Comment by blackhaz
4 years ago
My car (Lexus) and my iPhone X:
The car detects iPhone presence, like, 50% of the time. If it does detect it, it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other and begins playing "Songs of Innocence" the moment I turn the ignition on. I tried deleting this song from the iPhone, but it auto-magically restores itself somehow, as if it is in the telephone's firmware. The image of men hugging in shade is baked into my mind forever at this point.
As I want to set my plans in silence, I press stop on the dashboard. I set my Google Maps navigation, turn the knob to increase the volume so I could hear instructions, and this triggers "Songs of Innocence" to continue playing and the second burst of outrage in my cardiovascular system. I press the stop the second time, and at this point can continue on my journey - but should I try to increase the volume again, I have to remember the hugging men are always there.
Once (or twice), the phone just went berserk and couldn't stop playing them. I tried everything, but the Songs were playing, and the men were hugging while I was doing 70 mph on the motorway. I had to reboot the phone, but after the reboot, the car was unable to pair with it.
I don't know if it's a Lexus problem, or an Apple problem, but what I know is that I really fucking hate U2.
Similar thing would happen in my Toyota, the song 'Afraid' by Yellowcard would play every time I turned on the car. Realized it was playing the first song in my library. In Apple Music there is a song called 'A a a a a Very Good Song (Silent Track)' by artist Samir Mezrahi, that contains 10 minutes of silence. I added that to my library and now that song plays when I turn on my car (although this autoplay only happens occasionally since some Toyota update). The album art simply says: 'have a wonderful day.'
The song: https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-a-a-a-a-very-good-song-si...
I had a Mercedes lease for three years with the same problem of automatically playing the first song as sorted alphabetically. In my case, it was "A Boy Named Sue" by Johnny Cash. That song loses its humor after you hear it a few hundred times.
Same thing with my husband's car, his phone, and the song "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend. I now jokingly play it as the first song any time we head off on a long road trip, much to his immense frustration.
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Heh, decades ago a Phil Collins tape was stuck in my car's cassette player (yes, that was a thing) and there was no way to switch to radio when there is a tape inside. I guess I listened to that album few hundred times until I decided to do something (probably spray some WD-40) about it.
But why the hell is it autoplaying in the first place? Does apple really hate their customers/users so much that they can't make this an option?
That's completely insane. The more I learn about apple, the more I see extremely hostile UI decisions for literally no reason
I believe what’s happening is that certain car stereos are programmed to basically send the “play” command as soon as a device is connected. From the phone’s perspective, it’s as if you had connected Bluetooth headphones and then pressed the “play/pause” button.
I say this because my iPhone never autoplays when connecting to any Bluetooth audio device except for my car stereo.
I agree it’s aggressive and should be able to be turned off, but it’s the car’s software, not the phone’s, that’s the problem.
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IME, this doesn't happen in any of my Subaru vehicles. It picks up where I am in Spotify with no issues. Whether via carplay or connecting via Apple's Car integration.
That said, I have had this issue when connecting an iPhone to a '11 truck via USB. It tries to treat it like an iPod, and consume its default playlist (all songs in Music, sans shuffle).
So this is probably the bluetooth equivalent being done by the cars - treat it like an iPod that the entertainment center should be in charge of.
As others have already explained, the autoplay is because the car sends a "play" command as soon as the bluetooth connects.
From the auto manufacturer's perspective, this kinda "makes sense". Because that was the legacy behavior, pre-bluetooth. If you turn off your car with the radio playing, then the radio will start playing again the next time you crank up the car. If drivers didn't want that, then hey... they would have turned off the stereo before turning off their car. So it would be less confusing to carry forward that legacy behavior into this new thing.
The problem is, it's 10 years later now. The culture and the consumer expectations have shifted. Maybe (?) the radio-like behavior makes sense for older consumers in their 60's and up, who lived with radio for many years more than they've lived with bluetooth. But for the younger bluetooth-native consumers, it's generally pretty infuriating.
It's LONG past time for auto makers to stop this legacy behavior with bluetooth connections. Or at the very least, offer the option to disable it somewhere in a dashboard menu.
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I've always assumed this is a bug. Why isn't it just resuming from whatever you were last listening to? And why is this still an issue after so long?
This is one of those things that Steve Jobs would have fired people on the spot for.
