Does anybody else have one of these? The guy who drove me to my cataract surgery has one is his truck and I didn't think I would appreciate it, but I did. I went out the next day and bought one. Put in the vent mount, ran a USB power cable to it, used the Alexa app to add it to my phone. Started the car, made sure my phone was connected to the radio via bluetooth, and I said "Alexa play album Soul Side of Town Tower of Power" and in a few seconds there it was. The speakers in my car do justice to the bass heavy thumping sound of TOP, and Chunk and I took a drive to the power soul sound of TOP.

That album, that I only know of after a suggestion from the now officially old Mario, is like "wow". Their play has been consistent across many player changes, but the writing on this album is much more "sophisticated" than their older albums. Some of the songs take on an air of "I belong on your local smooth jazz station as 'the uptempo break from the elevator piano music instrumental versions of songs that had vocals originally' song." A lot of more accentuated backing vocals than their other albums.

couldn't you do approximately the same thing if your phone is already bluetooth connected to the stereo? in the case of the Amazon device, Alexa does your bidding, but with the phone Siri should be able to serve up similar content, if you are subscribed to the source of the music.

I use my phone in conjunction with wireless air pods to listen to music while I ride my bicycle. Hands free commands to call up, start, stop or cancel music from Spotify or other music app on the phone really makes biking a lot more fun. Disclaimer: some music platforms have limited feature sets with Siri

I have a Droid so I don't have Siri, though I have Google Assistant. My only music subscription to a music stream service is Amazon Music Unlimited. I could have stuck with the lesser selections available with the Amazon Music that is free with Prime, but the first 2 albums I tried to call up require Unlimited. It's $8 a month. I can handle that. But yeah, I guess I cold have reached the same destination with just the phone, but not using my phone to play music allows me to use Waze for GPS as the same time. And there are more things I can do with an actual Alexa/Echo device that I may never do, but I can do them. I can "drop in" on home and talk to the dog if he's home alone, add to my shopping list if some thought pops into my cavernous head... It was only 26 bucks so WTH...

Also, when you use something like Spotify, you get one song by your artist and then they start deciding what I want to hear. No. If I say Todd Rundgren or Meatloaf or TOP, I want nothing but Todd Rundgren or Meatloaf or TOP.

Every day I think about one more aspect of what computers have brought us and I just smile. A lot of it may require extra hardware, but smart home technology is so cool. A lot of the OG types continue to grumble "I can change my own thermostat" and similar things but many of them likely still thing cars are a passing fad.

I remember a day back a good 25 years when my housemate at the time, one of those "my idea of a computer is for games and finding naked pictures of women" people who never really "got it" as far as what some of this stuff meant. He came home once and I was looking at a live camera from Mt Fuji and he didn't really grasp the majesty of the fact that I can see something from the other side of the world on my computer screen in real time. Totally over his head. When I got an ISDN modem and phone line he lost his mind (and never split the cost with me, BTW) because with that network at 128kbps and a download accelerator that found up to 7 hosts and downloaded a fraction of each file from each host and then reassembles the file he could cruise the Usenet groups for his pictures. Really old school networking with BNC connecters and all. Amazing to look back wat what we thought was good when compared to today's standards. I mean, we have a phone in our pockets that is also a computer, a TV receiver, a radio receiver, a music streaming device, a camera... The Jetsons and Dick Tracey came to life.

I was using the Alexa Auto this morning. I wanted to hear Dolly Parton's "Old Flames" to hear the lyrics. The next song it played was her "Apple Jack", a song I had totally forgotten about but really always liked.

"When streaming is okay"...