Cadillac ATS Entertainment & the Apple iPhone

Last evening we found that enjoying songs from an Apple iPhone on the Cadillac ATS Entertainment system by Bose requires that you know one thing — who is in control?

We are enjoying a test drive of a 2014 Cadillac ATS Premium model courtesy of Crest Cadillac of Plano, Texas.  Please see 2014 Cadillac ATS Test Drive and Buying a Cadillac ATS, Wife Version for more info on this test.

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On a drive last evening we selected what seemed a simple task:  plug an iPhone in via USB to the Cadillac ATS and enjoy playing music from the iPhone.

In the big picture, this immediately appeared to work, simple and easy.  The entertainment recognized the iPhone as an iPod (wrong, but okay), and when we selected music to play on the iPhone, music played through the Cadillac ATS’ entertainment system.

Then we noted that the correct Artist and Song info, although visible on the iPhone, was not always visible on the ATS entertainment system (showed no artist found).  There was a place for it to show — and I should take a moment to share that I love that entertainment has become so interactive so that we can use a phone as a song database and play it in the car — but the place it should show the info shared that it didn’t know the info even through it was clear the iPhone did know.

If we selected Browse songs, it would pause for a while, then allow us to browse by Artist, or Album.  But if we selected a song on Browse, it would begin to rapidly sequence through songs, playing only a snippet then going to the next song (as if in Seek mode).

We tried a different iPhone, with different result — the song data was visible, showing Artist and Album, etc., and the music played properly from browse.

Then we closed the iPhone music player on the first iPhone, plugged it back in, and — not making any selections on the iPhone — used the Cadillac ATS entertainment system to select which song to play.  Now the song and artist information showed correctly from the first Apple iPhone as well, and everything worked as expected.

Lesson Learned?

Don’t try to control the iPhone from both the iPhone screen and the ATS entertainment system screen at the same time — just plug in the iPhone (without music playing) and then use the ATS Entertainment system touch screen to control it.

Meanwhile, the Cadillac ATS continues to impress.  We had a lovely evening out, and are enjoying the light, agile sports sedan.

 

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