How can you put Ryanair and BMW in the same category?

Ryanair's whole shtick is "we'll treat you like cattle in a truck, and you'll be grateful you only paid €20 for the experience". I feel that anyone who is outraged by their nickel-and-diming doesn't really understand what Ryanair is about.

If I paid €200 for a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam, and they forced me to watch ads on the seatback screen and charged me to use the loo, then I'll be rightfully upset. But €50 for Ryanair? Where do I sign up for the €20 standing-only tickets?

>basic Kindle

Praise be to AdBreak https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/AdBreak

I practically own it now!

Ryanair: can’t recall if they’re worse than Spirit/Frontier. “We have one price for tiny people flying with the shirt on their back, and other prices for everyone else like those who might need luggage, or, liquid to survive.“

Ryanair is the epitome of "cheap with compromise" which is the opposite of the BMW brand. And kindle basic gets advertising as a known feature at buying time.

Pushing advertisment after sale on a premium product is absolutely not similar.

A BMW is like a flagship smart phone. It looks like luxury, but everyone has them.

No, it's obviously not like that.

This has nothing to do with the method used to propel the vehicle. There's nothing stopping this from happening in an EV.

The most evil part of this is that drivers have been conditioned to click on these “surprise waiting for you” notifications. BMW usually had fairly cute holiday animations that were a fun surprise. I actually looked forward to them until I got bamboozled by this one…

Sounds like it is forced and it’s an entire banner. Imagine the click-through rate on something your car shows you compared to your average ad.

Mercs and BMWs occupy the same market space. They are direct competitors.

Mercedes may have a car or two that reaches just out of upper middle class but they are largely a middle to upper middle class brand, just like BMW.

The fact that Merc would do it too just means they are both happy cheapening their brand to align with practices of cheap off-brand android TVs.

I don't think I'll be buying recent model years any time soon.

Volvo, with their terrible infortainment system's performance, I'm not sure if it's capable of displaying ads.

Mercedes used to be that. The S class used to be the best car you could buy.

The S class sales are tanking as well as E class and the rest of their cars are just toyota corolla class with extra "luxury" features.

AMG used to actually mean something, now AMG badging is a feature that means nothing (Like M cars).

My Lexus 2025 remains perfect and user friendly. I have all the online connected stuff enabled. Zero enshitification.

Just saying that these brands have different offerings in different countries. Here in Germany all big brands: Audi, BMW, Mercedes and VW etc have offerings from low lever to luxury car.

You make it sound like there's no choice. Toyota/Lexus and Honda/Acura don't do it to my knowledge. Am I wrong?

EDIT Add Volvo and Genesis to the list of no ads

A fridge is one of these devices where I wouldn't know why I would even want a screen. So, I would never buy a fridge with a screen or a washing machine/dryer with anything more than a simple segmented LCD.

For me the biggest annoyance are pushing ads (and the pervasive monitoring that comes with it) to devices where screens are integral to the device and therefore unavoidable, like TVs, smartphones, computer displays, etc. We haven't connected our TV to WiFi (like any TV nowadays you have to be very careful that it doesn't enable a service like Samba that screenshots what you are viewing), but I'm sure these people will do anything to get their hands on analytics and screen time by embedding cellular modems and whatnot.

Similarly, at least on Android phones, you can git of a lot of crap with adb. But Android 17 removes the possibility to uninstall apps from the 'user partition' (you can only disable), I wouldn't be surprised if they also remove disabling in the future, so there will be no way to get rid of all the spyware and crap ware. Yes, alternative ROMs do not have this issue, but they get increasingly blocked out with Play Integrity.

This is not the future we should want.

I suppose they've determined the revenue from the ads outweighs the potential competitive advantage.

It's not like they're showing ads on fridges/cars in the commercials or the display units in Lowe's/the dealership. By the time you see the ad, it's too much of a hassle to return it, even if you can...

(I checked the directives weeks ago.)

