Portable CD players with USBs to connect to new cars without CD players

[JSngry]

And with earbuds! 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

I use an iphone with my two year old Toyota, which does not have a radio/disk player.  The car comes equipped with Apple CarPlay.  When I plug my phone into the usb port, I can see the screen of my phone on the dashboard display screen.  I can operate the phone from there and do most things you do with a phone: navigate, play music, make or receive a call, etc.  

[Kevin Bresnahan]

5 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

I use an iphone with my two year old Toyota, which does not have a radio/disk player.  The car comes equipped with Apple CarPlay.  When I plug my phone into the usb port, I can see the screen of my phone on the dashboard display screen.  I can operate the phone from there and do most things you do with a phone: navigate, play music, make or receive a call, etc.  

How do you get your music onto your iPhone? I only recently got an iPhone and I am not going to install any special Apple music player app just to get my music onto this phone. I used to use Sharepod to get my mp3 files onto my iPod, but that only works up to the iPhone 11.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, bresna said:

How do you get your music onto your iPhone? I only recently got an iPhone and I am not going to install any special Apple music player app just to get my music onto this phone. I used to use Sharepod to get my mp3 files onto my iPod, but that only works up to the iPhone 11.

Well there are other ways to put music onto an iphone but why not use iTunes?  It's free and you are not required to use it to play music: you can just use it to rip cds and put them onto the iphone and use something else (or nothing) to play them on your pc.  IPhones come with a built in player application which works seamlessly with iTunes but I believe you can use other applications on the phone to play music if you want.  But why would you?  It's simple and easy to use the existing software and there are few downsides.

[JSngry]

Apple is the devil.

The devil comes in many forms, but Apple is one of them.

Beware, brother, beware! 

[Ken Dryden]

20 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I am so not looking forward to any new car, if I could afford one.

And I say that even though I have adopted to a certain extent the use of a thumb drive in my 2014 Kia. It works for d/ls that I occasionally purchase and recordings from the Smithsonian that are still only a hard drive - I convert to MP3 for car listening on longer trips.  

But with the number of CDs purchased and in the stacks .. it will suck not to have a simple way to play in the car

Much as I detest the lack of the cd player is a pain, I do enjoy the safety features, which I've never had in a car that I've owned and driven (my wife got the last 2021 new car purchase). I figured that at my age, they will be of help, particularly with the number of idiots who run lights, change lanes mid-interseaction and various other stunts.

[Dan Gould]

21 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

Much as I detest the lack of the cd player is a pain, I do enjoy the safety features, which I've never had in a car that I've owned and driven (my wife got the last 2021 new car purchase). I figured that at my age, they will be of help, particularly with the number of idiots who run lights, change lanes mid-interseaction and various other stunts.

I don't think I would ever rely on a car's "safety" features beyond airbag and seatbelt. Safe following distance and constant attention to mirrors are my safety tools.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

6 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Well there are other ways to put music onto an iphone but why not use iTunes?  It's free and you are not required to use it to play music: you can just use it to rip cds and put them onto the iphone and use something else (or nothing) to play them on your pc.  IPhones come with a built in player application which works seamlessly with iTunes but I believe you can use other applications on the phone to play music if you want.  But why would you?  It's simple and easy to use the existing software and there are few downsides.

I can't tell if you're kidding or not but no, I am not going to install iTunes on my Windows PC. It's a sucky app and it takes over as your default player for everything. I don't want that Apple app anywhere near my music.

The thing that bugs me the most is that all I want is my music onto my phone. I don't need anything else Apple "thinks" I need done. I don't need it sync'ed to their money-making cloud. I don't need to be prompted to buy anything from their store. But Apple decided that just letting me mount my phone as an external drive was not in their best interest, so they made it impossible to do. SharePod did just that, but Apple figured out how to block it on iPhones after the iPhone 11. I have an iPhone 14. I only got this phone because my daughters want to FacteTime me, otherwise I'd still have a Samsung Galaxy.

FWIW, I use Exact Audio Copy to rip my CDs. I have for many many years. It's the best ripper ever made, especially if you like to tinker with the settings like I do.

4 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I don't think I would ever rely on a car's "safety" features beyond airbag and seatbelt. Safe following distance and constant attention to mirrors are my safety tools.

Some of the reverse sensors are really nice to have. I didn't realize how useful they were until I had to drive a car that didn't have them. They can save you from many parking lot idiots who fly around like they're on a highway.

Edited December 22, 2023 by bresna

[Stompin at the Savoy]

59 minutes ago, bresna said:

I can't tell if you're kidding or not but no, I am not going to install iTunes on my Windows PC. It's a sucky app and it takes over as your default player for everything. I don't want that Apple app anywhere near my music.

 

You can install iTunes and still use another app as the default to play music.  Go to Control Panel/Apps/Default Apps and set the program you want for music.  That simple. 

You can also use your preferred program to rip cds and then import the resulting files into iTunes in order to put them on the device.

Complain all you want about Apple's proprietary attitudes.  I agree!  Nevertheless, both you and I bought iphones and the easiest way to get music on them is to use itunes.  Let me know if you come up with a better way!

