Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est

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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

11:19 - It also places satellites into orbit

(top)

Various iPod aftermarket accessorizers have been trying for a long time to come up with the perfect way to hook up an iPod to your car. Every solution has its drawbacks. Cassette adapters are clunky and cheesy and temperamental. Direct line-in jacks are rare in car stereos, or require hacking wires into the CD changer connectors. FM transmitters are about the only reasonable, low-impact solution left, and they're far from ideal.

And they're hardly the only component necessary, either. You've also got to mount the iPod somehow, and power it somehow. I've seen mounts that jam into your cupholder, mounts that stick onto your dashboard with sticky pads, mounts that screw into places that shouldn't be screwed into, mounts that ask you to throw the iPod into your glove compartment�none of which are compelling options. And as for power, there's the cigarette lighter, and there are lots of adapters available, usually as part of more general mounting kits. But the adapters usually have an extra cable of their own leading to the mount or the connector, and in the end you're left with a big white stringy rat's nest on your previously spare and austerely dignified center console.

It seems that there are a couple of solutions now, though, that address all these problems and do it all in a single unit. The DLO TransPod seems to be the better of these, at $99, with a company history of making similar solutions and refining them over the years with each new iPod model; and not to be outdone, Griffin's RoadTrip ($79) is the same kind of thing. Each of these devices solves the power-and-mounting problem by using a cigarette lighter adapter that's integrated into an articulated plastic Space Shuttle arm that supports the weight of the iPod and cradle; and it solves the audio connection problem by integrating an FM transmitter (with digital tuner) into the cradle itself.

This is a far cry from the iTrip, which, elegantly understated though it might be in design, doesn't thrill me; you select the FM frequency by playing a specially encoded MP3 through it, one of a couple dozen with the frequency coded into a series of pulses. How... 1960. Besides, I've come to the conclusion that mine simply doesn't work. I can't get it to register a frequency, and nothing I do seems able to get it to transmit. I think it may be a dud. Odd for a piece of solid-state electronics. Ah well.

So that leaves me without a solution for my car; but the TransPod (or RoadTrip) looks like something I might want to try next. The TransPod seems to be a bit better designed and less likely to interfere with my gearshifting. From the review of the RoadTrip:

(Editor's Note: Regardless of the device you consider purchasing, based on TransPod user comments and our own RoadTrip experiences, our inclination is to recommend that the purchase of either device be made only from a store with a reasonable return policy. Placement in your vehicle may not be as straightforward as you imagine, and you can avoid the double penalty of disappointment and financial hardship by choosing a merchant that offers a fair testing period without a restocking fee. We also continue to recommend cassette tape adapters, direct line-out adapters, and separate power chargers for users who want superior audio quality and don't mind the extra cables and related charges.)

Yeah, well, I do mind those things. I think I can live with the FM audio penalty if it means a more elegant integration solution than even the Apple-endorsed BMW one.

One of these days, cars will all come with a little iPod-shaped receptacle in the dash, with a dock connector sticking up�just pop the iPod in and the car stereo starts playing from it. No docks, no cradles, no wires, no adapters. But until that day, I don't see a better solution than this.

It's either that or keep wearing headphones in the car�and having the dangling wires always getting caught in my seatbelt and the seat adjustment lever and yanking the earbuds out of my ears when I turn my head or stand up.

UPDATE: Of course, for your home, there is now... the Concertino! Tube-based amp for your iPod! Only �3200!

In Kris' words Poit! Narf!