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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Thursday, January 13, 2005
00:04 - Year of the roadPod	(top)
Visiting Macworld today, the first thing I noticed (aside from the fact that the show was smaller this year than ever before, following the trend of the ever-shrinking floor presence to the point where now the north hall is completely unoccupied, even while the Mac market continues to grow) was all the cars parked here and there and everywhere across the show floor. Each of these cars was on display to show off an iPod dash adapter setup that some company was hawking. MacMice (whose mice are, unfortunately, plagued by The Problem�, well-shaped though they be) had a red Mazda Miata. Two companies had Cooper Minis. Clarion had an Acura RSX in which most of the human-occupiable space had been replaced with speakers, and a dash adorned with their horrible garish full-screen solution in which the song and artist names are shown in a spaced-out font so wide that even shortish text strings are too long to fit on the generous screen width and have to be adorned with ellipses. And Mercedes-Benz had two factory-fresh show cars, the new SLK and the upcoming CLS "four-door coupe", both of which feature the next-generation iPod glovebox connector that'll be going into like six new carmakers' cars, showing the track info right in the instrument binnacle. That's definitely the best solution, especially considering the steering-wheel-mounted controls. Unfortunately, VW is not among the carmakers who will be taking part in the new iPod revolution, for some reason. That means I'm stuck with the current industry selection of iPod adapters... which is really no hardship. There are lots of good choices. But I've got one now, thanks to Lance and the just-ended gift-giving season: the Podfreq by Sonnet. I had thought that the best solution for me was the DLO TransPod or the Griffin RoadTrip; these devices both have a rigid arm that sticks into your cigarette lighter outlet. I'd thought that this arm was the best solution around�it would keep the iPod firmly presented against your dash so it wouldn't rattle around or have coily wires dangling around on your center console. When I got the Podfreq, which has a coiled cord leading from the power adapter plug to the cradle, I was skeptical; I didn't think it would be the right solution. But I think I've come around. (I believe Lance outsmarted me on this one.) See, when you've got your iPod in your car and playing music transmitted to your radio over FM, you don't want to have the iPod sitting in a rigid cradle at arm's length; the iPod screen is designed to be readable at about a foot's distance, and anything more would mean lots of dangerous eyes-off-road time. But if the cradle (which on the Podfreq consists of a nice enclosure that requires some fiddly assembly when you get into the car, but that smartly encapsulates the iPod and still gives you complete access to its controls) is connected via an extendable cable, you can reach out and grab the device like a CB radio mike, pull it close to you, work the controls, read the screen, and put it back, the way it was intended to work. The more I've used the Podfreq, the more I like it. There's some annoying radio hiss, but I don't think any other FM-transmitter-based adapter would be any better; apparently the Podfreq has the best transmitter on the market. It's either this or a tape adapter, which has its own irritating problems. For most of the time the sound quality is great, and I can usually clear up hiss by waving the cradle around in the car like an idiot for a few moments until it re-acquires the signal more strongly. This, plus my newly created and several-hundred-song-long "Driving Tunes" playlist, has already made my driving and listening experience a great deal more comfortable. At last I can hear real bass. I don't need a trunk full of speakers and a rear seat full of amps, thank you. Compared to some dinky earbuds, my VW's sound system is keen. And so is the Podfreq. Macworld is a bit subdued this year, but I think the new gear will present a long, slow burn, rather than a flash in the pan like usual; things are a little different this time around. Apple's about to enter a new chapter, now that it's actively courting a new class of customer; I think of Apple and the computing public, Apple might be the one to undergo more change because of it. Let's hope what emerges is a compelling synthesis, not a watery compromise. I think the chances are good for the former.