In my older car, I have a mount for my phone because it does not have GPS. But it does work just fine for Bluetooth.

CarPlay is a lot easier to use. As was Android Auto when I had an Android phone.

These also give me greater flexibility with regard to mapping. I can, for example, simply tell my phone to navigate to my wife’s location. (Obviously not a dealbreaker to not have, but convenient!)

It can also be really nice to have a side-by-side view of the media player and the maps.

I dunno, it’s not like I wouldn’t buy a car that doesn’t have CarPlay, but that car would lose some points in my mind. It’s the kind of thing I didn’t think I’d appreciate as much until I had it.