'NO NO, this can't be!!' I'm sure people are still carrying around Sony Walkman's, listening to Lafayette stereos with Koss Pro4A headphones, and enjoying do wop on Antique Car Show AM stations. Phones are just for making phone calls, right??
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2024 Ford Mustang Drops AM Radio From Infotainment
- Thread starter davideduardo
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I know there were similarities between Chevrolets and Pontiacs in the 50s and then Chevrolets and Buicks, while Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs looked similar by the 60s. But I'm just saying all cars looked alike by the time Oldsmobiles weren't made any more and there was just nothing distinctive about Oldsmobiles.
The front ends of Oldsmobiles looked distinctive by the 60s.
I see more Dodge Chargers than anything else. That's what the town I live in has.
The Caprice wasn't made for a long time then it made a comeback as a cop car. "Magnum, PI" has them.
In West TN a lot of law enforcement has switched to the police edition of Ford Explorers.
California Highway Patrol had them too, but Ford had a lot of issues with the Explorer Police Interceptor---many of them caused by the outfitting of them with police gear:
NHTSA closes Ford Police Interceptor Explorer exhaust probe without seeking recall
In 2016, just a year or two after retiring its last Crown Vic with an Explorer, the CHP terminated its deal with Ford and signed with Dodge, embarking on a rapid retirement of its Explorers. Most of the CHP fleet is now Dodge Chargers:
The smartphone. Replacing the radio, TV, newspapers, the letter, the email, the tape player / recorder, the video recorder, the CD player, the MP3 player, the cinema, the calculator, the document safe, the file cabinet, the ID card / passport / drivers license / voters card etc., the intercom, the walkie talkie, ham radio, the paperback book, the magazine, the webcam / PC, car keys, the house key, the credit card & debit card, the checkbook, and soon enough, it's going to replace money.
I know I left out half of it.
All of which, of course, will eventually make it more important for thieves to steal.
I know I left out half of it.
All of which, of course, will eventually make it more important for thieves to steal.
Not ham radio. Never ham radio.
😁It has yet to replace my car or house keys, and I refuse to sign up to replace my garage door opener or anything that replaces money.
Adding my 2 cents.
I am 31. my partner is a year younger, when he bought his new 2019 Honda, he hid the AM Option in a screen he never scrolls over too.
He is 100% Spotify via CarPlay and will sit in silence in a cell dead zone before even thinking of flipping the FM/HD tuner on. Only time the FM/HD Radio tuner ever gets flipped on is when I am in the car and take over.
I am 31. my partner is a year younger, when he bought his new 2019 Honda, he hid the AM Option in a screen he never scrolls over too.
He is 100% Spotify via CarPlay and will sit in silence in a cell dead zone before even thinking of flipping the FM/HD tuner on. Only time the FM/HD Radio tuner ever gets flipped on is when I am in the car and take over.
Ham radio is timeless. I listen in frequently and it's like I'm 12 years old again, listening to 80 and 40 meter ragchews. Everyone still talks about their equipment, weather and ailments. There are more than enough new operators getting licensed every year to keep it going long after I'm gone.Not ham radio. Never ham radio.
My equipment is relatively modern, the weather is what it is, and yes I'm getting old. Now get off my lawn!
Yup. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’m the odd person who doesn’t like listening to Spotify. It has absolutely no soul, and I just feel lonely if I’m driving around without an actual radio station to listen to. Even if I’m listening to a station with no live personalities, at least there is some suspense as to what will come up next, and I like the feeling of knowing that other people are listening to it the same exact time I am.
This. The connect.
Even satellite radio, a big “thing” in the sky is broadcasting to me and millions of others!
Hear Hear!
When I'm out and listening to the "radio" (be it AM/FM, satellite, or Internet), I don't want to have to think about the order of songs, nor do I want to have ads pop up randomly midway through a song (does Spotify do that? I know Youtube does without adblockers, and it is a-n-n-o-y-i-n-g! I need three adblockers plus a javascript blocker (NoScript) just to make the Internet sane!)
Regular AM/FM isn't great, but I was in a spot with no cellular service a couple weeks ago, so I thought I'd flip through the radio, and to my surprise, I actually did find some stuff worth hearing (mostly on FM; I scanned AM a bit too, but the tuner in the car I was in wasn't very good, so didn't get much beyond the ever present locals (KSFO, KCBS, KGO, and a few others), so I don't know about AM, but FM certainly isn't dead yet.
When I was up in the north bay, most FM stations from SF barely came in, but many of the AM stations boomed in all the time (especially during the day; after dark, things got a bit messy, but they were still mostly listenable, especially with a good radio). Anyway, as a result, I think I listen to AM at this point more out of habit than anything else (of course, I had KXBX 1270 in Lakeport that played the old time stuff (mostly 30s-50s and pre-British Invasion 60s until a few years ago, when they became more focused on late 60s, 70s and 80s material), so AM wasn't quite "All Mouth" for me).
Anyway, wasn't this thread originally about Ford removing AM radios in upcoming new generations of all their cars, starting with the Mustang?
For a few years, unless they do radical redesigns (and they probably will), it might wind up being that the circuitry for AM will still be mostly intact, but left unimplemented, in the head unit, so all one would need to do to "hack" AM back in would be to wire up an antenna and maybe do some software trickery to reawaken the AM tuner.