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I assume it's something to do with the devices not quite recognizing themselves as being identical to last time (perhaps any single change to anything on the iPhone causes it to download all the playlists again, etc).
I just use a stupid adapter with a mini jack input. Ain't got time for wireless wierdness.
Engagement is eating the world, maybe engagement is now driving these decisions, too. People who listen more, buy more, so optimize for time spent listening.
My car and phone achieve a level of randomness that makes me wonder at the complexity of the software behind it. Usually it starts playing Music, but sometimes it's another app, especially if the last thing playing on my phone was YouTube. But sometimes it's YouTube even if the last app that played audio was something else. Sometimes I get the pause music from a game that's been running in the background for days.
I can't even predict whether Music will start in shuffle mode and pick a random song or if it will start playing an album I was recently listening to in sequential mode.
The result is that I've started to look at my phone the way I used to look at cable TV, as an invader in my home that works for people who want to manipulate me.
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i seem to recall that this is what the spec calls for, and toyota follows the spec. it drives me up the wall.
Why do you assume this was decided by Apple?
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Modern problems require modern solutions. Nice work.
Modem problems require AT solutions, but I guess I need a font problem solution.
I created a one-hour long silent MP3 and named it similarly and added it to my phone. I've sent it to a friend who uses it as well.
I have a script (simple ffmpeg wrapper) to generate silent mp3 files:
https://github.com/marbu/scriptpile/blob/master/silence.sh
I'm not quite sure what I needed that for anymore, but I find it interesting that there are such weird use cases for this.
Call it Subliminal productivity silence and you can make a fortune.
Semi-related: I tried out Microsoft/Ford's SYNC system (voice commands for your car) in '08 and was upset that it didn't seem to support an option for "continue listening to podcast series X where I left off" ... like, the thing you would want to do all the time. (Item 5.)
http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...
I use a jailbreak tweak for this: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.itortrix.stopplayin12/
Samir is brilliant. Talk about identifying a need and then solving it in the most efficient way possible.
I wonder how much this person makes in royalties for a silent track.
Was (and maybe still is?) top of the charts
https://www.engadget.com/2017-08-10-silent-10-minute-song-it...
My dad added the song to the library, but it didn’t work, because he has a song called “A” [1] in his library and that one takes priority. It’s a family in-joke now.
[1] https://music.apple.com/gb/album/a/1316144097?i=1316144100
My car does this too! Except the first song in my library is A Christmas Festival by Boston Pops Orchestra.
The song has a dramatic opening, to say the least.
That is the best workaround for a software problem, I've ever heard.
My Toyota only plays my iPhone bluetooth if (a) my car is in bluetooth "mode" and not radio and (b) I have my music app open.
I've never experienced what you (two) describe. 2020 Toy and iPhone 11.
I have a 2017 Toyota and never has that problem. Though for awhile I did have an issue where audible kept starting randomly but it seems to have fixed itself.
Haha, sorry, reminds me - my wife hates U2 with violent passion.
Eventually I asked her what caused such burning rage, and she said her car starts playing a specific U2 song every time she turns it on. For years!
Eventually I traced it to a promotional album U2 and apple and iTunes pushed to her devices without her knowledge.
Man can these things backfire!
But yeah we have a 2019 Honda and iPhones xr (not my choice; iPhone is work mandated) and there's just no telling what'll happen any given time when we start the car. Especially annoying since modern infotainment units make you wait 3 to 5 seconds to display crucial legal information before you can mute the darn thing. And let's not start if you have more than one Bluetooth headphone and more than one device at home :(
(Yes I'm now the grouch that misses 3.5mm on modern phones and uses my old Note 8 and wired Sennheiser to listen to music hassle free :D)
Highly likely I'm misremembering, but a decade (at least) or so, there was an iTunes promo where Itunes literally pushed a free U2 album to everyone who had an iTunes account for free.
I specifically remember the internet hate that received at the time haha.
Here's a link: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/09/the-free-u2-album...
Yup. And the hate and negative backlash is still here - I'm not kidding, my wife can NOT hear U2 without a visceral reaction! It followed her through like 3 cars, until she finally married a guy nerdy and persistent enough :-D
That's literally what the parent comment is describing
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We should start a club!
My son just bought a 3.5 mm adapter for the phone. Turns out the younger generation prefers wired too.