Edited December 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Stompin at the Savoy]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

I don't think I would ever rely on a car's "safety" features beyond airbag and seatbelt. Safe following distance and constant attention to mirrors are my safety tools.

My car has a lane sensing program which you can turn on or off.  It gives a beep and a slight sensation on the wheel when you wander out of your lane.  I generally keep it engaged.  Pretty good feature.  I also like the camera image shown on the dash when you reverse.  The system can read speed limit signs and shows the speed limit on the speedometer, which is good.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[jazzbo]

Like Dan I wouldn't RELY on the car's safety/warning features, but they can be very helpful.

[medjuck]

2 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Like Dan I wouldn't RELY on the car's safety/warning features, but they can be very helpful.

I use mine when I'm changing radio stations or (especially) cds. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

One pgm you can use to move music files to an iphone is Music Monkey.  I didn't think it could do it but I upgraded to the current free version just now and was able to do it. 

I wonder if you can really operate an iphone effectively without itunes?  How do you backup the phone to your pc?  I doubt that anything but itunes is going to do that reliably...  If you don't have a backup you may have trouble down the line.

Edited December 22, 2023 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Ken Dryden]

5 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Like Dan I wouldn't RELY on the car's safety/warning features, but they can be very helpful.

When you have been driving as long as I have, you will still look back before backing up, etc. The safety features are a bonus, not a substitute for driving cautiously.

[rostasi]

On car rentals, all of those extra bells and whistles are such a total distraction to me.
I'm not so old that I've lost the ability of cervical rotation.
Rearview cameras are mostly very limited when you're backing out of a parking spot,
especially if another car is rapidly approaching perpendicular to you.

In the last car I rented, I couldn't figure out how to engage the cruise control.
Someone took the manual out of the glovebox and so I had to look it up
after I got to the hotel. Instead of pressing the cruise control button and
pressing "+" or "-" to adjust, you had to punch one of two "mode" buttons,
and that gave you the choices of "Adaptive Cruise Mode" or "Cruise Control Mode"
and then you could go ahead after you've chosen one or the other.

Just one of many ridiculous things. Maybe I need something equivalent to an
Apple car (like the one I already have) where if you're gonna have stuff,
at least it'll be intuitive and work consistently. 
 

[JSngry]

"intuitive"= what your personal muscle memory clicks with. I would totally have to reprogram my conscious and unconscious minds to work in an Apple environment.

I learned this for the few years that my wife had an iPhone. "Exasperating"  is putting it mildly! 

I learned about computers on DOS systems. Windows 3.1 had literally just been introduced. So "getting under the hood" still works for me, because it never DIDN'T work for me.

But not everybody's brain is wired that way, and for them, there's Apple, or for those for whom getting even further under the hood is desired (not me!!!), there's Linux.

But Apple's proprietary business models, yes, that is the devil.

What else is the devil is parking your car not knowing if you're going to be surrounded by big ass SUVs (or in Texas, pickups) to where you back out totally at you own risk. 

The time has come to start looking at segregating parking spaces by vehicle height and/or length. Maybe the actuaries can shed some light, maybe? 

[rostasi]

I actually wrote "big-ass SUVs", but decided against saying it.

I've just learned that lots of folks go with what they've become accustomed to.
For me, If I'm shown something that streamlines the process and gets me closer
to what I want, then I naturally gravitate towards that. The amazing thing is that
Apple and Amiga were both systems that not only did that, but actually showed
me that there were smarter and more innovative things that could be done that I
wasn't finding in the years I was always battling PCs after the ease of the Amiga.
The amount of money wasted trying to find the right matchups to a PC was huge!
Software of various kinds that sometimes worked (even then, usually very poorly)
or didn't work at all ... when I could actually have the stuff I needed not only there
for me to use, but was not just basic, but exceptional in that it pointed me in the
direction of showing me what more you could do with the software. In 2001, the
things that, for example, iTunes showed what could be done with a music library
was extraordinary at the time and I use the multi-facets that it still provides now.
 
I prefer not having the hillbilly car that the owner is always tinkering with to get
it to do the thing that another, better, car already has installed and works even
better than you expected. Phones? Holy hell! My wife couldn't take it anymore
with this Samsung doorstop of hers. Why do you have to do these intermediate
steps just to answer the damn thing? Push this, swipe that, stand on your head.
A cruel game of "Simon Says" methinks. Anyway, people go with what's "them".
 

[JSngry]

Wow. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

To get back to the original topic, I would recommend against a portable cd player for the car.  It's going to bounce around and the controls will only really be safely accessible when the car is stopped.  In addition, the capabilities of a cd player are so meager compared to a phone.  For example you plug your phone in and call out "Hey Siri give me directions to 1750 Vine Street Los Angeles, California" and a map comes up on your dashboard showing where your car is,  and spoken directions follow.    You can bring hundreds of albums with you in the car instead of a few cds which you probably cannot control with voice commands-  "Hey Siri, play Classic Don Byas Sessions".  How about "Hey Siri where's the next rest stop?"  Your cd player can't answer that.   The smart phone clearly is the mainline designated replacement for a car stereo.  You'll miss out if you don't get with the program.