I think the death of AM won't come as a sudden announcement from the FCC that the band will be sunset-ed, but rather, it'll be a slow attrition, with AM tuners gradually disappearing until we get to the point where AM stations will find their existence pointless because there will be no radios that can tune in to them.
c
In my case, I'm just cheap - I figure I'm already paying for commercial radio, why pay again for a smartphone + data plan suitable for streaming the same songs I get by just switching on my car radio (and the "group experience" is sort of part of radio listening for me too).
Maybe someone will develop a (pocket radio sized) AM radio (with some way to attach it to an inside vehicle door so the AM antenna can "see" outside) with an FM and/or Bluetooth transmitter so these vehicles without AM can have AM radio reception.
Kirk Bayne
Maybe someone will develop a (pocket radio sized) AM radio (with some way to attach it to an inside vehicle door so the AM antenna can "see" outside) with an FM and/or Bluetooth transmitter so these vehicles without AM can have AM radio reception.
Kirk Bayne
Yes.
I'm glad to hear a younger person voicing this thought. Radio broadcasts are seen by some listeners as a way of keeping them company and connecting to the outside world. For those who feel this way -- and I'm happy to see a Gen Z person who understands this concept -- radio broadcasts provide a valuable emotional and psychological service. JMO -- DarylSame here!Yes.
As a group, I've noticed that many Gen Z-ers seem either unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this concept, perhaps because they haven't been exposed to it so much?
c
Around here I see mostly Tesla chargers. 😉
I'd argue against TV and especially the cinema ( I see Keith and CT have already covered ham radio).
Unless it's to stave off boredom waiting in a line or riding on a bus, nobody's gonna choose to watch a TV show or movie on a six-inch screen. And you'll notice big-screen TVs are still selling well, and people are still upgrading theirs---55, 60 and 65 inches are currently the most popular size.
As for money, checks and debit/credit cards, it doesn't so much replace them as give you quick access to all of them. I've been using ApplePay everywhere it's accepted for three or four years now. Grocery store, restaurants, tollbooths in France.
Unlock the phone with my face, tap the phone against the credit card reader, put it back in my pocket, and I'm done. I approve or decline the transaction on the card reader. It's linked to whatever account I want it to be (I use my credit card because it's easier to dispute if there's ever an issue, but there hasn't been).
Phone theft is absolutely a thing, but it's not about what the device can or cannot do, or what you have inside. Assuming your phone is locked when not in use and everything is password, fingerprint or face-scan protected, that's all safe. Most smartphone thieves want the device itself to fence it at the earliest opportunity for quick cash. They'll likely do a factory reset without password, which wipes the device, and then it'll be sold to someone looking for a cheap new phone, no questions asked.
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Honest question from an automotive journalist who should already know the answer:
Is there an actual "head unit" when we're talking about a center touchscreen? Here's the '24 Mustang dash:
I just assumed that what we're dealing with here is a computer that has software allowing you to control radio frequencies, not a control surface for a separate radio.
Quick explanation of Spotify, because it looks like a lot of people here haven't had much/any experience with it:
Spotify is basically a giant library of pretty much every recording currently commercially available in the United States (it varies depending on which country you're in, because copyright and music licensing does too). You can access it for free. If you do, it will play advertising between---NEVER during---songs. One to four minutes per hour---so, shorter than a single commercial radio spot break. It will play them separately, not in a cluster, so people who say radio should go back to four shorter spot breaks an hour can test that theory.
So---the music. 80 million plus tracks. You can grab entire albums and put them in your library. You can grab specific songs (think singles) and put them in your library. You can listen to pre-programmed playlists (dozens of them, from dozens of genres). You can make your own playlists from songs that you've either saved into your own library or songs you're browsing.
And you can make what they call "radio stations" by picking a song or two and having the algorithm create an open-ended playlist that builds off of that. Having programmed radio stations, it usually frustrates me within four or five songs ("Why THAT?"), but your mileage may vary.
The way I made it make sense when I first used Spotify ten years ago was:
Playing back whole albums---that's like 8-tracks in my car in the 70s or CDs in the 90s.
Playlists of different songs---that's like the cassette mixtapes in my car in the 80s. Except you can hit "shuffle" and mix up the order if you're getting bored.
For that matter, you can hit "shuffle" on literally your entire library. Nothing you don't like, because you put it there, played in an order that you don't see coming.
There are a couple of drawbacks to free Spotify beyond the ads. One is you have a limited number of skips per hour---six. If you don't like a song, hit the "next" button. But after the sixth, you're stuck until the next hour, when you get six more. Also, using free Spotify, album playback defaults to shuffle. You'll hear all the songs, but not in the same order as the original album and not the same way the next time you hear it either.
If those drive you nuts, Spotify Premium is ad-free, allows unlimited skips and plays the albums the way you want. It's $9.99 a month and there's a student rate of $4.99.
Apple Music is very similar, except there is no free ad-supported tier and all the music is high-resolution (Spotify's been struggling to get that done for months).
I switched from Spotify to Apple Music last year and am very happy with it. Part of that is that I use the playlist function for organization and playback of my aircheck collection and it's a much cleaner interface for that than Spotify's.
As for paying for it, for less than the cost of one CD per month, I have access to literally everything that's available.
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