this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
464 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

59187 readers
1991 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's a little annoying how the article only gives much of a hint as to what exactly a Car Thing is, beyond a "dashboard accessory", in the last paragraph of the article:

the product was more of a remote control for Spotify on your mobile phone than any kind of standalone player

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

It's worth noting that it was quite cheap and therefore a very good budget option to MacGyver music streaming into older cars.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago

Car Thing is basically the Rabbit R1, but for music. In other words, a cheap Android device, with one app (a car dashboard variation of Spotify), a scroll wheel, and a some shortcut buttons.

It works by connecting to your phone via Bluetooth. So, yeah, instead of using the phone for the auto friendly UI, it pipes that UI to a second cheaper mobile device.

It’s truly stupid, and it cost about the same as an external CarPlay / Android Auto screen… which could display an auto friendly Spotify UI, and much much more.