What people like my lunch companion would ideally want, they think, would be if audio head units would support AAC CDs just like they support MP3 CDs. But Apple is reluctant to license AAC to third parties; it's taken them this long to license it to Motorola for their phones, and that effort is all but stillborn. So AAC-capable CD players are an unlikely possibility. But something better still might be the answer anyway.

Imagine, then, what these guys conspicuously missed: if Apple were to produce its own car audio head unit.

The image just draws itself in one's mind, doesn't it?

A smooth white rectangular face in your dashboard. In the lower left, a horizontal slot—as wide as an iPod, and as high as it is thick—into which you slide it like your bank card into an ATM, screen up. The screen on the iPod is no longer readable, but that's okay—because the head unit itself has a much bigger screen, which shows the iPod's whole listing and more, much more lavishly and with eminent readability from the driver's seat at speed.