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Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

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Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#131

Post by micromacrofoot »

sbarre wrote: post #101

What I always find so disappointing in these scenarios is when companies are too chicken-shit to just give a reasonable honest explanation to requests like open sourcing this to avoid them all turning into e-waste. It feels like adding insult to injury for everyone who put faith in the product/company. I've been a long-time premium subscriber of Spotify, but I've already decided I will never buy a hardware device fro…

The honest explanation is that they lost so much money on the idea that they grimace at spending even another hour of developer time on them.

They don't care about waste, they don't care about the consumers, all decisions boil down to profit.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#132

Post by ClarityJones »

crazygringo wrote: post #61
ClarityJones wrote: post #13

It's one thing to discontinue selling the product. It's another to discontinue service (i.e. Music) to the product. Did the hardware generate a lot of support requests? Does it require too much engineering to keep secure with updates, etc.?

Seriously. I can't repeat this enough: there needs to be LEGISLATION against this. If a product needs cloud functionality to operate, there needs to be a legal minimum number of years (5?), and the company should be required to prominently advertise the length of time (so they can compete to guarantee for longer periods of time, like 10 years).

I think the courts are much better suited to resolving this kind of issue, because it's very product and advertising specific. Courts could easily rule that e.g. Spotify breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, or possibly civil fraud, or something else, by failing to prominently disclose the minimum number of years / bricking the devices too soon.

A judicial solution would be much more measured and flexible.

Unfortunately, lawyers and courts have a undeservedly bad reputation which is often created by poor legislation which is beset by political motives and disadvantaged by having to draft prospective rules that can apply to a broad set of differing circumstances.

Edit: Why don't court do this more? Often because of terrible, over-reaching legislation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#134

Post by yareal »

It's surprising to me that people see examples like this and somehow still think, "well, it's one bad apple. One bad decision from one company" rather than a systematic problem with incentive structures.

Capitalism, and particularly capitalism that emphasizes profit, warps incentives away from building things for people.

And we have other functioning models! Open source is about as close to anarchist theory in practice as there is, for example. "Wellbeing for all" isn't some pipe dream we could never achieve, FOSS is built on the principle of "I'll build it, use it if you like. Help me if you can."

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#135

Post by yareal »

gruez wrote: post #125
mkopec wrote: post #94

I firmly believe that permanent key fusing to lock bootloaders should be outlawed. At the very least the keys (and schematics) should be released once the device reaches EOL. Otherwise we're just manufacturing e-waste.

Realistically how many people are going to bother reflashing their devices? This case is exceptional because it was EOLed so early, but for the typical phone that reaches EOL in 2 years I doubt more than 1% of people are going to make use of this ability.

You are saying you can reduce e waste by whole integer percent with a simple bit of legislation? That's a clear win.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#136

Post by mkopec »

gruez wrote: post #125
mkopec wrote: post #94

I firmly believe that permanent key fusing to lock bootloaders should be outlawed. At the very least the keys (and schematics) should be released once the device reaches EOL. Otherwise we're just manufacturing e-waste.

Realistically how many people are going to bother reflashing their devices? This case is exceptional because it was EOLed so early, but for the typical phone that reaches EOL in 2 years I doubt more than 1% of people are going to make use of this ability.

I think if the process was made easy, it would save quite a bit more than 1% of these devices from the landfill, assuming you have enough power users to build a community. Plenty of people flash their chromebooks to MrChromebox UEFI to give them a new life, because it's easy enough for mere mortals, and because Google doesn't lock them down.

I believe if given the tools, people would gladly donate their time to make something fun with it. Heck, that's what I do in my spare time. But it's impossible if everything is completely locked down, as if a music streaming box contains nuclear launch codes that must be protected at all costs.

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#137

Post by Aardwolf »

rkangel wrote: post #127
Aardwolf wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just stop this nonsense of needing updates to keep things working, which then allows updates that break things. Have proper standards how music is transmitted. Have devices support those standards. Have those standards be long-running.

Any connected device NEEDS continual updates in order to continue to be secure. This is particularly true of internet connected devices, but is also true for IOT devices that only connect to the internet indirectly. Security holes get found, if you can't patch and update devices in the field then you are leaving your customers unprotected.

> Any connected device NEEDS continual updates in order to continue to be secure.

And I feel that updates are being abused too much by device makers now:

-allows making devices worse, say "optimizing" the UI e.g. to make you spend more time in the parts they (not necessarily the user) want you to see

-allows releasing half-finished games since they can just be updated later anyway

-allows breaking old functionality for whatever reason

-allows the device makers to choose when to do the update rather than the user, say just when you want to start playing a game

It's a shame there's no less invasive way to ensure devices are secure. It sure is convenient for the device makers that the solution to security also gives them continuous control over your device's features and when you can actually use it

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#139

Post by Macha »

rhplus wrote: post #93

Not surprising, given the awkward position the product was in, targeting customers who don’t already have CarPlay or Android Auto (lower end of the market), but are also willing to pay for Spotify Premium and a good smartphone data plan (higher end of the market).

I guess the US has more of a culture of buying new cars but here in Ireland, basically everyone I know has some form of unlimited data and no one has a car from the last two years. Our new car sales are about 120,000/yr compared to a licensed vehicle count of 2,800,000, which implies that most cars get driven for 20 years before being retired, which from the distribution of cars I see on the road seems entirely plausible. Our registration plates have the year of first licensing printed prominently on them, and there are many 2008 cars still on the road.

In short, the top ~10% might have modern cars. The top ~90% have unlimited data or data where the limits will not be reached by playing Spotify. I could see someone going "Hmm, that's 80% of the market we could sell this too".

Re: Spotify Car Thing will be discontinued

#140

Post by Macha »

bmelton wrote: post #119
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a very US-centric view or the world. If you make a decent amount of money you have to spend it on a car? Lots of people don’t care about cars and/or don’t spend a enough time in them to justify spending a lot on it.

What a weird critique. American or not, if you don't have a car you're probably not in the target market for a CarThing I purchased mine without any intent on using it in a car, and in fact I never did, but it was clear that I was engaging in out-of-bounds behavior in doing so.

The American assumption is that cars are purchased new, and are recent enough to have integrated android auto/carplay.
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