I sometimes wonder what the world would be like without FAANG. I'm lead to believe the world would be a better place if all companies would have a max company size of Bose, or Sennheiser. Then no stupid decisions could be pushed through by force, like the removal of the 3.5 mm jack. If the market really wants it, they will eventually vote with their wallet. Same goes with social media, fb killed off local country-specific social media, which sometimes had much better features and less agressivity/conspiracy theories/scams.
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It's patently ridiculous how much better the microphone on $15 wired headphones is than the ones on a $50 set of wireless earbuds.
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I prefer wired because, for some reason, car audio via Bluetooth has adaptive volume, i.e. I start coasting in the car and the music becomes almost inaudible. I speed up and it returns to normal.
This....
I have exactly the same problem with the U2 album. In general, I like U2, but that album is a pain. It starts up every now and then in my car with carplay. Especially if I have my phone on with no app in the foreground when I plug it in.
I feel you man...
The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) must be our most listened Song of all time.
For me it was The Jackson 5's ABC that would play as soon as I plugged my phone into my car. That opening "A buh-buh buh buh" is ingrained in my memory forever.
There's an app by Apple that allows you to remove the U2 songs
Looks like that might be retired going by https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251184844
> Customers are no longer able to remove the album on their own. You will need to reach out to Apple Support directly to have the album removed
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Same. Happened twice, really. Once on the ipod and then the iphone. Made U2 haters out of my wife and myself. I wonder how many people hate U2 music now because this.
There used to be a link to remove the album[1] but it seems like they shut it down. So the only way for you to remove the album from your account is to contact apple support.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540#:~:text=Apple%2....
I also have an alarm set up I cannot delete. It says "pick up Matt from school." It migrated all the way from iPhone 7 to this X. But he has grown up since and I don't need to pick him up anymore. I'll include this in my request.
There is a "Free Airport Wifi" WAP saved on my phone from Mexico City since my iPhone 6. It is long deleted, but it has migrated through the years to my current iPhone 13.
Its residue is left on my phone in only this way: Whenever I connect to a new wifi point, after typing in the password, my phone will say it cannot connect to "Free Airport Wifi". I have to type the password in again (usually one someone just read to me) and connect again.
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I’ve had a similar saga with my Apple ID profile picture. I snapped it in a poorly lit kitchen with my new laptop’s built-in webcam in December 2008, and in spite of occasional efforts to remove it, it has propagated itself back and forth between devices and services for so long it now looks like a “needs more jpeg” meme. Over the years several people have exclaimed from behind me as I open my laptop “where the hell did that picture come from!?”.
You have a gift for writing humorously.
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Sir, have you tried picking Matt up and putting him down, narrating your actions for Siri?
The general idea I think is that once you start the car, it just send a play command the moment it detects the connection.
And in theory it _can_ provide a really nice experience. For example I'm walking to my car listening to an audio book, the moment I start the car, BT is connecting to the phone and moves the audio playback from my AirPods to my car speaker without skipping a beat, its really impressive.
Additionally since I'm an Apple Music user, whenever I start the car, it just defaults to whatever's I've been listening to there, unless there was a book / podcast or even YouTube video playing before. Which is very often quite nice.
Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice a.k.a. Spotify" is questionable, and why the automatic play is also not configurable is beyond me.
Just wanted to give my 2c how this can lead to a good XP.
Doesn’t it also mean that whatever you were listening to yourself, and potentially stopped as you got company, is now playing in the speakers for everyone in the car just as you’re turning it the engine on and can also reach the stop button so fast?
I have experienced this with NWA's "Gangsta Gangsta". Another delightful thing is that the volume is system volume * speaker volume, so that if you turned up the system volume because you were, e.g., using a quiet pair of headphones, this is now blairing at a total unreasonable volume, perhaps even destroying your car's speakers.
This can include that porn you were watching in your mobile browser the night before. Ya know, theoretically.
> …since I'm an Apple Music user, whenever I start the car, it just defaults to whatever's I've been listening to there… […] Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice a.k.a. Spotify" is questionable…
As you noted, it continues playing whatever you were playing in whatever app you were using, with no preference for Apple Music (I'm also a Music subscriber). If you were playing something with Spotify, that's what will continue to play.
I do wish it were configurable with contextual defaults. Too often, I start my car and my sleep sounds app continues to play "Airplane Interior".
Too often I start my car and it begins playing a podcast where I left off. With my kids in the car. I listen to a decent amount of stuff that isn't necessarily appropriate for kids. Makes for a fun scramble to hit that pause button.
