My personal view of CarPlay is that it looks nice on the screen but generally speaking the native phone (Bluetooth) integration beats it in most departments.
In the Golf it only works when you have the phone connected via usb. When connected, it disables Bluetooth. Some of the steering wheel buttons that you’d otherwise use to handle phone calls / music, etc then don’t work either. The MFD doesn’t show anything other than “CarPlay”.
I mostly used it for Podcasts and Spotify. However I found Spotify very buggy on it. Sometimes requiring disconnect / reconnect 2-3 times in order to get it to work.
The apps you can use on it are totally controlled by Apple. Only last week WhatsApp finally began working on it. But like with native messages, it’s a bit limited. You can’t read messages, you have to rely on Siri to read new messages to you and for dictating new messages. And I personally hate voice control interfaces. They rarely work (for me!).
So at the moment I think CarPlay is a nice to have rather than an essential. Until manufacturers improve the integration of it with their own native setups, it’s too compromised.
