Have you driven a new car lately and wondered exactly why in the world someone decided a certain piece of tech belonged in it? It turns out that you’re not the only one, and we’re beginning to see some of this tech slowly leave cars. This also applies to Ram, which is now realizing that passenger dashboard screens might have been a mistake.
Last week, I had a hectic period of about 24 hours when I hustled with a bunch of other journalists and YouTubers to drive all of Ram’s hot new Heavy Duty trucks. Out there in the warm desert, I learned that Ram absolutely hit these trucks out of the park. Ram’s newest heavy pickup trucks make towing so easy and so comfortable that your grandma can do it and feel confident.
These trucks are also packed with fresh technology, too. You can drive one of these things with a 19,500-pound tractor hooked to the bed while the radar cruise control still works just fine. These trucks will help you back a trailer, see past the super-high hood, and immerse you in heavy bass tracks while cooling your tush from your leather throne.
It’s incredible how far vehicle technology has come, but some of it has felt unnecessary. One of Ram’s tech features is the availability of a 10.25-inch infotainment display just for your front seat passenger. Your passenger can use this screen to watch a movie or play games through HDMI, set navigation, play music, or play around with the truck’s cameras.
That sounds pretty cool and all, but do you really need it? Automakers are finding out that the answer might be no.
No Buttons For You
Ram isn’t the only automaker jamming arguably too much technology in vehicles. Back in 2021, I had the privilege of being one of the first to test out the then-new Volkswagen ID.4 AWD. I’m one of the few people who actually love the ID.4 AWD, but there was something that really bothered me about it.
For several decades, cars have had really simple ways to manipulate the controls for their HVAC systems, audio systems, and other vehicle features. But now everyone seems to be obsessed with minimalism. Volkswagen began ditching buttons for touch capacitive sliders and options behind menus on its screens. The brand even fussed with its steering wheels, replacing perfectly functional buttons with more touch capacitive pieces. Admittedly, the touch stuff in itself wasn’t too bad, but then VW neglected to give these pieces backlighting. Nobody wants to turn on a cabin light just to adjust temperature, Volkswagen.
If you visit a Volkswagen forum, you’ll find some bickering about this. While some people don’t mind the capacitive buttons, others hate how they accidentally hit the touch capacitive steering wheel buttons while turning or how they have to physically look at a control to hit it with their finger because Volkswagen decided to put the headlight switch onto a button bank rather than a dial or stalk.
Keep in mind that Volkswagen has also tried eliminating rear window switches on the driver door. Instead, you have just two switches and once again another touch capacitive switch to turn on the rear windows.
I know I’m beating on Volkswagen a lot here, but this has been a thing across lots of automakers. Tesla is infamously allergic to buttons and putting basically everything behind a central screen. BMW and Hyundai also leaned heavily on deleting buttons and putting their functions behind screens. [Ed Note: And Tesla is pretty bad about this, too, with the Cybertruck turn signal switches being the worst of any mainstream car IMO. –DT].
Who Asked For This?
But then you just have even more arguably useless features. Late last year, I flew out to France to test the new Audi S5 and found that car to be laden with tech that I wonder how many people actually use. Some of the new tech was legitimately cool, like the headlights and taillights that were basically super bright displays. Then, the lack of buttons reared their ugly head again. The worst of all was the passenger screen. It has a similar list of functions like the passenger screen that you get in a Ram truck, but I often wondered who, exactly, was it for?
It was fun to play with for a few minutes, but then I took note that I was still holding my phone while I was fiddling with the passenger screen. What’s stopping me from just using my phone for entertainment as I have regularly since I bought an iPhone 4 back in 2012? It’s not like the screen does anything my phone doesn’t.
This doesn’t even get into how pointless native operating systems tend to be inside car infotainment systems. Most people will immediately turn on Android Auto or Apple CarPlay while fewer people like myself will still use old-school Bluetooth. Do you even know all of the different apps your car’s infotainment system has? The last time I used a Ford infotainment system, its keyboard defaulted to alphabetical order rather than qwerty. Sure, that’s minor, but minor annoyances add up! Now we have Stellantis products that glitched out with pop-ups and BMWs with subscription-based physical options.
