How CarPlay Works In A Ferrari FF, And How Apple Will Push New Third-Party Apps To The System

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Apple’s CarPlay is barely out in the wild, and only on display at the Geneva Auto Show with select partners including Ferrari. Our friends over at Engadget got to go hands-on with the in-car infotainment system replacement created by Apple, and are one of the few lucky outlets to have captured the experience on video.

In the video above, you can see Engadget’s Matt Brian taking CarPlay for a test ride in a gorgeous new Ferrari FF. It’s a bit strange to see the Ferrari take a back seat to the software running in its dash, but there’s a lot of interest in Apple’s brand new move into the vehicle information and entertainment software market.

During the demo, an Apple rep takes Brian through operating the system, which really does look like a complete reimagining of how iOS operates designed specifically for the car. As you can tell from the language used by the rep, the interface is intended to minimize distractions and make navigation easy.

Some of the more interesting features include Maps culling potential destinations from your email and your calendar, to try to make it so that you don’t have to dig down multiple levels or run complicated searches just to find out where you’re going. The music app also focuses heavily on the iTunes Radio experience it seems, to enable users to select something quickly and not have to fuss much after the fact. Siri offers hands-free control and the ability to interact with the various CarPlay features throughout the interface, and throughout Ferrari’s own in-car interface as well.

The Apple rep also gave a brief demo of third-party app iHeartRadio in action, and gave this succinct description of how third-party software will be made available for CarPlay in the future:

As the app gets updated to support CarPlay, it will just get updated on your phone and magically show up on your car

It remains unclear whether the API will be made open to all devs, or made available to select partners only.

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Samsung's new Smart Home service outlined, wants to connect to third-party services and products

We heard whispers that Samsung was planning big for CES, and we're not just talking TV panels. It's now revealed Smart Home, which attempts to tie together Smart TVs, home appliances and handheld smart devices into one single platform. Perhaps more importantly, the company says it's going to collaborate with third-party partners to extend the platform to products and services beyond only those with Samsung branding.

At the middle of it all, there will be a single app that (as the picture above suggests) will get its hooks into all your wearables, phones and white goods with a cloud-based server keeping your data moving. Device Control will let users adjust lighting and temperature management through your smartphone. Meanwhile, Smart Home will also included embedded voice commands: if you say "going out" into your Galaxy Gear, then the system will automatically turn off your smart lighting and "selected appliances", so presumably not your fridge. The, once out, Home View will let you tap into devices with cameras inside your house, offering up some not-so-covert video streams to your Galaxy phone. Alongside the new system, the company announced a new software protocol too, hoping to forge a new ecosystem -- with Samsung in the middle of it all. Expect to hear more later this week.

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Source: Samsung

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Fleksy Launches Its First SDK Partners On iOS To Demo The Power Of Third-Party Keyboards

San Francisco-based Fleksy has launched its in-app SDK integration for iOS via four new partners who implement the software in their own apps today. These include Launch Center Pro, Wordbox, GV Connect and BlindSquare, and were chosen from a number of potential partners to help Fleksy demonstrate the power and range of its virtual keyboard.

Operating on iOS as a replacement for a default system component like the keyboard is not an easy task; Apple will not allow third-party devs to replace some system features like the keyboard, browser, messaging or calling app in the same way that users can do so on Android. Fleksy is attempting to get around this limitation by providing an SDK that third-party devs can use to build Fleksy into their own apps one at a time, in much the same way that Google makes it possible for devs to build in an option to have their software open links in Chrome on iOS.

These four launch partner apps are all available right now in the App Store, and take advantage of Fleksy’s unique ability to interpret a user’s intended input regardless of where they strike on the screen to different ends. Fleksy co-founder and COO Ioannis Verdelis explained to me the selection process for this first batch of apps in an interview.

“We’ve had a lot of interest

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