In the eu, the general idea is "you can disable the functions each time you restart the car - they will be re-enabled as the car is off".

Some people spend minutes turning off the annoying parts from the settings before starting the car, each time.

I haven't driven a recent model but afaik the answer for most is Yes, or at best you can disable them for the current ride and they turn on again automatically on every start.

> My 2015 has none of these things

The eu has started pushing those things with a 2016 (I believe) regulation that imposed "all cars approved for production after 2018 must have an "e-Call" system (internal GPS, microphone and telephone connected to the police in case of car crash)".

And then more, and then more, and still more...

Same in my car from 2017. Also has rear camera, no infotainment other than bluetooth (so I guess it doesn't have any telemetry), physical buttons, no internal nav, no EU warning systems, no alerts that I need to turn off. Perfect car. Very peaceful to drive.

Earn 300 bonus BMWBucks by visiting your local Taco Bell (R) (TM) drive through in the next 15 minutes! Limited time offer!

Spend $20 at your local Burger King and we'll turn off that oil leak!

I mean, I don't know of it's still around, but the ad-supported Amazon Kindle was at least cheaper than the regular version. So the customer got some compensation for being shown ads.

Focusing on US, not EU: Had a 2020 m340i delivered pre2020 so lived through this. The niche market also understands this, C3 made a full breakdown presentation for the Volkswagen scandal (https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...) that makes your first point moot.

They're both violations of boundaries associated with ownership.

It depends if you like U2 or not I suppose.

> Time to ["]up["]grade to a 2008 330i

Went to an official repairs shop for a device yesterday, said I had a backup device with a malfunctioning (for clinical reasons) OS. The technician replied that OS downgrade is inhibited.

And there are similarities. For example, after laws that forbid circulation of older vehicles upon "non-ecological" reasons. For example, if they stop producing replacement parts. Etc.

And anyway, if the basis of Economics is not rebuilt, that of a "violent" Demand side with a strong refusal against the Supply side, the damage will be even more than the already critical one of unacceptable products eating u the market.

Only the older ones without screens. A naturally aspirated inline 6 with a manual gearbox and 50/50 weight distribution is it's own special kind of bliss.

I only take it out maybe 20 times per year, but after merely 30s behind the wheel I remember why I keep it.

Oh he let me drive it a couple of times and the thing was an absolute beast.

I suppose it could be worse. The ad could torture you with loud high pitched noise until you look at it, like in Black Mirror's 15 million merits.

yes, these are data from Czechia in 2022, TOP10 (it's percentage share of accidents per operated/registered cars, it doesn't take into consideration km travelled though which would eliminate all the trucks immediately with their yearly mileage):

1. DAF 4,67%

2. MAN 3,60%

3. Iveco 2,99%

4. Mercedes-Benz 1,53%

5. Volvo 1,34%

6. BMW 1,04%

7. Audi 1,02%

8. Fiat 0,89%

9. Renault 0,86%

10. Volkswagen 0,83%

Guess which of these brands doesn't sell trucks (just a little bit hint - Mercedes and Volvo sell a lot of trucks in Europe) and you will get number one among passenger cars from one brand which doesn't sell trucks and cause the most accidents followed unsurprisingly by Audi.

https://www.garaz.cz/clanek/servis-auto-cisla-statistiky-vin...

different chart from 2025 from CEBIA in Czechia, company checking whether car was crashed and their findings, percentage of cars they were checking and which actually crashed, though this one just says percentage out of verified cars, it must be noted that Skoda/Toyota are extremely popular in Czechia, so they are also more likely to have accidents:

Audi 69,69 %

BMW 68,82 %

Škoda 64,37 %

Toyota 63,87 %

Mercedes-Benz 62,27 %

Hyundai 61,95 %

Volvo 58,59 %

Volkswagen 56,02 %

Seat 55,02 %

Mazda 54,78 %

https://autosalon.tv/novinky/ojetiny/10-nejcasteji-bourajici...