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you can set up shortcuts to automatically start playing something. I've got one that changes to music and maxes the audio volume when it connects to my car.
My car (mazda 3) does this where it just sends the play command as soon as the phone (pixel) connects. But it just continues playing whatever I was last listening to, so it's always something different. Kinda nice.
My fathers android does the same thing with YouTube music
> Now why apple just defaults to Apple Music, and not "your music player of choice
I think this should be obvious, they want you further into the ecosystem.
If every morning when you get into your car your iPhone starts playing Apple Music, you're more likely to switch to Apple Music for all of your listening than to get another phone.
Oh my gosh, I didn't know where this was going with the half-naked shaved guys until you said, "Songs of Innocence"... and immediately it became a shared experience. If I could somehow tell my phone, "NEVER play Apple Music, always defer to Spotify if you have to auto-play anything", I'd do it in a heartbeat.
This is the real issue. Apple Music being a firm default. The U2 thing can be deleted from Apple Music. It exists because it was released that way a decade or so ago. It got pushed into everyone’s playlist as a purchased album, but can be deleted. I have no music at all in Apple Music for this reason. I prefer silence over this.
My problem is that I have to turn off BT on my phone for various reasons. Yet, no matter what, when I start my car it turns back on my phones BT setting and reconnects. (Eg. If my wife is playing her phone, then we stop for an errand, and get back in it always goes back to my phone.)
It's why I have NO music on iTunes.
Did you hear that, Apple? I will never give you money for music, ever ever, as long as connecting to a car == play iTunes.
You can delete Apple Music from your phone, but that can break BT Audio playback on some devices.
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You can uninstall Apple Music. At least there's that saving grace.
It's definitely a Lexus problem. The BT connection on my Citroen is absolutely 100% flawless. Works every time reliably. But it's literally just a dumb audio and telephony connection. Anything more complicated than that is guaranteed to be absolutely a universally huge fucking shit show.
Its funny as I have the toyota rav4 2021 hybrid, (toyota owns lexus) and have none of these problems. My money is on the shitty 'interpretation' of 'resume last song' between the car and the phone.
The first song in my library was a song by Killswitch Engage. A very loud song with lots of screaming. Ultimately I deleted the Music app from my iPhone to solve the auto play problem. I used Spotify for music at the time (now VLC). Deleting the app to solve the problem definitely feels like an extreme solution to a problem which shouldn’t be a problem at all!
But I have worse Bluetooth problems. My favorite Bluetooth headphones never want to connect the first few times. Trying to connect in this error state turns them off, for some reason. So I have this horrible dance where I turn them on and attempt to connect. My connecting device spins for a while. The headphones have silently turned off. I turn them back in and repeat. After about four times, they will usually connect. But sometimes I have to delete the connection and re-pair. Sometimes I have to turn off Bluetooth on other nearby devices to get it to work. And sometimes when connected, even near my source, the connection just goes silent.
I wish Bluetooth could behave a bit more like FM radio. A source is streaming out audio and my headphones can tune to that secure channel and get the stream. Headphones can tune between channels easily. This would solve my connection woes.
Unfortunately, deleting Music app turns off iPod integration, and now I’m unable to use other media players on my car over USB
Oh no! Didn’t happen to me in my Honda with my iPhone 7, but I guess every car is different.
Reading your comment made me feel like someone had been spying on me in my car. I go through this same thing in my Lexus every time I drive it as well. It is such a relief to know I am not the only one.
Amen, brother.
FWIW, the men are father and son; the lower man is U2's drummer Larry Mullen Jr.
I don't know if it's for much better or much worse, but this allows me some freedom of thought now. Thank you, sir.
Apple has done this for years and my take is they are tying to increase usage and relevance of Apple Music.
For example I only use Spotify in my car but it will not connect correctly unless I download and have Apple Music installed.
Just bad move by apple in my opinion. Just connect by bluetooth and let me use any app want.
Super dumb that you have to put a song labeled A in your song library that is just silence to get around this.
It’s the car that auto plays the first thing. My old car used to do the same thing. New car no longer does this.
I generally hate Bluetooth. But, your post is golden. I'm sorry you are dealing with it.
My best understanding is that this is a Lexus problem, because on the occasions I have connected wireless speakers to my iPhones this has never happened.
