Power:

First things first, you’ve got to have power. I suppose if you are only going to be using the iPhone in your car occasionally you won’t need this step, but if you plan to use it for more than a quick drive in town then you will want to plan on a power adapter. At the moment there is only one car power adapter made for the iPhone 3G, The Griffin PowerJolt. The problem with this device is ALL it does is supply power. No music connection. So if you want to play your music in your car as well, you will have to plug in a separate headphone jack into the top of the iPhone, and at this point it become cumbersome.

The Griffin AutoPilot offers power and auxiliary out for audio in addition to music control.

The device I chose does provide power and a line out to giving me one connection to do all the heavy lifting. It technically isn’t made for the iPhone 3G, but it does provide power and audio out without a problem. Because it isn’t blessed by Apple for this it displays that pesky message about interference, which is non-existent. So I just click on it saying I want to use the phone even though it may cause interference.

There are also a few things the AutoPilot does that other charging options for iPods and iPhones alike don’t do: music control. This is one of the features I like best about the AutoPilot. Once the music is on, you can do other things on the iPhone. Unfortunately, when you are on other screens you have to click out of them to go back to the iPod control in order to pause or skip tracks. This device solves this problem, and allows control of playback on the iPhone without having to stop what you are doing in order to go back to the iPod screen.

Another nice feature of the AutoPilot is its charging feedback. The center circle on the AutoPilot is actually a multi-colored LED. It fades on and off red while it is charging your iPhone, and then changes to a constant green when it is fully charged. You don’t have to wonder how much charge you have on your iPhone when leaving the car if the green circle is on. The lights for the charging indicator aren’t too bright to cause distraction while driving, simply there to provide information in an easy to use format.

The auxiliary out for the AutoPilot can be used for an AUX in on a stereo headunit, but also for other things like tape adapters. It provides a Hi-Lo switch next to the port to control the volume of the line. Once set, you never have to worry about the volume you had the iPhone with headsets as it will always play at a constant volume through the line out and the volume control is then passed to the headunit in your car.

Docking:

I needed a place for my iPhone to sit in my car so that I could glance down and see it on the fly, and also so it wouldn’t move when hitting hard bumps or turning fast. This solution was easy in the past. I used a Belkin Tune Dock. It fits in a cup holder, holds the ipod upright, and has a dock connector pass-through on the bottom with a cable management system to reduce the clutter. The problem this time was I wanted to be able to use my iPhone with its cover still on. Yeah and Santa wants next Christmas off too, but that isn’t going to happen right?

The Belkin TuneDock, pre-modification.

Well, it just so happens, Santa may not get next Christmas off, but he will have some help. I couldn’t find a real solution to this problem, so I did the next best thing. I modified my old Belkin Tune Dock to fit with my iPhone 3G with the cover.

Because the TuneDock is made out of plastic, it was easy to modify. I simply took a pair of pliers, held the sides of the unit, and applied heat to the rounded edges of the dock. Applying just a small amount of pressure to the plastic while it heated allowed me to move the side walls out just enough to fit my iPhone in with the cover while still maintaining the integrity of the unit.

The suction cup still works with the cover I have on my iPhone, keep it secure in the dock, and the side walls are still there to keep it upright. The dock connector hasn’t really changed so of course it fits right where belkin intended it to, with no problem.

The other nice thing about this setup is it isn’t expensive. I have seen the TuneDock on ebay for as low as $8. It certainly isn’t hard to modify, and it just works. It is a simple solution. As you can see with the image, it comes with three different sized cup holder bottoms, so it will most likely fit in your car.

I know what you are thinking: “Mr. Mac, all you have done is put your iPhone in a dock, and plugged it into your car, how is this a command center?” I know, I am amazing at reading minds, you probably even said that sentence word for word. Ha, sure you did, you just read it didn’t you! Ok, enough with jokes. Here is where the fun comes in. You have the basics, the building blocks with these two items. The rest of the work comes right from your iPhone.

Navigation:

With GPS in the iPhone 3G, navigation is now possible, and is also damn accurate. Simply hit the location button in Maps and suddenly your iPhone shows your current location. Big deal right? Start moving. It will adjust the map as you start moving. This is half of navigation. The other half is it giving direction, which still isn’t as good as turn by turn, but if you already have an iPhone, you won’t need to also buy a Tom Tom.

Music:

Maps on the iPhone with Navigation

Of course you have music on your iPhone right? You should. It is simply the best iPod ever released and it happens to make phone calls. While you are in your car, you can play music, switch to navigation while the music is playing. So your iPhone is doing two things at once, flawlessly. Go ahead, crank up the volume, jam out, know where you are, and don’t miss a phone call. While your music is playing, the fading still works while plugged into the car. You will never miss another call because you had your music up too loud.

Grab a bluetooth headset and round out the command center. Leave it on your console or some other convenient place in your car. When you get a call, as I said, your music will fade out and pause. Put your headset on, and accept the call without the caller ever knowing you were jamming out to some loud music.

