Paris Mac Expo – Unwired

 

Parrot SA:

What does a parrot have to do with Apple, Macs and the iPod or iPhone? The colors of the original Apple logotype? Well, I’d say it’s more likely the manufacturer’s claim of enabling you to “Move Wireless” – they heavily bet on Bluetooth and WiFi, and NFC (Near Field Communication) and more connectivity options are closer than on the horizon.

At their crowded stand, Audrey and Pauline show me their new MKi9x00 line of car handsfree audio systems, specifically designed to support the various iPods or iPhones, and each of the three different sets comes with the connectors required to use basically any given music player on the market. All the Parrot handsfree kits have text-to-speech and multi-speaker voice recognition and voice dialing built-in.

The MKi9000 consists of just the connectivity and a wireless multifunctional control which comfortably attaches to your car’s steering wheel. The mid range sibling, MKi9100, features an additional bright dot matrix display, effectively providing the necessary visual feedback while you control your music playback or in-car phone calls:

Of course, with the high-end MKi9200 comes a bigger and full-color display which let’s you not only more visually interact with your iPod or iPhone while keeping your hands on the wheel, but it also offers multimedia features such as displaying slideshows of photos on your handheld:

Just when I was about to leave their booth, I saw this perspective giving you a nice view of not only the award-winning SK4000 motorcycle handsfree kit (iF Product Design Award 2008) but also a glimpse of Parrot’s wireless stereo audio speakers (audio transmission and channel synchronization via Bluetooth, make sure your mobile phone supports the A2DP protocol for stereo audio though!), boom-box and digital photo frames. And to avoid any confusion – the control device for the helmet’s audio does not have any wires. What you see is the audio cord for your music player:

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