CarPlay solves some of these problems and is maybe not perfect, but generally a far saner UX experience than what car companies have managed to cook up over the years.
I would assume similar things are true for Android Auto. Like, not perfect, but far saner than whatever the heck the UX wizards at Toyota brewed up.
You’ve been able to delete the Music app for a while. If the U2 album is the first thing to play, it sounds like you may not use the Music app anyway.
Just delete it and problem solved (though agree with the general rage caused by this promotion).
For what is worth, the same is for android. Whoever thought that changing volume should trigger "play" didn't actually test it.
I thought Audible was a virus, I can't shut it down or stop it and whatever I do, it starts playing
That’s not actually Android, or iOS. It’s the car audio system sending the Play command.
Oh I see, that's terrible
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Oh, I am sure they did test it alright. With a Grinch smile.
That's so hilarious considering you've probably been putting up with that for years and years while there's a ton of solutions. Here's a fun fact about U2: If Bono himself is in his own car driving around and it comes on he has to change the channel. Doesn't like hearing his own voice (Not macho enough), nor the band name. [1] I also heard the same thing about Phil Collins.
[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/bono-says-he-switches-the-radi...
I have an iPhone SE (1st gen) and a 50 dollar bluetooth enabled radio in my car. It works flawlessly every time, I turn on ignition, the radio connects with my phone and I can hit play. When I turn off ignition the current song is paused and the radio disconnects.
That's an iPhone problem. All our Androids (OnePlus, Google, Samsung, LG) have been connecting perfectly well to my TomTom navigator. Only my iPhone Xs refuses to connect. It's a well documented problem with iPhones and TomTom for many years. Similar story with my AirPods which won't connect to my Thinkpad running Linux - while all other BT headphones (Bose, Sony, Anker) do connect.
Also the article seems to primarily refer to Apple products.
My iPhone doesn't have these problems with my nearly-a-decade-old Honda Odyssey's BT stereo system. Neither does my wife's iPhone, nor the couple others we've owned while owning this van. That thing (the stereo / "smart" entertainment system) has got plenty of "how the shit did this pass QC?" quirks, but none relating to its interaction with my phone.
It's the car's fault.
Apple's entire interfacing be those digital or physical are intentionally designed for incompatibility with devices from the not-Apple universe.
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It's possible it's neither:
> but what I know is that I really fucking hate U2.
Back around 2010/2011, AT&T pushed a U2 album to Android phones in an OTA update as a system install, it couldn't be deleted.
You may enjoy this episode of Reply All: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76hel39
This is primarily a problem with car manufacturers designing terrible user interfaces.
Audi does a reasonably good job. I wouldn’t buy a Toyota or Ford because they tend to be terrible.
At this point, if a car doesn’t let me default to Car Play automatically, I’m not buying it. And if every time I turn on the car it lectures me about driving safely, I’m really not buying it.
Can you turn BT off and connect via a chord?
That's what I do with my car. Sure it's a little annoying to use a chord rather than using BT but at least you wouldn't have it auto-playing when you start the car.
I have an Android and when we had the BT on the radio on, it would auto-connect to my phone and start playing whatever the last thing I was listening to on Spotify. If I stopped Spotify, my phone's audio output would still remain connected to the radio, even if my gf was connected with her iPhone and the system had switched to iOS CarPlay (the radio had both Android Auto and iOS CarPlay)
We finally figured out we could disable BT via the radio's setting and that solved our problem. We actually prefer connecting via a cable anyways.
I have a Honda and if I plug my iPhone into it's USB port it will auto-play the first song in my Apple Music/iTunes library which for a long time was "A-YO" by Lady Gaga. The opening lyric of "heeerreee we gooo" was amusing and appropriate for a while until it got incredibly annoying once I switched to Spotify.
I think the issue lies somewhere between Honda's implementation of the iPod standard and some weird backwards compatibility the iPhone is providing. When in this "iPod-like" mode I lost functionality like queuing songs via the Play Next option. It just disappeared from the long-press menu on songs.
Anyways I just bought a Bluetooth adapter from Amazon and plugged that into the aux input. Waaaay better
If you use Apple Music, it has the additional benefit of wasting all of your data and battery every time you turn your car on since it streams your entire library on shuffle.
I thought I was clever and could fix this problem by using the iPhone’s “Shortcuts” app “Automation” feature to pause after connecting to the car’s Bluetooth. But for some reason the thing called “automation” requires manual fucking interaction every time. Yes, that’s right you have to click on a prompt to run the “automation” shortcut.