When you finish the call, hit the button on your headset and put it down as the music picks back up from where it stopped and fades back to the volume it was at originally. You are now doing phone calls, emails, music, navigation, and really anything else you want to do with just one device.

Of course, the iPhone offers one feature that most other car units that do similar things don’t. Security. When you get to your destination, you aren’t going to leave it in the car, you are going to take it with you. Avoiding potential theft. This certainly is nice.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/11/iphone-3g-unlock-in-the-wild/

Other ideas?

This app is really just a drop in the bucket

I love the motivational talk it gives when you press the information icon in the lower right corner. Makes me appreciate my money even more. Thank you money for making me the man I am today.

There is a big piece of this that I think many have not talked about. When I was reading about the update, from the pop-up iTunes places on the screen when I told it to check for updates, it says this update is for “Bug Fixes.” 249.2MB for Bug Fixes? Really? What else is going on here? How is it possible bug fixes take up almost 250MB?

Outrageous description of iPhone 2.0.1 Software Update

If you have had any problems with this update let me know. I am in the process of updating right now (aka: downloading the file, taking forever). I am curious about where all these patches are going and what exactly they are fixing.

An article from ars is talking about the sour points of the developers still being under NDA. They list a few examples of why this hurts, and can’t come up with good reasons for them to still be under NDA. I guess it is just the way of apple.

Ars lists the following problems

• Less Productive Coding
• No Books on Shelves - this cuts down on 3rd party sales
• Stability problems with the code
• Enforceability of the License agreement

But they also included a great quote about how this affects users and sentiment towards Apple:

The important thing is that Apple’s developers also have a lot of really positive things to say about Apple. I think it’s comparable to the mini-fiascos regarding the iPhone launch and MobileMe; are customers going to hold a long-term resentment against Apple because of some snags along the way? Not when the end product is as great as it is.

See the full article here.

This command will change a hidden setting in the iTunes preferences that will force it to skip the backup process.

This is not a Steve Jobs approved  technique…

1. - Quit iTunes.
2. - Open Terminal.app
3. - Copy and paste this in, then hit return:

4. - Open iTunes
5. - Plug in your iPhone (2.0 or 3G) and sync.

It will take a few seconds, assuming you don’t have a ton of music or podcasts.

Changing the ‘true’ in step 3 to ‘false’ will re-enable the backup feature.

Secondly, the string they found in the 2.1 software for using copy and paste is the same string used in Leopard’s webkit as well. Let’s get with the program guys and not get everyones hopes up. Thank you.

When we discovered that the Apple SDK allowed us to look through your contact list we thought it would be a great idea to automatically show you which friends are playing the game. Why automatically? Well, everyone always complains about the keyboard on the iPhone and how annoying it is to type on it. So we thought, “Hey, why don’t we make this feature REALLY easy to use – no typing!” And such, the community feature was born. Some people have said that it would have been ok if we had a better notice explaining what was going on. I agree! We weren’t trying to be sneaky about how this worked. It was just overlooked. No one we showed it to even asked a question about it – nor did we. It just simply never came up as a potential issue when we beta tested the game with early users.

Wow, I don’t know about you, but my top-hat and monocle fell off after reading this. I am in the process of recurling my mustache right now. At least they were trying to cause harm to the user, they are just shotty programmers not thinking they were going to become popular.

Hopefully they fix this and make it right.

It is sad how often I refresh this page

Let’s first take a look at the market-share of the Windows Tablet PCs versus regular Windows laptops. If we analyzed that market at all with a critical eye, we would begin to wonder why Windows still has tablets at all. (Clearly they still have them because Bill Gates believes this is the future.) If you start talking about multi-touch on the tablet then things start to get interesting, but I digress.

What would the form factor be? It would have to be somewhere between the iphone and the MacBook. Maybe around 8 inches or 10 inches at the largest. If it was smaller, most could justify having just an iphone or ipod touch. It it was larger, I think many would want a keyboard, and it wouldn’t be very comfortable to use on a day-to-day basis.

I also don’t see how Apple would market this, would it be used as a primary computer? With prices the way they are, I think it would need to have the power and functionality of a primary computer simply to justify the price. Why would I spend $900 for a tablet when I can get a MacBook with a bigger screen and a keyboard for only $100 more.  While this is true, the functionality of a tablet lends itself better to being a secondary computer, one you take to meetings, use during a presentation, or jot quick notes on while having the ability to access all of your information. Unless this tablet is around $500 or $600 I don’t see it having a lot of market without it being a fully functional computer.

I could see a mac tablet being used as a media device, say a mobile movie player, mp3 library, and more to fit in with the current trend by Apple. But again, if it is more than $600 I don’t see it picking up use the way the iPod and iPhone have.

I have listed a few reasons why Apple wouldn’t make a tablet, but why would they? Seriously, I want to know what you think. Give me reasons to rewrite this article. (Ok, after the whole boing-boing debacle, I will just post a new article while linking back to the old one instead) Put them in the comments and if your comment is interesting, you could win the first board piece in the mythical game of monopoly mac.