Comments on: A True iPod Car Stereo–iCarTunes

By: Nacho

Nacho — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:47:50 +0000

I’ve been looking for a car stereo like this. Is there any progress in this area?

By: Technotheory.com - Follow up to iPod car post…

Technotheory.com - Follow up to iPod car post… — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:05:37 +0000

[...] A little while back I wrote about a different approach to an iPod car stereo. I just read a rather informative article in the Post offering a series of suggestions for iPod integration. I should give Apple some more credit–offering integration in 40 percent of 2006 cars is quite a testament to their ubiquity. [...]

By: Jared Goralnick

Jared Goralnick — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:14:27 +0000

Thanks for the feedback, Kirk. I wasn’t aware of a cordless option for cars, but I suppose I haven’t done all of my research. However, I will say that of the cars in the sub 30k range (and I’ve looked at many) the best I’ve seen for an iPod interface is the way it was configured in the Scion tC. There they allowed you to connect your iPod in the console’s compartment between the seats and control the songs from the stereo or steering wheel. However, to my knowledge, all one could do is skip between the songs by track number, say 1-500.

Perhaps some of the more luxury cars have improved on this idea, but I feel like there are a number of iPod users who aren’t buying expensive cars in the immediate future who wouldn’t mind spending maybe $300 on a device like this. Most cars that “iPod ready” just have 1/8″ jacks to plug in as an auxiliary input. To have the iPod system in a new car, like the Scion, one still had to ADD $260. And this idea would offer much more functionality.

As for the argument about multiple-iPod families, I think that could be accomodated by simply having a really large hard drive in the stereo. 250gb hard drives could be had for reasonable prices at the consumer level, so I imagine they’d be very inexpensive for a company manufacturing en masse. Or, worst case, there could still be an auxiliary input for additional iPods to use it. Maybe they could still make the input proprietary to keep out competitive products.

You’re right that it’s not the typical Apple venture, but I’d love to see them try something like this. At least it makes more sense than the iPod Hi-Fi…

By: Kirk McElhearn

Kirk McElhearn — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 09:32:07 +0000

An interesting idea, but there’s one problem. With many families having more than one iPod, limiting the transfer to a single iPod is a problem. This said, the concept is a good one. But don’t many new cars offer a much better (cordless) interface with the iPod?

Nevertheless, I can’t see Apple getting into that kind of market. Perhaps partnering with another company, but we saw what happened when they tried that with Motorola for the Rokr.