Turns out it’s a limitation of the “on connect to Bluetooth” trigger for “security” yet this isn’t explained anywhere. Because if someone stole my phone and car they might be able to... pause the music? Thanks Apple.
Thank God that I have a car from 1981.
I have exactly he same issue with U2 on Apple Music. Exactly the same song. I think it’s because you get it for free.
Similar happens in my Mazda. No matter what I do, unless the source was actively changed to something like the radio before I shut my car off, as soon as I turn on the ignition it starts force playing a random song on my iPhone , Usually at a painfully high volume. Apple has bloomed Mazda and Mazda have found Apple.
It always tends to be a race between the Bluetooth connection in my ability to turn the volume down before it plays; even when it’s stopped, the moment I take a phone call it starts playing at maximum volume again after ending the call.
Not sure which version of the entertainment system you have but on my 2016 Mazda 3, it will try and play the last song you had playing on your phone. If it can't get the song to play it will then default to the other last audio device i.e. radio, XM, CD.
You should have separate volumes for music, navigation and hands-free in the entertainment system. Also, you can mute the sound using the volume knob while the warning text is displayed during key on.
My current solution is to make sure my CD player is the other last used device so that if the BT connection fails, I get sweet sweet Baroque music instead of FM blaring.
Nowadays you can delete (really, hide), the U2 album. If you delete all remaining music in iTunes, then the U2 album gets restored, and you have to re-delete it.
Other problems:
Solution:
> but what I know is that I really fucking hate U2.
I can't imagine not hating U2.
I also had similar problems with iPhone and BT. Before it worked very good with an Android. What I've learned over time is that apple seems ti sabotage anything that is not apple. I had connection problems with my car, with my Sony BT headphones, with portable speaker. Alk that went away as I switched back to android.
I guess you're right. My bluetooth experience is Macbook, iPhone, Apple keyboard, Apple mouse and Apple headphones. Everything works extremely well. The thing that I like most is power indicator integrated with iOS and macOS. Allows me to charge those things before they run out of power. As long as you stay in the garden, things are smooth.
That's just... the BLE battery level service? AFAICT Windows does the same thing when you connect a BLE device that reports a battery.
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It is kinda funny, it was this behavior among others that made me switch from android to an iphone. I got so tired of BT shenanigans.
I do feel sympathy for the people still having trouble, but mine has been flawless. I do not, however, drive a Lexus.
My cars are all older, but my Android pairs up with a Kia Sportage almost immediately after starting the car. My wife's iPhone 11 sometimes takes several minutes. She ended up getting an adapter to connect audio to the 3.5mm jack.
That’s a hilarious writeup.
My car starts blasting the FM radio if I don’t plug my iPhone in. I have never and will never willingly listen to FM radio, and yet, Ford has decided that it must be played at full volume an uncertain interval after the car is started. It’s caused me enough anxiety that I’ll be buying a different car next time.
That sucks. For what it's worth, "old-school" Toyota headunits with Bluetooth seem to work quite well (for Bluetooth). The ones that came with graphics/more complex CPUs seem to have gone downhill.
You can try to install an older model OEM headunit in your car to see if that fixes your Bluetooth. Certain models had really decent sound, are cheap when found used online, and should have the same connectors in the back (depending on speaker options). Here's an example of replacing your headunit: https://thetrackahead.com/projects/2003-toyota-4runner/the-u...
Also, I think Auto-play is a setting in the headunit, in mine anyway. If not, your phone may have a setting for it.
I had to laugh so hard at this as I’m literally sitting in my Tesla listening to Songs of Innocence that autoplayed on my iPhone without my explicit consent for exactly the reason you mention. I swear I have Stockholm Syndrome because the album that Apple forced my to download is slowly growing on me.
This happens to me every time I enter my car while on a Zoom call; the bluetooth or even the hardwired headset would switch to the car speakers and the call gets unmuted. I need to scramble to mute the call while my daughter is screaming at the back. Can't get it to work.
Would love if CarPlay would just work constantly. On my Ford remote start results in it not working 50% of the time. Regular start fails 10% of the time.
Solution is turn car off for 10 minutes or so. I assume some capacitor has to drain fully.
This is apparently just a known bug.
Not quite as bad, but my Subaru is similar. If I'm in the car with my phone when it turns on it connects immediately almost every time.
