i play, you play…

i can’t remember if i covered this, so i’ll keep it brief…

…when quinn (nik’s x1) was in the shop for a couple of weeks we had to get her a couple of rentals, both of which happened to be nissans. when we returned the last one, i asked her over happy hour moments later if the experience made her wanna get a nissan, which got an emphatic “no”.

but she did lament she would miss carplay.

“carplay”, for all who don’t know, is a touch screen system whereby your apple iphone is basically beamed onto the touch screen of the vehicle where you can see your preferred maps program, most apps, music, etc. her x1 is a 2015 with navigation software from that year. do you know how much of austin has been built out in the last decade? more of it has gone out than up, and this pic tells you how much it’s gone up…

and just updating the factory software was around $350, so when i found out i could get a carplay upgrade aftermarket kit for just a bit more, it was a no brainer, because with that she could just beam her google maps up to the screen and it’s ALWAYS updated and it shows traffic! so, we started with this…

with all 2015 factory stuff, including a screen just barely larger than an iphone in landscape position. what you DON’T see is that the factory radio bezel is actually behind the center console, so we had to get it like this…

…and this…

…to get to the radio out and then the screen…

…so we could get to this…

and all was right with the world again!