Cars of "Next Tuesday"
 

Just checking for Ren & Stimpy fans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/business/once-popular-car-technology-at-the-end-of-the-road.html?_r=0

Funny, Lexus offered a cassette deck till 2010?

https://38.media.tumblr.com/f5ff776e...71ndo1_250.gif

Interesting, I personally don't see integrated nav dying out. Especially as cell phone providers attempt to choke down the enormous amount of data consumers use. While I still have unlimited data, I don't want to use my cell phones data to stream Nav updates to my car. Also if you went to say, Canada, you'd be entirely screwed. I use my iPhone a lot more than Garmin around town, but when I go on long trips or when I am somewhere where I really will have no idea where I am, I use the Garmin. Or when in a car so equipped I use the built in-nav.

I didn't know the Lexus fact, I guess it makes sense when your median buyer still has a collection of 8 tracks and vinyl. Mercedes held a candle for cassettes for a long time, my dads CLK430 had one in 2003, and I think Chevrolet Suburbans had them until the new body in 2007.

I am surprised when I get in a new car that does not have a standard aux input though, that should be in everything.

People are going to opt less and less for sat nav considering the automakers charge like $3k for them while a $60 garmin or your phone gets the same thing. Bluetooth audio and video integration is the way to go as it isn't device specific.


Sent from an abacus

I expect that cars will continue to have increasingly prominent LCD/OLED displays and either micro HDMI or wireless connectivity for outboard devices to access the display.

Agreed about the AUX input -- but you don't have to use a cell connection for nav. Some tablet and phone apps allow for pre-loaded maps over wifi or usb.

I'm still shocked new cars come with a CD player. I haven't bought a CD in at least 10 years.

True, we did that one time when I went to Canada, we loaded as many maps as we could whenever we would go to Second Cup on their wifi. I just never remember to load them domestically and end up using data.

I considered burning a CD because my E55 only has a CD changer and cassette and its an ordeal to add an aux, then I realized neither my Macbook, nor my girlfriends several year old Macbook had a CD drive.

There are cheap and painless ways to drag you (and your car) into the current decade: Bluetooth via cassette.

Never seen that, would work great in the E55 with the cassette hidden behind the screen (should be the same as your CLK55 was). Thanks for the link!

Thanks for that product info. Just ordered it from Amazon for $19. Hope it works well in the '99 C280.

We used the nav on my wife's phone when we were in Greece. Pretty handy...spoke English too though even in English some of the names were pretty hard to hear and recognize when seen.;)

Just grab a CD/DVD burner. Non-Crapple Mac-compatible ones can be had for $30 and are actually better than the Crapple accessory since they don't have the horrendous slot-loading mechanism.

Got the ION BT cassette adapter today. Works great. The only downside is that there is some cassette shell noise from the spinning spools, but only barely audible between tracks. Setting the crossfade to minimize the dead air between tracks should take care of that.