This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply. The Verge: Spotify’s brief attempt at being a hardware company wasn’t all that successful: the company stopped producing its Car Thing dashboard accessory less than a year after it went on sale to the public. And now, two years later, the device is about to be rendered completely inoperable. Customers who bought the Car Thing are receiving emails warning that it will stop working altogether as of December 9th.Unfortunately for those owners, Spotify isn’t offering any kind of subscription credit or automatic refund for the device — nor is the company open-sourcing it. Rather, it’s just canning the project and telling people to (responsibly) dispose of Car Thing. more Not all embedded content is displayed here. You can view the original to see embedded videos and other embedded content.
I wanted one of these SO BAD but never had the chance to get one. Absolutely nuts decision for them to do this to such a cool product. It never ceases to amaze me when companies this big make such backlash-inducing decisions.
I've loved having mine as a desktop controller/screen solely to look cool & be a conversation starter in the office. I'm bummed it'll only get a few more months of use & it won't be open sourced to toy around with, it's been pretty cool
Well that's a bummer for the people that bought into this... I'd be pissed if I had gotten one because now it's just going to become an expensive paper weight. Such a bad call from Spotify. This is off-topic, but that's a really cute otter plushie on your desk.
Unless it's for safety/privacy reasons, it should be completely illegal for a company to brick the hardware they sell.
They should at least be required to open source and unlock the hardware so it can be used for other purposes.