Video: iOS May Soon Be in Your Car

Back in June of last year at Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference, the company announced its ambitious plans to bring its hit mobile operating system, iOS, to your car. But beyond detailing what apps you’d see in this technological integration and what car manufacturers Apple was partnering with, we haven’t heard much else since.

Until now, that is.

By posting a brief video on YouTube, app developer Steve Troughton-Smith has given the world an early look at what iOS in the Car integration might look like. This early version uses code from iOS 7.0.3, and predominantly focuses on expanding the map capabilities of your iPhone or iPad to a dashboard display.

The tech essentially mirrors the display of your device, but does so while highlighting more car-centric features, such as GPS navigation with voice search for finding locations, as well as pulling down traffic data and bookmarked spots around town.

The conventional iDevice home button also makes an appearance in iOS in the Car, and is used similarly to its traditional function of switching between applications. Not all apps were in place in this demonstration, but Apple has promised support for in-car calls, GPS navigation, messaging and audio playback. You can probably expect even more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5OZMu5u0yU

We also got an even newer look at iOS in the Car as it appears in the beta build of iOS 7.1, which is available to some app developers like Twitter user Denis Stas. This shows a familiar mapping layout of Apple Maps on a widescreen display, but with the iOS 7 design philosophy. This may be closer to what Apple is preparing to ship with iOS in the Car later this year (or even early next year).

But until we hear more from Apple, or the manufacturers preparing cars for use with the tech, that being Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, Ferrari, Chevrolet, Kia, Hyundai, Volvo, Jaguar amongst others, that’s all we know about iOS in the Car.

In the meantime, don’t try and hold up your phone for using the maps app while you drive – that’s a recipe for disaster. Then again, so is Apple Maps in general.