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A comment on The 19th Century plug that's still being used. Parent comment

Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by thaumasiotes on Monday August 01, 2016 @03:30AM (#12200728)
I use the phone's internal speakers to play music in the car. I would use the audio jack for that, except that cars no longer seem to come with any way of accepting an audio cable. My car from 2002 had a tape player, and I was happy using an audio cable with a casette tape adapter on the other end. A car from 2015 just can't do it. :(

I also use the phone's internal speakers for playing the notification sound. (And, technically, ringing.) I sure hope that's not going away.

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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by dredmorbius on Monday August 01, 2016 @05:42AM (#12201142)
Micro FM transmitters. Plug into the 3.5mm jack, power from the cigarette / accessory adapter. Usually a choice of frequencies to broadcast on which can be picked up over your car's FM receiver.

Quite frequently found at highway truck stops, though almost certainly other electronics stores as well.

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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by semi-extrinsic on Monday August 01, 2016 @05:14PM (#12206046)
Plus, they're crap. Seriously. I bought one of the more expensive ones, with auto channel scanning, still crap. Made me go back to burning CDs until I put an aftermarket stereo with 3.5 mm jack in. Fortunately that's a near-universal feature these days.
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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by tunap on Monday August 01, 2016 @01:12PM (#12204121)
And suffer from interference and low volume; has been my experience.

Wireless is convenient.

Wired is reliable.

YMMV.

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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by scatters on Monday August 01, 2016 @04:06AM (#12200836)
Doesn't your car have Bluetooth? Or rather: how old does a car have to be before it doesn't come with Bluetooth as standard? Every rental I've had in the last five years has had Bluetooth to my recollection, and I don't hire expensive cars.
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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by thaumasiotes on Monday August 01, 2016 @04:08AM (#12200847)
As pointed out elsewhere in the thread, bluetooth is not a good solution when you want to use one speaker (the car) with several devices. The beauty of a cable is that it's unambiguously connected to whatever it's plugged in to, and not to anything else.
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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by lmm on Monday August 01, 2016 @04:52AM (#12200974)
Huh? How is it harder to disconnect a phone on bluetooth than to unplug a cable?
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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by ygra on Monday August 01, 2016 @05:31AM (#12201105)
I recently had the joy of having to delete a paired device in a car before I could add a new one. For some reason you could only have three devices paired.
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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by duaneb on Monday August 01, 2016 @10:59AM (#12202852)
Agreed; this is a normal part of renting.
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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by astrange on Monday August 01, 2016 @03:38AM (#12200747)
Does your car have a USB port? If it does, it might speak iAP to play audio through it. If it doesn't, you can always replace the radio and get some more inputs.

Bluetooth's more reliable than USB in a car anyway.

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Re:The 19th Century plug that's still being used by duaneb on Monday August 01, 2016 @10:59AM (#12202848)
To be sure, I use it too! But almost never in public; I still use the headphone jack daily.
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