[JSngry]

2+ years of an iPhone where left was right, top was bottom, inside was nowhere, and an intuitive for me split-second process took forever to ferret out what I was supposed to be thinking in the first place was enough to convince me that these Apples had no taste in my mouth. 

[Stompin at the Savoy]

2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

2+ years of an iPhone where left was right, top was bottom, inside was nowhere, and an intuitive for me split-second process took forever to ferret out what I was supposed to be thinking in the first place was enough to convince me that these Apples had no taste in my mouth. 

Um, so get an Android phone?

[rostasi]

An example: in 2020, when I had to stay outside of a vet’s office in
the car (because of the pandemic) waiting while they looked at the cat,
they tried to call me on my wife’s Samsung. The fumbling I had to do
(put in a code, swipe this way and that, and so on…) in order to just take
the call was so much that I kept missing the call. In the end, they walked
out of the office and walked to my car to give me the message.

Today: My wife gave me her iPhone just in case the doctor’s office called
to come pick her up. They did. While at a red light, I reached down and 
pressed one button that immediately answered and pressed one button
to shut it off. Again, the idea is to make things simple enough for those
who have seldom (or not at all) used the technology.

Edited December 23, 2023 by rostasi

[JSngry]

15 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Um, so get an Android phone?

Um, yeah. Have had one for years now, a decade at least. Only upgrade them when required to keep getting security updates. Phones are not central to my existence, and/so I've never not been able to do anything I've wanted to do.

But I do try to plan trips in advance, get somebody else to look shit up while driving, and limit talking while driving to an absolute minimum, even if it entails being rude.

Not all drivers are so inclined, those assholes. 

 

11 minutes ago, rostasi said:

An example: in 2020, when I had to stay outside of a vet’s office in
the car (because of the pandemic) waiting while they looked at the cat,
they tried to call me on my wife’s Samsung. The fumbling I had to do
(put in a code, swipe this way and that, and so on…) in order to just take
the call was so much that I kept missing the call. In the end, they walked
out of the office and walked to my car to give me the message.

Today: My wife gave me her iPhone just in case the doctor’s office called
to come pick her up. They did. While at a red light, I reached down and 
pressed one button that immediately answered and pressed one button
to shut it off. Again, the idea is to make things simple enough for those
who have seldom (or not at all) used the technology.

LOL. Gonna have to do a LOT better than that, bro! 

Your wife had her phone time out from inactivity and didn't give you the code to reopen it. It's a standard security protocol that she chose to enable and could have chosen to disable. Since she didn't do that, or didn't give you her password, the phone operated exactly the way she had it setup to operate.

Did SHE know how to use her own phone? Did she know where the security settings were or how to adjust them? If not, then Apple is for her too! 

Or maybe she didn't want to complicate things for you!?!?! LOL 🥰

Pretty much any phone, Apple or Android, will have the one-touch ease of answering/hanging up if it's set up to. 

[rostasi]

Actually, I remember the Samsung conversation we had about all of the things you need to do in order to phone and “be phoned” before she handed it to me to go to the vet. Stunned that one needs to know all that, but it was a constant form of frustration for her for years (pretty much cementing my dislike for cellphones).“Security” was/is not a thing with either one of those phones. It usually sits around in some out-of-the-way area until it gets some use 3 or 4 times a month, so it’s not a locked-up problem. Also, I’ll remind you that my wife has been an engineer for over 40 years, so computers are something she knows something about: having installed huge ones for NASA and NOAA and other government agencies.

Also, only about a half-hour went by before the vet call. No kind of “security” settings for something used so infrequently. Maybe a code, maybe not, but I just remember: IT WAS A PROCESS! If I did, then, OK, one (other) step, but this wasn’t a single extra process. Also, it wasn’t that I couldn’t use the phone at all (I wasn’t locked out), it was that it took me multiple steps to actually answer it. By the time I got to the other end, the call was over … but I did get to the other end.

Today, she said, “I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but maybe
you should take the phone with you. This one is much easier.” (She doesn’t 
scream at it now). I drove around for nearly two hours before I got the call from the doctor’s office, so the inactivity thing doesn’t hold in these instances. Also, I know her password, so if needed it would be a snap and there aren’t secrets around here. When a phone is open and available, you shouldn’t have to go thru layers.

As for security settings: I don’t know about cell phones,
but to have a piece of equipment that you have to adjust
for security reasons because the product is incapable of
handling it on its own is just a cRaZy additional step.

In the end, I know what it’s like to own an AMC (American Motors Corporation) car: bits and bobs from various companies holding the “system” together. I’d rather have the fully functioning automobile that’s been pre-tested and works like a charm.

Edited December 23, 2023 by rostasi

[JSngry]

Dude, no phone is that hard to use unless somebody sets it up like that. No idea what dysfunctionality was going on, but it had to have been on the user end to be THAT  wonked down