That was easy. It took less than an hour to have a new Alpine head unit fitted with an iPod connector. The CD stacker is no longer connected, but that's a small price to pay for being able to play music from the iPod on long trips. We have a six hour drive ahead of us this weekend, so it will be nice to have plenty of music to choose from.
The unit is a mid-range Alpine system. It's not fancy. It doesn't have a multi-coloured screen. It doesn't integrate with GPS or a rear facing parking camera. It just plays music, which is all I want it to do.
I already have one pet hate though. The volume knob is on the left hand side of the face, which is fine if you have a left hand drive car, but a pain in Australia. The thing that I fiddle with the most on any car stereo is the volume, so ideally I want the knob close to me. As it is, I have to stretch a wee bit to get to it.
It would be fine if I had buttons on the steering wheel to control the volume, but I don't, and I am not replacing the steering wheel.
The other thing is that it is littered with tiny little buttons that perform essential functions. I hate that. I don't have big, fat farmer fingers, but they are fat enough, and some of the buttons are hard to press without hitting the button next to it.
Ah well, you gets what you paid for.
The biggest problem now is that we only have a 4GB iPod. I alone have 5.6GB of music in iTunes, and J has more on her computer. I'm not sure how we are going to be able to share a single 4GB iPod. Suddenly, an 80GB iPod is starting to look attractive.....
One thing I haven't done yet is to try to search through the iPod for songs, albums, artists or playlists. It's supposed to display a bit of text on the screen to show you what's playing. I don't really care if it does or not - I just want it to play my selected playlist and not much else.
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