My least favorite automotive development has to be always-illuminated dashboard (i.e. gauge cluster displays that require backlighting always). I’ve lost count of how many cars I’ve seen driving around with their lights off, but their drivers were probably blissfully unaware because their dashboards were lit up like a Christmas tree. Sure, there’s a little green indicator to tell you that your lights are on, but that’s clearly not enough. [Ed Note: Also DRLs have become really bright making it seem like headlights are on when they’re not. The result: Loads of cars driving around at night with no taillights!-DT].
I won’t even get into voice or gesture controls, but I think you get my point. There’s a lot of unnecessary technology in cars today and few drivers are happy about it. Reportedly, JD Power has noticed that your satisfaction with tech has gone down and so have automakers.
[Ed Note: I just want to jump in here and note that I recently drove an updated Rivian R1T and R1S, and their over-use of tech — like idiotic electric vents, electric center console lid latch, and electric door latches — actually made them feel dated. These once-charmingly gadgety features now just feel old to me. -DT]
Volkswagen Gives Back Buttons
A couple of weeks ago, Autocar released a bombshell of a report seeming to suggest that Volkswagen regrets taking your buttons away. Now, the company is running back to buttons. VW design chief Andreas Mindt said, via Autocar:
“We will never, ever make this mistake any more. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing any more. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this. Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car.”
Ram’s Passenger Screen Is Lacking Fans
During the Ram trip, I spoke with Doug Killian, Chief Vehicle Synthesis Engineer, during a nice press dinner. Our conversation was more casual. I love seeing what engineers do in their jobs and what gets them excited. Killian was refreshingly honest, admitting that not everything is a home run. In our conversation, he noted that Ram might have discovered that passenger screens are a piece of unnecessary technology.
Ram found out from its customers that few people actually use the passenger screen. As I noted before, everyone is carrying around a phone nowadays, so a dashboard screen for the passenger is quite redundant.
Ram found out that a passenger screen might not be as useful as putting screens in the backseat. Most of the time, the passengers in the rear of the vehicle will be kids who will want to use those screens for movies and games. However, the person sitting up front will likely be an adult who already has a phone.
Another journalist at the event noted another problem. Some adults, and this includes me, sometimes get carsick when trying to operate one of these passenger screens. In my case, there’s even a 50/50 chance I’ll get sick using my phone as a passenger in a car. So, if you’re an automaker like Ram, you have a set of people who have no need to use the screen because they have a phone and other people who won’t use the screen because they don’t want to barf.
Ram also found that some people would rather just have another place for storage rather than another screen. In Ram trucks without the passenger screen, that part of the dashboard opens up to become a handy place to store sunglasses, lip balm, sunscreen, and other daily items that you don’t want to shove into a glovebox. This legitimately useful space gets lost to become that screen that apparently a number of people don’t like.
Nothing is set in stone yet, but Killian says Ram might explore options on what to do about the screen. Perhaps we might not see the screen in future trucks or maybe customers will get an easy choice. Want a Longhorn but not the passenger screen it comes with? Maybe that’ll be an option in the future. For now, Ram is aware that the screen seemingly has few fans and that the screen might have been unnecessary. It seems like more research will be needed.
Either way, these recent events are signaling that automakers are becoming aware that there might be a thing as too much tech. It’s seriously awesome what the cars of today are capable of, but maybe cars should be cars and smartphones might be smartphones. Maybe we’ll begin to see more automakers realizing that sometimes simpler really is better. Sometimes, if it’s not broken maybe it really doesn’t need to be fixed.
I want all my products to be themselves. I hate IoT. I don’t want a smart microwave or a smart toilet brush. Just let stuff be stuff. Nothing needs to be a smartphone except a smartphone.
Now get off my lawn!
Bosch dishwashers lost a sale when they put the delayed start onto an app instead of a button on the control panel.
But it is not all bad. I like the washer/dryer app I have to ping me when the load is done. My laundry is upstairs and I’m not always within ear shot of it.
I loved the HVAC controls in my 1994 Chevy K1500 Cheyenne Work Truck (It’s name was Truck. My then 3 year old nephew named it). Buttons for vent, floor, defrost, separate recirculate from the A/C controls, and you could choose any combo, and the amount of blending of floor/vent/defrost. I can’t do that with my i3 or my blushing bride’s Pacifica hybrid, with all their fancy controls. The climate controls lasted the life of Truck (350k miles), and I never even had to replace the resistors for the blower. Granted, Truck might have been a unicorn, because the 4.3 V6, transmission and transfer case lasted survived until the end. Sadly, Truck was totalled in a collision, T-boned by a stolen car driven by an unlicensed teen auto thief. GM knocked it out of the park with those HVAC controls. I have always appreciated any vehicle control knobs/buttons that I can operate without looking at them, and I would suppose that I am not alone.
