Get Connected Kit for new iPod
Company: Xtreme Accessories, LLC.
Price: $49.95
http://www.xtrememac.com
When my .Mac membership came up for renewal, I had a choice of a few different incentives. I chose the $20 credit from the Apple Store. I desperately needed an auto charger for my iPod.
A visit to the Apple store showed just the thing I needed for 19.95, but I was also thinking about replacing the auto cassette adaptor too. It was making a loud grinding noise and was irritating. Sometimes you could hear it over the music, like a mysterious bad musician. The cassette adapter came from an old portable CD player that has a lot of attachments. It also had an audio cable that I hooked up my Dock to, and was running the iPod through the kitchen radio. This is my iPod’s home base, and it made my kitchen radio, a Zenith Bose-wannabe, sound much better. And of course, no commercials!
The XtremeMac Get connected kit had what I needed for the car, plus a replacement cable for the kitchen radio, another adaptor that would hook up to my stereo, an extension cable, plus a line splitter so two people could listen through headphones to the same iPod. The last would be good if I ever get back to the gym with my wife, and we manage to agree on the same music selection (not likely.)
The cost of the kit is $49.95, with the $20 incentive and shipping it cost me around $35. It arrived a few days later via FedEx.
The first thing I did was hook my iPod up to the home stereo. Very cool! No more digging for CD’s. And now I understood why they shipped an extension cord. If I wanted to bother, I could run the cord directly to my Mac, and run the stereo out of iTunes.
I then replaced the kitchen radio cord with the gold-tipped cable. I tried swapping back and forth a few times to see if I could notice an appreciable audio difference. I was hard to tell, but I would say yes. The cable did make my iPod sound better, even on my cheap radio.
Next up, the car. I popped out the old cassette adaptor, inserted in the new. Plugged in the lighter adaptor, hooked up the iPod and was ready to go. I started up the iPod, turned the volume down to see if I could hear anything: Nothing! The mysterious bad musician had played his last note.
The auto cassette adaptor is quiet. No more dead iPod discoveries in the car. The kitchen radio sounds better. The home stereo can pump music for hours on end (I need to work on some playlists.) And I still have expansion capabilities when and if the need should arrive. I’d say the kit was well worth the asking price. I do wish it came in black, but it only comes in white. And, if you are a Dock user, be aware that the adaptor to the iPod from the auto battery charger requires you to squeeze the sides to release the catch. The other day it “stuck” on me. I had been squeezing it unconsciously and never realized that the lever was there.
The other thing of note is that the cable to the car charger is coiled. In my car, everything is close and tight: cassette, charger, and place to put my iPod. I can lift the iPod to read it without any trouble, but your car may be different, and you might not prefer to have a coiled cable. I do find it odd that one is cabled and the other is not, since they are both connected to the iPod when you move it.
It would be nice if someone would make a holster that simplified the cabling, but there is nothing like that on the market as far as I now. As is, you end up with a cable at the top and another at the bottom of the iPod.
The free iPods that came with a VW bug seem to use the same setup. My old car had an audio input jack, but the new cars do not seem to have one. I suspect we will see that jack port come back as the popularity of the iPod-like devices grow.
The kit includes:
Xwire Gold iShare Earbud Splitter
Xwire Gold Male/Male Audio Cables
Xwire Gold Male/Female Cables
Xwire Gold RCA Audio Cable
Premium iPod Car Charger
iPod Cassette Adapter
For more info visit www.xtrememac.com
Like all fine American products it is made in China.
MyMac Rating: 5 out of 5
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