by Jared Goralnick
Today Apple announced one more product in a long line of tools built to capitalize upon and further the success of their iPods. The iPod Hi-Fi was announced as a high quality compact speaker system that serves as a docking station for their iPods. It’s portable, it works with the Apple Remote, and it serves some value for people who want everything to look Mac-minimalist… But even the least technically-inclined have found easy ways to play their music at home, especially since they have a synchronized copy of their music in iTunes or other music software. This is nothing revolutionary.
What I’d like to see is a synchronized iPod car stereo. I’ll explain to you first what I see out there now and then offer what I believe would make the most sense…
Apple has done an excellent job of partnering with car manufacturers and car stereo companies to sell their proprietary iPod integration technology for cars. It allows for some decent controls, and the better models even provide artist information on the stereo screen. But it’s a far way off from the interface of iTunes or the iPod itself. They also require that you have your iPod with you.
A better idea would be to have a car stereo that synchronizes with your iPod, much like iTunes, and then offers a iPod or iTunes-like interface. Let’s just call it iCarTunes for the sake of the argument. People would still need to connect their iPod with their car stereo from time to time to update the car, but they’d have most of their music available when they haven’t synchronized. This would accomplish a number of objectives:
- People would no longer need to bring their iPod with them. Not only would this be convenient but it’d be much safer. If you knew how many times I’ve struggled to plug in my iPod Nano while driving… Trust me, people wait until they’re moving before plugging in quite often.
- It would be easier to find music with a familiar interface. And, if you’re thinking, “well, I can just use my iPod if I don’t like my car stereo’s interface to the iPod,” I think that’s just plain unsafe. Sure, I do it, but it’s dangerous and there’s most likely a cord involved.
The first objection I would imagine hearing is the DRM (digital rights management) concerns. But I figure the iCarTunes would just get the data from one iPod and it wouldn’t allow you to aggregate music from multiple users’ iPods. Just like with iTunes, only one account could work on the stereo. Or maybe the iPod would only be able to work with one iCarTunes. Either way, existing DRM could easily be preserved.
I think Apple would profit immensely from this. Most of the present portable-MP3 integration solutions allow other devices to plug into a car by way of a 1/8″ headphone jack. This could restrict more people into using only Apple hardware. In addition, it’d be one more reason to do more on your iPod…and one less reason to worry about the distribution of DRM protected material (thus more purchases on iTunes).
I also think it’d open up a whole new revenue stream for them…without eliminating any of the existing car stereo options. Old iPod integration tools for the car would continue to work…they just wouldn’t be as nice. It also would still have more possibilities for further developments: how cool would it be if the iCarTunes could download your latest podcasts in the car or let you buy one more song that your buddies are talking about?
And who wouldn’t want a much slicker car stereo–one designed by Apple?
Rumor has it Apple is getting into the cell phone market. They already have the patents for some excellent touch screens that could be used with this device. They own the market for MP3 players, even in Japan. What’s to stop them?
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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.
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…
I’ve been looking for a car stereo like this. Is there any progress in this area?