The hvac controls on my FRS were in the perfect position to adjust with my wrist resting on the shift knob. Id like to someday replace it with a newer GR86, but I’m sad that I’m going to lose that level of intuitive control.
I’ve always been fascinated with dash buttons. Sitting in a ’61 T-Bird at the age of nine, I was blown away by the gleaming console, and WOW, there were lighted buttons above the windshield, like an airplane! Buying my SAAB 9000 in the late Eighties and counting 60 buttons on the dash, mostly on the double-DIN AM/FM/cassette player and its matching graphic equalizer. By comparison, the beige molded plastic buttons, large but pitiful, on Japanese cars of the period made me sad, so I made sure not to buy one. Not just the quantity of buttons but the quality mattered. Nicer cars had nicer buttons, with better feel. All touchscreens look and work the same – don’t they? All the makers could do to imitate progress now is to make their dash displays brighter, bigger, more eye-catching – which is an obvious recipe for death and destruction.
Have you seen the overhead panel on a Grenadier? So cool. Major button envy.
Touch panels are not all the same. The kenwood in my vw i getting crappy already. Crestron is good, but lots of crappy. Looking at you Logitech Tap
Good news from VW! The past 15 years of “progress” in auto interiors has left me cold. I’ve come to believe that the middle of the last decade was the most driver-friendly. Take my 2014 Ford, for instance. The generic Focus/Escape/C-Max dash has it all: a medium-sized touchscreen that can handle all HVAC and audio functions, and others; a full set of buttons and dials for the HVAC and seat heat; an IPod-style set of audio controls on the sloping shelf that braces your hand while you use the touchscreen; real steering wheel buttons; and voice controls, which I haven’t tried. I’ve sung to myself in cars, but I avoid talking to myself out loud. Nice job, Ford!
It’s a pleasure compared to my other temple of dashboard buttons, my Mercedes GLK. There must be two or three dozen buttons on the center stack, all in neat rows, small and hard to read buttons. They’re expensive-feeling buttons, though, with a crisp touch and a firm detent. Thankfully, most are completely unnecessary, like the numeric keypad where you can input phone numbers of all your contacts, or the audio controls that are duplicated by the 8″ low-rez touchscreen and its COMAND system, a large directional button/joystick where the shift lever isn’t. That’s more ergonomic than a touchscreen, but it still demands reading comprehension as you drive. The HVAC control panel is well designed, but it’s tucked down low above the console where it’s hard to reach or see. Four wands off the steering column complete the complicated control suite. There’s probably voice command, too, but…
I bought the GLK at nine years old, after considering a newer Volvo XC60. I didn’t want to endanger myself with distraction while navigating the central touchscreen. There were only five real buttons beside the screen: seat heat, emergency flashers, defrost, the things Swedes really need in a hurry. I’ve learned the Mercedes system, but when I drive the C-Max I’m always impressed about how well Ford executed the ergonomics and usability- even better than Mercedes. At the time, they made beautiful interiors from elegant materials, while Ford was doing just the opposite.
At least it has something for them and you don’t have to tweet Elon to tell him to put your left blinker on remotely.
Yay for more buttons. Volkswagen has been trending the wrong direction on this for a while, glad to see a 180.
I drive a 23 arteon. It seems to have been made at the crossroads between the older button heavy interface and the “everything on the screen” interface of the golf R and the ID stuff.
My car has controls for the a/c and heated seats and whatnot that aren’t part of the main screen which is good but most of them are touch control which is less good. At least my Hvac stuff is backlit, unlike some recent VWs. I generally set the temp at 70 and forget it, so it doesn’t really come up much except heated seats and defrost in the winter.
It has a physical volume knob, 4 real window switches, a physical drive mode selector button, and a normal shift lever. It has an E parking brake, but unfortunately I don’t think brake levers will be returning.
The steering wheel controls are a mixed bag. They react when touched, but they are separated from each other and give some tactile feedback (they kinda press in a little). I’d imagine it depends heavily on hand size and where you grip the wheel, but I’ve only accidently activated a button once in a about 30k miles driven. I’d still rather have physical buttons on the wheel, but they work okay.