If I remote start the car and then go out to it it probably connects about 1/5 times. Another 1/5 I can go into the bluetooth settings and manually initiate the connection and it'll work. But a full 60% of the time I have to turn the entire car off and on again for the bluetooth to finally sort its shit out. Thankfully no 10 minute wait necessary.
My mom's Subaru... has that god awful 15 inch monitor in the middle of the dash. Every time a phone call comes in, the music starts playing WHILE ON THE PHONE CALL.
And I thought, wow, this huge-ass monitor will be awesome for Android Auto and CarPlay. NOPE, only like 1/3 of the screen gets used for CarPlay. This little tiny 7 inch section of the screen. Total joke these infotainment systems are. Give me back my goddamn double-din hole in the dashboard!
> it shows me a couple of half-naked shaved guys hugging each other
Well, since nobody has ever read the spec in its entirety, it's completely possible that those guys are actually part of the specification, somewhere around page 5000 or so.
This is a weird one. I also have a Lexus, but from the year before they put carplay in. I did an aftermarket carplay upgrade, and I've never had any sort of issue like this with Bluetooth on my wife's iphone before...
I thought your anecdote was satire until the very last word. That was a great ride.
I have a 2010 Toyota Prius, and I've intermittently had the exact same problem. Except my song was "Oogum Boogum" - fortunately it was the Alex Chilton version which I still like.
My latest struggle is that my phone now plays audio at 50% speed through my cars bluetooth. Spotify, Youtube, etc - it doesn't matter. It seems to play 50% speed super low pitch for about a second and then skip forward in the audio stream about a second. The only thing that remedies this is to reboot my car.
Wow definitely bringing back repressed memories for me - my audi s8 for whatever reason would refuse to stream via a2dp unless I had some music actually on the phone, in which case it would auto play said music after some random delay. So my brilliant solution was a 5 second silent mp3 loaded on my phone - it would keep the bt gods happy and i could switch to a2dp at my leisure. This was perfect, until someone decided to force deploy the same half naked men on my phone.
It‘s nearly as good as my story. I‘m walking with airpods past my car. The car detects my keys and turns on bluetooth, iPhone connects and thinks it's better to send audio to my car instead of the airpods in my ears. A long and painful connection loss is the result while I walk away and hope that my airpods reconnect. There is no way to set a presedence or similar. These days it‘s even better, the iPhone also switches to car mode and forces me to disable it first.
infotainment systems built by car manufacturers are just absolutely dreadful from an end user perspective. I have had a similar experience in the past (albeit much less of an annoyance) but was fixed 3 years later in a firmware update while randomly visiting the dealership for warranty items.
android auto/apple car play are an absolute dream to use on the other hand. If I buy another car, it will be a must have (rather than an aftermarket accessory)
James Keelaghan will take priority over U2. Ever time I step into my 2014 Hyundai Elantra I am greeted with Canadian folk music. Definitely a step up.
My girlfriend's phone automatically resumes in the middle of a podcast. Same spot, same podcast, every time. I had no idea how lucky we are.
Right? I thought it was annoying that No Such Thing as a Fish kicked on into the exact same spot every time I went for a drive. But that's a million times better than anything by U2 or whatever Songs of Innocence is.
This is one of those stories you read where you thought it was just you but then realize it’s happening to a bunch of people
It's definitely a Lexus problem. In a ford I think it just continues playing whatever the last played song was.
I also put songs on my iphone instead of using apple music, so I suppose it could be an issue with that service although idk why it would behave way differently from playing local files.
Only in fords with sync 3 or later. sync 2 is garbage
We had the same problem in our 2016 Outback until the head unit died. The only thing we really miss about it is the backup camera; but we can live without that, and apparently the stereo, as a fair price for being free of bluetooth audio hell.
Not sure if it matters, but many aftermarket head units can have the reversing camera connected to restore factory functionality, I believe the average HN reader could do this.
Edit: https://motoristcare.com/how-to-connect-backup-camera-to-hea...
Is a pretty good example on how to complete this.
Thanks for the tip!
Tip: remove the Apple Music app from your iPhone and it won't play anything.
