It's not even just continuity between devices that it lacks, most times when I plug my iPhone into my car's USB port, it always starts playing the library at track 0 (alphabetically). Normally I could avoid this if I open the Music app before plugging it in, but it would not always work.
So one of my favourite things about Spotify is that this doesn't happen.
However, unless I have the Music app still installed on the iPhone, the car's entertainment system doesn't show what's playing with Spotify and most times when I plug it in it plays from the Music app instead of Spotify and I have to switch apps. So I installed the Music app again and sync'd a single "silent" track with an exclamation icon album art and a track title saying "Switch Apps".
It's really annoying that when I had to buy a new car in 2019 after my old one was written off, that Apple CarPlay wasn't available in Hondas in South Africa except in Civics and CRVs or better, even though in other countries it was. I'd been holding off buying a new car until CarPlay was available and been telling the sales reps as much each time I'd look while dropping my car off for a service.
This is actually a problem with your car. Some cars will issue a play audio command immediately upon connection. If no songs are in your iPhone's music queue, it will dutifully start from the top.
Most newer cars won't do this, and you may be able to shut it off in your car's settings somewhere.
Except that if I open the Music app prior to plugging it in, then I almost always don't have this problem. The issue tends to occur only when iOS has closed the Music app at some point to free up resources.
It seems like my car instantly presses "Play" when plugged in, if the Music app was already loaded, then it continues where it left off, but if the Music app wasn't loaded, then iOS loads the music app but instead of making the iPod interface wait until it's loaded where I left off, it instead plays the default list of everything in your library alphabetically. It feels like a kind of race condition which was just never considered by Apple.
Then consider the problems with Spotify. If it was recently playing and I plug it in, then the radio uses Spotify, otherwise it uses the Music app and I need to switch to Spotify on the phone. If the Music app is uninstalled completely, then the iPod interface doesn't work properly, it doesn't show track names or the artwork. It seems highly unlikely to me that Spotify is using the wrong iOS APIs, so I expect the blame here also most lies with Apple.
I acknowledge that other cars may not have this problem, but I can't see why Apple couldn't make their software more robust here. Anyway, this is also why I stated my annoyance at the not having the option of CarPlay since it delegates more control to my iPhone, meaning I get innovation and bug fixes on the screen my car on Apple's timelines as opposed to "when I get a new car", and even then, the car companies have far fewer software development resources so can't possibly hope to keep up with the likes of Apple.
My iPhone doesn't even work in my car says "Device is unsupported" yet my friends iPhone which is the same model works. It worked for a good 7 years then just deviced to stop any of my devices. Aux works, but its not the same. But my friends iPhone works, I have no idea why.
So one of my favourite things about Spotify is that this doesn't happen.
However, unless I have the Music app still installed on the iPhone, the car's entertainment system doesn't show what's playing with Spotify and most times when I plug it in it plays from the Music app instead of Spotify and I have to switch apps. So I installed the Music app again and sync'd a single "silent" track with an exclamation icon album art and a track title saying "Switch Apps".
It's really annoying that when I had to buy a new car in 2019 after my old one was written off, that Apple CarPlay wasn't available in Hondas in South Africa except in Civics and CRVs or better, even though in other countries it was. I'd been holding off buying a new car until CarPlay was available and been telling the sales reps as much each time I'd look while dropping my car off for a service.