Product Anxiety
Like many, I take great pride in my work and do my best to make whatever I build as good as it can be. Now and then when I give a product to someone to go over and test, I tend to get a little anxious because I of course want it to do well. The same goes for when a demo or full version is shown to customers, I don't want anything to break, I want it to work perfectly and be as clear as can be without the anything thinking "gee, I wish it could do ___ as well" or "I wish it would do it this way instead." Traditionally, I do not feel the same way about the products of others, either from my company or elsewhere.
As an owner of an iPod who has an hour commute each day, I began with simply throwing my headphones and listening to tunes. This is legal in my state (SD), but every now and then when I visit my parents in Minnesota it becomes illegal at the border.
I like many was happy to hear about the Alpine KCA-420i iPod Interface that would make your iPod look like a CD Changer to many Alpine decks.
When it was finally released, I went down to my local Ultimate Electronics with a couple of friends who know far more about car audio than I to take a look. Suffice to say, I was not impressed. I first played with the adapter plugged into my iPod and a $1500 head unit... it was a joke, it was rarely able to display all of my songs, was a nightmare to use to scroll through to a specific one and was painful just to have play a random track.
I was, disappointed, not a state I am in very often and my friend Chad quickly noticed. A frequent phrase that he kept saying when I'd run into an oddity, flaw or general usability issue was: "God damn Alpine", not to be confused with similar and often heard phrases like "Stupid Alpine" and "F*#@ing Alpine".
Being ready to spend several hundred on a nice deck and the iPod adapter, I ended up buying a nice Pioneer deck as well as an aux input cable so that I could run my iPod to it that way.
Not long later, I heard of the CD-IB100, an upcoming product from Pioneer to do what the Alpine product did. Being curious, I went back to the local Ultimate to take a look and see if it "sucked less" (yes that was the term I used when talking with the sales person at Ultimate).
I would really like to be able to have a clean way of controlling my iPod from my deck, however if the CD-IB100 is anything like the Alpine one, I am going to be quiet angry, and in the mean time I feel a bit of anxiety regarding this as I am very much looking forward to the release of this product.
Within the next month it should be out, and I'll try to give it a try at Ultimate, or just drop $100 bucks, plug it into my own and hope it's better, or more likely, see if it "sucks less". I'm hopeful... but still skeptical.
As an owner of an iPod who has an hour commute each day, I began with simply throwing my headphones and listening to tunes. This is legal in my state (SD), but every now and then when I visit my parents in Minnesota it becomes illegal at the border.
I like many was happy to hear about the Alpine KCA-420i iPod Interface that would make your iPod look like a CD Changer to many Alpine decks.
When it was finally released, I went down to my local Ultimate Electronics with a couple of friends who know far more about car audio than I to take a look. Suffice to say, I was not impressed. I first played with the adapter plugged into my iPod and a $1500 head unit... it was a joke, it was rarely able to display all of my songs, was a nightmare to use to scroll through to a specific one and was painful just to have play a random track.
I was, disappointed, not a state I am in very often and my friend Chad quickly noticed. A frequent phrase that he kept saying when I'd run into an oddity, flaw or general usability issue was: "God damn Alpine", not to be confused with similar and often heard phrases like "Stupid Alpine" and "F*#@ing Alpine".
Being ready to spend several hundred on a nice deck and the iPod adapter, I ended up buying a nice Pioneer deck as well as an aux input cable so that I could run my iPod to it that way.
Not long later, I heard of the CD-IB100, an upcoming product from Pioneer to do what the Alpine product did. Being curious, I went back to the local Ultimate to take a look and see if it "sucked less" (yes that was the term I used when talking with the sales person at Ultimate).
I would really like to be able to have a clean way of controlling my iPod from my deck, however if the CD-IB100 is anything like the Alpine one, I am going to be quiet angry, and in the mean time I feel a bit of anxiety regarding this as I am very much looking forward to the release of this product.
Within the next month it should be out, and I'll try to give it a try at Ultimate, or just drop $100 bucks, plug it into my own and hope it's better, or more likely, see if it "sucks less". I'm hopeful... but still skeptical.
posted by Brendan at
9:10 AM
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