura needs to do is release a software update, fixing Apple car play to work as intended with the touch pad. For all we know, apple is already working on it. Android auto is the same... It will be available with an update in due time. The difference being that you get one now, but flawed, while you have to wait for the other, but it will be right. By the 2020 model, all of this will more than likely be resolved, if not sooner.

This isn't Acura's fault whatsoever. We want them to move forward with new tech and thats exactly what they did. I'm not even sure it is Google's or Apple's fault either. It's just something that will get worked out.

Personally, I'd rather have the car now than have to wait 3-6 months for them to get some basic software functions right.