I decided it wasn’t a deal breaker and bought the car this way, but I would NOT have purchased if it had an all touch/screen interface like I saw in the golf R and the electric VWs. If they go back to physical buttons in future models, I’ll be a happy boy.
Maybe they can bring back wagons while they’re at it. Love my arteon, but the wagon variants I saw in England were sex on wheels.
Remember when BMW introduced a knob like ‘mouse’ user interface? People hated them
I like the one in my Mercedes. It sits right where my hand drapes over the armrest. It feel heavy and moves and clicks with authority. It demands a little too much reading off the screen, but you learn common commands by muscle memory. Like my favorite: from Audio, my favorite menu setting, click right four times to reach and click System, then right once and click to Turn Screen Off.
I drove one once.
Didn’t dare touch that control.
Even the center screen on the Ram is poor. At least on the 2020 model, Car Play or AA can only take up, at most, the top half of the screen. So while the truck is bouncing and jostling down the road, you have nothing to brace your hand against while trying to hit the bottom row of AA (which is consequently in the middle of the screen) and the button sizes are based on a 6″ screen rather than the advertised 12″ screen, which ends up being smaller than the 8″ screen in the early JL Wranglers. Just spent 15 hours towing in a Ram and there were a lot of accidental button presses.
What I really want are context sensitive buttons like on ATMs. They give physical controls that adapt to what’s on the screen. The dial on the Mach-E is pretty nifty, too.
This is a real problem, especially in a truck. On a rough road, reaching the screen at arm’s length would feel like a sudden attack of tremors. I like the little shelf that Ford built into the center stack of mid-2010s compacts. It holds the audio system buttons, but also give you a place to lay a finger or two to stabilize your hand. Today’s screens, even in some of the same models, don’t have that.
I own a pre-refresh Model Y. Not to stan Tesla, but the old Model Y and Model 3 do have 4 individual window switches and two multifunction scroll wheels that click all sorts of ways on the steering wheel. Those two also have a column shifter and a turn signal lever. Plus the UI is laid out okay for the stuff that gets used regularly. So those two have some buttons.
Just give me Android Auto on a screen that’s easy to read and a physical volume and HVAC controls. That’s it
This 1000%. Let Google or Apple handle the stuff they spend more time/money on than the car makers do on their entire engineering and design departments.
From what I can tell, buttons cost more, when multiplying by several million vehicles to sell, than creating the software to include those functions on the screen that is already there.
And, worse, those buttons don’t wear out fast enough to require replacement!
Now, if I could ask a mfr to include buttons and make the monitor smaller, and I would pay extra for it, would they do it for me?
Where are the aftermarket button-makers?
Guess I’m stuck with my ergonomically better 23-year-old car.
Yep, not only do those switches cost money, but they need a wiring harness that connects to all of them. It’s a cost savings that they market as advanced technology.
At the same time, they have added voice recognition systems, so I’m guessing there is a faction within the engineering groups that says it’s all fine because you should just use the voice controls. But who wants to memorize the commands, or try to use it in a car where passengers are carrying on a conversation?
“the voice commands on this works so well in our quiet lab!”
What about when the music is up loud?
I have already told my wife that whatever I get next will probably be used and older than she would like, because I view no button, all touchscreen controls as ‘unsafe to drive’.
My Lexus can probbaly go 300k miles if I want and I keep up with maintainence, so this isn’t imminent.
Driver controls should be be physical and use memory, not on a touchscreen (or even worse – finding them in a sub-menu).
I’ve been happier with my old car(1997) than the rentals due to the screens and adjustments that I don’t have or need in my old car. Also as everything and a kitchen sink aren’t connected to the ECU then I don’t have to worry about the Check engine light being anything other than a real problem.
“Ram’s newest heavy pickup trucks make towing so easy and so comfortable that your grandma can do it and feel confident.”
She’s been dead for 30 years and never held a driver’s license when she was alive, so this is an absolute miracle!! Welcome back, grandma!
Umm… I guess you should get zombie granny her license. Can’t have her trying to drive without one
Zombie driving is required where I’m from
Florida?
Maryland
Ew.
AT LAST I HAVE BEEN VINDICATED!
