Some keyboards also come with software that lets you disable or remap keys. I turned Caps Lock into something more useful to me, for instance.

This is how I did it, using my Mac laptop. You can’t do it with the phone app, but a Mac or Windows computer can.

https://gist.github.com/gboudreau/94bb0c11a6209c82418d01a59d958c93

Honda’s sensing system will read shadows from bridges as obstructions in the road that it needs to brake for. It’s easy enough to accelerate out of the slowdown, but I was surprised to find that there is apparently no radar check to see if the obstruction is real.

My current vehicle doesn’t have that issue, so either the programming has been improved or the vendor for the sensing systems is a different one (different vehicle make, so it’s entirely possible).

I never liked it because I didn’t want to accidentally change the face, which happened a few times.

I was always surprised that there was no way to disable the feature.

But now we can both be happy. It’s a shame that the simple solution of making it a toggleable option took this long.

It was bad, yes. Not debating that, and I’m glad that the design was changed and existing owners could get the shifter replaced at no cost to them.

However, it’s frustrating to see that people so often ignore recalls and then are injured or killed in a way that would have been avoided had they done the free recall. I usually feel sad when I think of deaths like that because the death is just so final and was easy to avoid.

People have recently died to exploding airbag inflators, even though the Takata recall has been in the news for years, and even if a vehicle has had multiple owners, the publicity means that chances are that the current owner has seen at least a headline about it. Yet clearly people aren’t getting the recall work done, and they’re dying because of it.

Is it a hassle to take a car in for repair? Yep. Had to have mine serviced due to a recall for something that hadn’t manifested on my car in my own use. But given that the alternative could have been very bad (the car’s software was updated to ensure that it would shift into park more reliably when there was a rollaway risk, if the driver didn’t do so manually), I dealt with having a loaner for a day when the update took longer than expected.

Designers sometimes make bad choices. Regulations are written in blood, it’s said, because it’s often tragedy that leads to changes. But I don’t think it very likely that shifters like that will make it past design reviews again. It’ll be some other bad decision that causes the next big recall.

Both of those things have been acknowledged and will be changed. Cars have very long design cycles, though.

The ID.7 has the new sliders as does the facelift of the ID.4.

Yes, there’s other problems, but this one is already on the way out.

That vehicle had a recall out to replace the badly-designed shifter. It was ignored.

The fix would have been free.

Neither company has a monopoly anywhere but the mix of Android and iOS varies greatly by region.

Thankfully, most cars that support phone projection support both, probably because of that fact. Easier to develop a single configuration that works for everyone.

Android Automotive (the car OS) does support phone projection (Android Auto and CarPlay).

From what I’ve seen in reviews of cars that have it, Automotive is pretty solid, and I’d take an EV that had it as long as CarPlay were an option. (So no GM for me).

They can’t gather data from my use of the built-in apps if I don’t use them.

Shortcut link is bad.

Seems to me that this should be priced up front. “In-app purchases” is a big no.

I subscribe to that - servers and datacenters aren’t free to run. Stand-alone games, though, have to be a one-time fee for me to pick up.

They’re one of my exceptions. The API/data needed for weather apps to function is not free (at least in the US), with the possible exception of NOAA, though I’m not sure if they offer an API for apps to use.

That’s why the developers have to pass the cost on. If you’ve got a free weather app, you’re probably paying for it with ad views. I’m personally not interested in doing that, so I chose an app I liked that lets me choose which source I want to use and customise the display.

Another thing I have a subscription for is a flight tracker. Operating ADS-B receivers is also not free, nor is additional data some apps get about delays and the like.

I also have a WoW subscription because servers are an ongoing cost (not factoring in continual development and new features even within a single expansion) but won’t keep paying for single player games. My purchase should cover development costs and the cost of fixing bugs.

Other stuff? Nope. I’ll spend a few dollars for useful utilities, but everything seems to be free with in-app purchases now, so most of the stuff I’ve got is grandfathered in from when you paid a reasonable fee that covered development costs and you weren’t hounded.

I can get it to show up if I search for a flight on FlightAware.

Some apps somehow do get the stock keyboard to show a number row (I don’t have any third party keyboards installed) but I’ve never figured out how to get the setting to stick.