What does “not a good system in an objective sense” even mean? In what objective measures do you see it fail in?
I and basically everyone I know love it because it and android auto are made by actual UI/UX designers that aren’t embedded systems engineers- resulting in an infotainment screen that isn’t a complete and utter piece of shit, and has actual functionality. I use my phone for everything in my car anyways, especially navigation, which historically is not included in a cars infotainment system without subscription and/or vendor lock. In that one singular regard, CarPlay is literally infinity percent better than every single built in infotainment system, because I can use my fucking cars built in screen instead of my tiny phone display to navigate using software that is infinitely more well made than whatever shit is on my cars native system (a brief note: my angry tone is not directed at you or your lack of agreement with my opinion, but at how awful I perceived the car infotainment systems of yore to be. God they were useless.)
For every objective measure I can come up with in my head and not type out, it passes with flying colors compared to the alternative- so I’d love to know where your perception differs.
My old car was a Toyota Rav4 2001 and my only usage of the infotainment system was to play music and get directions from google map (voice via bluetooth). I think the only controls I used on the head unit was the volume knob and the call button (to receive a call). I've never needed anything else.
This is not a counterpoint to your argument. It's more a context about the following question: Is the infotainment on a car actually useful?
See how defensive people get about CarPlay? Why so emotionally invested? It's buggy and sucks when you are driving someone else's car or a rental. You proved my point too, which is that it's liked because it's better than everything else, not because it's objectively good.
Carplay is sort of interesting because the UI does generally suck less than the UI of most infotainment systems. But it is much worse than my phone UI. Various apps seem to be missing their search abilities entirely.
It isn’t as bad as most built-in over developed systems, but it has not quite reached the perfection of a cheap phone mount and a car that is dumb enough to act as a Bluetooth speaker.