I probably haven’t used half of my technology in my DD Vehicross I bought new and have driven for 24 years. So I am all in on reducing technology. I mean a manufacturer will switch from a metal screw to a plastic screw to save a nickel and figure a couple hundred deaths are cheaper. How much money do you save eliminating a 10.25in passenger entertainment screen? Incidentally Mercedes if you have a 50/50 chance of decorating my dashboard while using the screen you also have a 50/50 chance of walking the rest of the way. But really I own it, I am driving it, I am picking the radio station and I don’t want anyone else being able to play anything else and interfere with my listening pleasure. There is a reason I buy two seaters or remove back seats of my cars that have them.
They offer the junk, and for the same reason, they offer any high-end trims like King Ranch or Tungsten. They are very profitable. The higher up the package hierarchy you get, the higher the margins tend to be because they appeal to people who are less concerned with getting a good value per dollar and are more concerned with spending money in the most visible way possible and which vehicle they select is a big part of their identity.
Effective fashion/branding preys on consumers’ insecurities and desire to be perceived in a certain way. The most profitable thing you can sell is something purchased as a fashion statement. With the right logo, a $5 T-shirt can be sold for $500. A $40k truck with $10k worth of badges, bling, and modest upgrades will net an additional $40k in profit.
The bigger the badge, the bigger the sucker.
You are correct but when does the price finally become too high? People can’t afford housing, food, gas but $1,000 a month 80 month payments are fine. Banks need to be limited on what payment and period they can offer people so they don’t ruin themselves financially.
Corporations don’t care about anyone. Not the consumer, worker, or anyone other than the shareholder. If killing people were profitable, they would do so without any considerations. That is more or less their legal mandate.
The only thing that would convince a corporation to limit the price of something is if doing so increases its stock value. Stock value doesn’t go up based on units sold; it goes up based primarily on the return on any given investment, which equates to profit margin. Luxury goods have better profit margins so that is what everyone wants to sell. Selling high value items only happens as a last resort.
Corporations are shopping for their preferred consumers, not the other way around. Corporations vs consumers isn’t a negotiation of equals. The corporations have all the information and all the power.
I’ve been doing product/brand development and marketing for 30 years. I recommend everyone eliminate any idea of brand loyalty they might ever have had. It isn’t reciprocal. All brand loyalty is a form of Stockholm syndrome. Buy things purely for their value based on good research—even your toys. Be open to buying things that seem less than ideal if they represent good value for money. Buy used whenever possible as long as it makes financial sense.
There is a reason corporations often spend more money on marketing than engineering.
I miss simple. Look at a 2001 Corolla’s center stack – three grabby, detented wheels and three big buttons covered everything you needed from the HVAC system. Never even had to look. Touchscreens take concentration, which should be 100% given to the road.
People keep taking out loans to pay for it, they’ll keep shoving more useless junk in there because it’s profitable to do so.
One of things that journalists tend to pan, but real people who buy things generally love about Lexus products is that they tend to be a little less “glossy” but far more tactile. They had a few years of failed interfaces, but lately they have been knocking it out of the park for combining capacitive and physical in a logical way that allows to easy use and uncluttered IP’s. The LX700h dash feels a little derpy in the “everything is computer” age but good lord is it easy to learn and use and it does everything you want it to.
Exactly how about user surveys separate from the manufacturer about what you wish you knew before buying?
If all manufacturers would make decisions based on effective user interactions instead of seeing the screen-based solutions as a way to cut the cost of building the vehicle we would not be in the mess we currently find ourselves.
I remember “touch” controls on certain products being a gimmick back in the 80s/early 90s, not a lot of products though. People didn’t seem to really care about it (or for it) back then… so … back to buttons.
I vividly remember a 3rd party company advertising controllers for Sega Genesis where everything was touch based. I thought it would be cool, then I tried one, it was awful. How can I play Road Rash II with controls that sensitive??!!
I only need touch control on one unit and I only need lotion to operate it.
Hours of entertainment for $5.99. Too bad Sears went out of business. Free material included with catalog
Andreas Mindt said, via Autocar:
“We will never, ever make this mistake any more. On the steering wheel, we will have physical buttons. No guessing any more. There’s feedback, it’s real, and people love this. Honestly, it’s a car. It’s not a phone: it’s a car.”
THAT is a refreshing piece of honesty. THANK YOU Andreas!
Forget not a phone it is not a computer. Tesla designs a car computer for tech nerds. Not a hot market. Now they need a EV design with a real car vibe.
Give me buttons or give me public transit
Not going that far. Give me buttons or give me used.
If only customers and journalists had been telling manufacturers this for years….
