The full-featured CarPlay has finally arrived, but I may not be able to use it in my lifetime.

Guys, after waiting for who knows how many years, the CarPlay Ultra that Brother Neck has been longing for has finally arrived.

Back then, this concept was introduced in 2022. At that time, it was still two years before Apple announced it was giving up on building cars. Now that three years have passed, it has finally come (the concept image from a year ago).

However, this "fully - fledged" CarPlay is currently only available on the Aston Martin DBX. Since Brother Neck's DBX hasn't arrived yet, he watched a review on Top Gear to give you all a virtual taste of it.

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The first time you get in the car, CarPlay Ultra will also take a little time to connect to the car's infotainment system. Of course, subsequent connections will be faster.

What really annoyed Brother Neck is that this demonstration still requires a wired connection... The host said that wireless connection is also possible, but the wired one is faster...

As an old CarPlay user, Brother Neck knows that wired and wireless CarPlay are completely different... Since the wireless connection wasn't demonstrated, one can't help but wonder if the wireless connection is still laggy!

Anyway, the first ones to suffer will be the noble Aston Martin owners. Thinking about it this way, it's easier to accept...

Brother Neck would like to add that currently, when CarPlay is in wireless mode, it can't achieve 7.1.4 panoramic sound when playing audio. It can only do so when connected via wire (except for Lotus).

What's the situation with this part of CarPlay Ultra? Neither Apple nor the review media mentioned it, so it remains a mystery for now...

Well, aside from this, Brother Neck is really excited about the deep integration of CarPlay Ultra with the car.

Now, CarPlay is no longer just a screen mirroring of the iPhone. It involves joint computing and interaction between the phone and the local car infotainment system. The Apple UI, which used to only appear on the center console screen, can now also be displayed on the dashboard.

Of course, only phones after the iPhone 12 and iOS versions above 18.5 can run it.

Top Gear gave a high evaluation of this system. By reading the CAN line data to display the car's status, the customization is very in - depth. All kinds of fault lights in the car are designed by Apple. Can you believe it?

(Aston Martin's native interface)

(CarPlay Ultra interface)

Moreover, it offers several different dials to choose from, including those that display lanes, maps, fuel level, and water temperature, etc.

The color and style can also be adjusted. There should be several different themes.

Of course, even for this magical combination of old - money and new - tech, it must highlight "handmade by British craftsmen".

Also, now you can finally control the air - conditioning and seats in CarPlay. It supports both screen adjustment and physical button adjustment. These interfaces are also adapted to the CarPlay UI. Looking at these smooth rounded rectangles, Brother Neck is really satisfied.

Of course, on CarPlay Ultra, you can also directly adjust the driving orientation, such as steering, suspension stiffness, exhaust sound, etc.

Siri in the iPhone can also be called up directly using the car infotainment system buttons. Although Siri may seem a bit useless to domestic friends, it should still be able to handle navigation.

Since it's CarPlay Ultra, can't the map be zoomed in and out with two fingers?

CarPlay Ultra also has some considerate details. For example, the host of Top Gear is British. So as soon as his iPhone is connected to the car, the spelling on the car becomes British, and the temperature display changes to Fahrenheit.

There's also a new widget function. You can slide up and down to select different widgets. From the demonstration, there seem to be only 8 widgets at present. Well, it's better than nothing, and they are quite useful.

There's also a design called "punch - through UI" in CarPlay Ultra. In CarPlay Ultra, Apple didn't redesign the UI for all interfaces. Instead, it retained some native interfaces.

For example, in the DBX Settings interface, when you click on the audio settings, it will jump to the native car infotainment system's settings screen. And when reversing, the car's 360 - degree image will appear, but the dashboard will still keep the CarPlay interface.

Apple: I retained some native interfaces so that you know you're using an Aston Martin.

This time, CarPlay Ultra is like an "Apple design package" provided by Apple for car manufacturers, allowing them to make in - depth customizations according to their own actual situations.

With different screens, they can develop systems with unique features but high consistency, which really gives the feeling of "changing cars without changing the experience".

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However