On my old car, deleting the music app prevented the shitty radio from detecting that my “iPod” (aka iPhone) was even connected, so I had to have the Music app installed even if I wanted to play Spotify.
this EXACT thing happens on my toyota but it's even more annoying because i'll be using my phone and we stop for gas and then when we turn the car back on U2 starts playing from my wife's phone
Same thing happens in my GFs Prius... So annoying we refer to it as an "aural assault". I can't help but think U2's release strategy was really negative publicity for them in the long run.
I'm not sure if comedy was the intent here, but I laughed a lot.
I ended up uninstalling Apple Music because it would similarly play the same song (I forget what it was) at surprising times.
Spotify doesn't give me the same problem.
This continues to happen in our 2012 Toyota Prius. U2 song “California” from the Sounds of Innocence soundtrack. Don’t remember ever downloading it.
My android didn’t have this problem. When i switched to iPhone it did. A quick Google search will give you similar results.
I believe this is in Apple problem.
I ended up just uninstalling Apple Music so that music wouldn't autoplay in my Prius. Absolutely ridiculous that that was the only way.
I guess you've gotta ask yourself... cui Bono?
Buy or load a $0.99 silent song that starts with the letter A and you won’t have this problem any more.
The iPhone forces Apple Music to self-start if nothing else is using the speaker when you auto-connect with a car Bluetooth system.
Kind of like how Windows 10 forces you to use Microsoft Edge as a pdf viewer no matter how many times you switch to Adobe or how many settings you change.
Apple doesn't want you to forget about Apple Music.
> auto-magically restores itself somehow iCloud. Apple Music needs something to play.
I have never, not once ever, wanted something to autoplay when a bluetooth device connected.
> but what I know is that I really fucking hate U2.
I bet your comment has hundreds of upvotes already.
My car does this too when I plug my phone into USB, it starts playing the first song alphabetically no matter what. I became so sick of this I just have a long empty track with tildes in the name in my library. I would assume bluetooth would do the same but my car's bluetooth has been off since it came out of the facotory and I will never turn it on.
Another obnoxious design is if i want to start a playlist I can't just start playing it - It gives me the playlist sorted alphatically. Once i start playing a track it then sorts them by playlist order. Literally the point of a playlist is the order which you choose your songs to be in. Same solution works, put a short empty file with a tilde, 0 or underscore. So when I pick a playlist I just have to press enter twice and not deal with the alphabetically sorted list.
This trick also works when i try to navigate with google maps and my phone is plugged into usb. I wont get the navigation voice if a music track is NOT playing - again I go to my silent track and play it in order to get the navigation voice when my phone plugged into USB
>but what I know is that I really fucking hate U2.
We can agree on that!
The image you're taking about is the cover art for that album, right?
It's album art for an album he never wanted though. Apple did a stunt some years back where they celebrated the launch of a new U2 album by automatically putting that album on everyone's iPhones. For many people, it's the only music they have in the stock Music app, so it's what gets played when nothing else is currently playing.
Yes...
A likely story. This is a safe place pal, we’re all friends here..
I don't think it's intended to be homophobic. The album art is just really cringey.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_(U2_album...
Alright, having seen it, fair enough.
What's 'cringey' about it?
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Out of that whole post, you landed on homophobia as a reasonable thing to call out?
what?
what the hell did I just read... but yes Apple's implementation of Bluetooth is quite subpar compared to most peers, even though not sure if Lexus is 100% innocent here
I think the blame has to lie with Lexus. My current phone is an iPhone and my previous phone was a Pixel and both work perfectly in my Subaru, although the head unit was replaced 3 times because it was triggering some type of SOS signal to Subaru.
Frankly, I've had fewer BT issues with my iPhone than I had with my Android phone, but the Android was from three years ago and I think things have probably improved since then.
I haven't driven for a few years but my iPhone 4 always used to connect and work with my Peugeot 307 perfectly.
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If you consider Apples to be sub par. What’s your standard for decent?
I’ve never had any BT issues with Apple stuff. And most of the other things I own have terrible BT implementations. But maybe because I can’t tell how to check for a good implementation?
Devil's advocate: Couldn't Apple's BT implementation be bad but still work well with itself?
An Apple problem. Their car connectivity follows the idea that configuration is evil and there's only one way to do a thing.
This isn't correct. Apple Car Play does not play anything automatically on start. It's the Lexus that is telling the device to begin playing music.
If you don't use Apple Music, it'll pick the only album you have -- which for many people is the U2 album Apple added to everyone's library for free many years ago.
I stand corrected but also want to note that I've seen many car models do this.