Every expert in every field of commercialism starts to feel they know more than the customer. And they start trying to predict incoming trends. Sometimes they are right mostly they are wrong. The big problem they never admit wrong step back up to when we were right and adapt they try to adapt from the mistake steps. Bad idea.
It even comes down to dumb BS, like automatic dash lights. While mine lets me adjust the sensitivity in reacting to exterior light levels, even the least sensitive setting is way too annoyingly frequent to change and I can’t seem to fully defeat the feature other than by turning up the display to permanent full brightness when I want to turn it way down and never want it full bright, especially where it’s tied to the damn touch screen that I should be able to uncouple at a minimum and should really be able to be turned off while still functioning to play music. I don’t even really need it for the GPS as I can display directions in the gauge cluster. I covered the damn sensor in electrical tape, but it still changes brightness, if not as often. I can’t think of a damn thing beyond engine management controls that is programmed to be automatic that works anywhere close to my preferences.
Yes, most screens in cars are too bright at night, even in low. Some have an ‘off’ function, but then you lose some info you want.
I have had this issue in every rental for several years now.
I need to look into if there’s a way to shut off the display while it still operates, but if there is, it isn’t obvious. I don’t know who needs these things to be so bright.
The use of “haptic” when describing controls with no feedback drives me nuts. One of those, once you notice it, you can’t un-notice it type of things.
I’m still annoyed that I can’t use my basic iPod classic on new cars anymore. I just want to play the library of music on there, I don’t want to stream from my phone!
New cars coming with charge-only USB ports is baffling. Even more baffling is when they’re USB-C and only charge at 5V 5A. At that point it’s only slowing the battery’s discharge, not actually charging it.
Honestly if I can’t use a USB flash drive in a stereo newer than like, 2013, I hate it. I don’t want the car to connect to a phone so it can take away controls and invade my privacy even more.
Yeah agree that is why I drive a 2001 and the only way to charge my phone is thru the cigarette lighter. And yes the cigarette lighter and ashtray still works.
I use a flash drive as well. I do not connect my phone to the car.
Anyway, sell USB-C to USB-A adapters, and they work well for me. It’s specifically a USB-C to USB female adapter. They can be charge only, or charge and data. A lot of retailers sell them.
even with the correct adapter, the newer head units don’t recognize it as a device with music on it.
Mine technically still works, but, even if I leave it plugged in all the time, every time I turn the car back on, it has to start ‘indexing’ all over again.
Gah! This is why I moved my music library to my phone. Sometimes progress…isn’t.
That is why my boombox with cassette player rides the passenger seat. Yes, it eats batteries and tapes and the sound quality is worse than a speak and spell, but dammit, I will not surrender to progress!
Tell me about it! I almost crash every time I have to wind up the Victrola I have in the back seat. Don’t even get me started on changing records!
I bought a passenger van and just keep a cover band in the back. The amount of food they require is nuts but I never have to fool with a screen to get the song I want. Just yell “Wagon wheel!” and it starts up.
Wow, that sucks. I have a 2013 Lexus, and it doesn’t do that. It’s not exactly difficult to not have the USB dribve index everytime. I think that’s a matter of the firmware. It may default to assuming you are trying to do an update or something.
Indexing on my iPod takes forever since there are around 12,000 songs on it. Both of our cars are 2022 models. Something about the software in more recent Fords doesn’t play well with iPods. I haven’t tried it in our daughter’s ’16 Mini, but I bet it’ll work much better.
I’m no technophobe, but change just for the sake of it is rather irritating.
I’m moving my library to my car. My 2104 Mercedes has a Music Register that’s basically a hard drive for music. I’ve been copying favorite CDs onto it one by one, a task that takes about eight minutes each. But once it’s in there, it’s in there to stay, unlike my Apple Music Library that I stocked the same way, only for Apple to steal it and sell it back to me as streaming.
They stole your music library? As in deleted it from your phone, or from icloud? I do have some music on my phone for flights, and I’m curious as to what happened to you, in case it happens to me.
how did they do that? I still have everything I ever had as normal, nothing has ever been deleted?
Older Fords with the Sony sound system had that too.
And then of course they had to get rid of it. I refuse to use streaming services, so that is what forced me to begrudgingly embrace current technology to listen to music in the car. Problem is, that uses up a ton of memory on my phone. Can’t win.
It will work you just need about a dozen adapters from thru the years
not even at that point, I have the right connections, they just don’t recognize the device as something that has stored music anymore.