Wow! Good news for CarPlay users everywhere! January 14th, 2022, System1 announced that its MapQuest iOS application has been updated to include Apple CarPlay capabilities.
For those of us that have CarPlay, this is a huge improvement. Up until now most CarPlay users were downloading Apps and using them for Navigation. Waze and RV life are just a couple of examples of navigation apps that work with CarPlay.
I have had a decent navigation experience using the Waze App. I like some of its features, such as real time alerts. It works flawlessly with CarPlay and overall a very good App. I feel that the RV life/Trip Wizard Navigation, while it has some good features, was cumbersome, and to be quite frank, it needs a lot of work. After using it for nine months and over 5000 miles, our opinion was that it was not worth the price of the subscription. Hopefully in time that changes as it has a huge following. I know the folks at RV Life are working on improvements. To read our review of the RV Life/Trip Wizard App click here.
The absence of MapQuest from CarPlay was always a disappointment to me. It was extremely disappointing when I traded in my 2015 Ram 1500 for the 2020 Ram 2500 and I lost built in navigation functionality; which I believe was Garmin.
So, I have to say; I am thrilled that MapQuest has been added to CarPlay. I’m sure Tammy is even happier, since many times last year we had to have her use IPhone MapQuest app to validate that our CarPlay Navigation App was taking us the correct route (many times it was not). Now obviously, MapQuest has not evolved to the point where it is offering RV friendly routes like some of the other Apps out on the market. However, I have yet to encounter an issue where an App I was using alerted me to something that I would need to avoid. I’m not saying that that is not a nice feature to have, it is. But, I would rather have a good reliable Navigation App like MapQuest, than an unreliable RV friendly App.
So, moving forward I will be using MapQuest with Waze as a back-up. In addition, there are many free Apps that are RV friendly that I can use to pre-check my route just in case. All in All – great news for CarPlay users everywhere.
Leave a Reply