Great news for all you Apple users. Hot off the heels of the big Apple Watch reveal at the Spring Forward event yesterday, Apple’s Tim Cook announced that “more than 40 new models” of vehicles will be shipping with CarPlay-enabled dashboards by the end of 2015.

If you’re not familiar with CarPlay, it’s the OS installed in the infotainment system of a car. It allows your connected iPhone to run a simplified version of iOS 8 on the infotainment display. It allows iPhone users to operate the most important functions of your phone – Maps, phone, music, and messages. For obvious safety reasons, CarPlay locks the driver out of any apps and functions that may distract the driver. Basically, if it’s not related to driving and getting around, then it’s not there. You’ll have to wait till you’re stopped before you engage in a heated friend-losing argument over the colour of that dress on Twitter.

As for which cars and manufacturers will be shipping with CarPlay, Cook also says, “every major car brand has committed to delivering CarPlay”. This is not entirely true as Toyota (and presumably Lexus), only the world’s largest auto manufacturer, will not be using CarPlay and will stick with their proprietary infotainment systems.

If you’re not an Apple user, fear not! CarPlay will be just one of multiple infotainment options available, Google’s Android infotainment systems will be available simultaneously or instead of Apple’s CarPlay. How you like ‘dem apples?

Man, the future is indeed awesome.

Photo courtesy of Apple

Photo courtesy of Apple

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