I have an "old" 20GB iPod which no longer holds its charge for very long. I had pretty much retired it in favor of a new 60GB iPod. It had previously made its way to work with me every day, but since it only remained charged for an hour or so, it soon lost its appeal.
At the same time, I’ve been wanting to get access to all my music in my car. I have a six CD changer, but I rarely change out the CDs. For whatever reason, I never think about it and its inconvenient to find a CD that I want.
So I combined these two scenarios by buying a cigarette lighter power source and a cassette tape interface for the old iPod. Now the old iPod travels in the car with all my music and its charge capacity is not a factor since it has a constant power source. Sweet.
I think its only a matter of time before CD changers go away completely. And even iPods probably have a limited life span in that environment. It seems like some sort of wireless solution must be around the corner. As in, I’ll have my own channel out in the ether of the Internet and my car (or my home equipment) will be able to access it.
In the words of Kip, "I love technology."
You might get better sound if your car stereo has an direct input jack, maybe even on the back.
I can’t believe there is no car stereo with an iPod dock yet. It would look something like those old 8-track car stereos, you’d plug in your iPod and then control it through the face plate display/buttons.
The possibilities are endless: the full iPod could be inside the stereo and hidden to deter theives, the stereo could be a full ipod itself and sync from your portable iPod, etc. Can I patent those ideas now?
Closest I could find was a dock that fits in a cup holder and just uses an FM channel, something that Apple itself has patented.
Indeed. If Apple could settle on a design that would remain standardized, I could see how a built-in within a dashboard would be great.
I’d love to just plug it in like an 8-track and be done with it.