"Oh, goodness, no! We're doing great! But we already took that money, and we know our customers are too weak and airheaded to put law enforcement or regulators on us, nor to sue us for more than a free Big Mac coupon settlement received only after several years of foot-dragging. And most all of you pathetic worms will keep paying us money. If you can't hear us laughing at you, that's because you're plugged into one of our other products like a mindless zombie."
Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
51–60 of 240 posts
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#52Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#53Off topic, but I cannot resist to comment on that line under the headline: > By Chris Welch, a reviewer specializing in personal audio and home theater. Since 2011, he has published nearly 6,000 articles, from breaking news and reviews to useful how-tos So 13 years, that’s around 460 publications per year. That sounds pretty high, you would have to be writing non stop for more than a decade. I know nothing about the…
In any case, the "website writer" jobs are known for overwork and low pay, so these numbers are par for the course.
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#54How much work could it possibly be to simply deprecate the software, let alone open-source it? Flipping the switch to break every existing device is frankly malicious.
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#55It would be easy to wipe proprietary IP from the latest version, shove whatever's left in a ZIP file, and upload it somewhere online.
It would be easy to do literally nothing except publish instructions on how to wipe the flash. That alone would be enough to allow some clever people online to get a normal Android installation onto these things.
Somehow, all of these options are too much for Spotify to stomach. Shameful.
Honestly, I forgot Car Thing even existed. I hardly remembered it at all. Given how my car is over 20 years old and I make extensive use of Spotify while driving, I imagine I was probably the target audience for Car Thing. Makes me wonder if Car Thing's biggest problem was marketing.
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#56It would be easy to flip a couple GitHub repos to "public" and call it a day. It would be easy to wipe proprietary IP from the latest version, shove whatever's left in a ZIP file, and upload it somewhere online. It would be easy to do literally nothing except publish instructions on how to wipe the flash. That alone would be enough to allow some clever people online to get a normal Android installation onto these thi…
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#57> Thank you for being on this journey with us, safe travels. I miss the era when I was a customer paying for a product. Now I'm apparently some kind of traveller that's on a journey with dozens of companies as they try to find local maxima of profit.
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#58I've really enjoyed using the Car Thing in my 14 year old Mazda CX9. My car shows no signs of failing, so I don't anticipate replacing it anytime soon for one with Carplay. The Car Thing is so much more convenient than unlocking iPhone with my face, opening spotify, futzing around on the phone to change songs or playlists or whatever. And its easily accessible to my passenger. Its a far better interface than phone fo…
You can probably get a really nice wireless CarPlay compatible head unit installed by a local shop for less than $1.5k to $2k. https://www.crutchfield.com/g_300/All-Car-Stereos.html
The head unit's software is definitely a little janky, but it doesn't really matter as all she uses it for is CarPlay anyway. It even supports wireless CarPlay so she doesn't need to take her phone out of her work bag - our brand new Kia with an expensive infotainment system doesn't even support wireless.
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#59The least they could do is credit accounts with Spotify Premium, for those that bought these devices.
Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Taking the piss, people paid $80 for these only 2 years ago. Make the waste of a PM that decided "it no longer aligned with the Spotify vision" tour the globe to personally pick up these things and hand people back their money.
You think a PM made this decision? Not at least someone at a VP or higher level?
This is a decision by the person who hires the PM. This is a VP/director-level decision.