Apple CarPlay to bring iPhone experience to your next car's dashboard

Apple announced Monday that several car manufacturers are rolling out its CarPlay. Ferrari, Mercedes and Volvo will premiere the new feature this week at the Geneva auto show.

CNET previously reported on Apple's plans for an iOS feature in automobiles called "iOS in the car." The concept remains the same: replication of a simplified iOS interface into a touchscreen display in the car, plus extensive voice command. Apple's focus is simplicity and safety, with no complex interface elements and, seemingly, no virtual keyboards.

Instead, many actions will be made easier thanks to some intelligent coding. For example, CarPlay can look at your calendar and emails to anticipate upcoming meetings and appointments, suggesting directions to the appropriate destinations. Similarly, Siri can read any incoming text messages and let you dictate a response. Calling, of course, is possible as well, through voice command.

And it wouldn't be an iPhone experience without music, and you'll be able to listen to music and podcasts plus Spotify and iHeartRadio. However, those appear to be the only non-Apple apps that will be available through CarPlay, at least for now.

It remains to be seen whether there will be an API exposed to allow other third-party developers to get in on the fun. But CNET expects to learn quite a bit more between now and when the first cars hit dealers later in 2014 from manufacturers like Ferrari, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo. (Just about every other marque will follow suit next year.)

To be clear, this experience is completely driven by the phone -- more specifically, an iPhone 5, 5S or 5C. The cars themselves won't be running iOS, just feeding the signal provided by the phones, which will be connected to the car via Lightning cable.