Customers are demanding more features in their cars and General Motors will soon make an offer. Calling home is rarely done on a phone built into the dashboard, and recorded music is less often stored on CDs jammed into the glove box; but instead, the smartphone in the driver’s pocket serves both needs.
G.M. will offer a link that lets drivers control their phone and apps using the dashboard touch screen. Essentially, they are replacing the cellphone’s windshield cradle with software. A cellphone-style infotainment system can bring other advantages: the interface is typically more familiar to users, especially young ones, and its maps are fresher than those of onboard DVDs.
G.M.’s style of cellphone integration required some tough decisions: what buttons go on the dash and which on the screen, and how to make the resulting system feature-filled but not distracting. The result was a favorites screen, where the driver puts icons for the most commonly used numbers and apps, which also happens to be exactly what smartphones have been doing since the iPhone.
