I recently installed the Pioneer 4100 NEX for CarPlay. There are a number of issues with it, such as Siri not being able to respond to my commands. When I ask for directions to such-and-such a place, Siri doesn't hear me. If I discconnect the iPhone 6 from the head unti, Siri hears me just fine. And there are other performance issues that make me unhappy. But that's not the main point of this discusion.
Pioneer issued a firmware update in December 2015, and my hope is that this firmware update will resolve some of the issues I'm having with CarPlay. I have been trying since then to update my firmware, and I am not there yet. Two calls to Pioneer, and a visit to my car stereo installer, and I thought I was ready to go with the update this morning. Unfortunately, if you use a Mac to download the firmware update, it won't work. I was able to format the USB drive properly (FAT-32), but because the Mac OS puts hidden files on the drive, the Pioneer unit cannot read the drive. I am able to make the hidden files visible through Terminal, but I am not able to delete them (as anyone who has tried will know).
So I'm going to have to find a friend with a PC so I can get the firmware on the drive without the hidden files. It just boggles my mind that an Apple product can't be maintained properly (with firmware updates) without using a PC! I would hope that Pioneer (and other CarPlay after-market companies) and Apple could get this figured out. How about a wireless firmware update instead of having to use a physical drive? That would eliminate this "hidden file" issue. Or, Apple, how about letting me delete these hidden files from an external drive?
