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Comment by jdminhbg | Hacker News Reader

According to their App Store description:

> We no longer recommend using the Automatic car adapter due to reliability issues.

Do you happen to know if this is real or just a CYA? I'd pay $10 to extend the life of my adapter, but not if I needed to buy another device anyway.

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Former VP Eng @ Automatic here :( There is an auth component needed for that BT connectivity to work - once the token expires, the BT connection won't authenticate anymore.

i.e. if you uninstall the BT apps, change phone etc...

Thanks for the info, sorry about the outcome. I enjoyed having mine.

Why wouldn't you have pushed an update that removed the DRM?

"Former"

Oh that really sucks. I have an older one (Gen 1 I think) that a friend gave me when he upgraded. I don't really make much use of it but it was nice being able to see basic OBD codes the one time my car was acting up and the check engine light was on. Helped me figure out the likely issue before even taking it to the mechanic (saving time spent having them figure out the issue).

I could surely get a different BT ODB reader but I already have this one.

Yeah...I have a Gen 1 adapter, and I found this to be a really annoying limitation. It makes sense from the company's perspective, since it forces you to have their app installed. And at least up until one of the major iOS releases a few years ago (iOS 8 I think?), it was not possible to definitively disable access to Location data for background apps. So you had to decide whether to allow the app to constantly record your location, or instead to delete the app and not be able to use the adapter.

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