Alpine plus iPod This Fall

I have been waiting with great anticipation for Alpine’s release of their Interface Adapter for iPod, which they announced earlier this year at CES. It’s been six long months, and finally we have some more information. It will be released this Fall, cost $100 and will work with any 2004 Alpine head unit that supports Ai-net. This last detail was one that kept me from buying a deck for my new car recently. Now I can finally replace my stock stereo.

While looking for decks, you have a couple of cheap options. The cheapest one that will get the job done appears to be theCDA-9825. While this certainly seems to be a capable unit, the only illumination available for the unit is green. Green. ugh. It’s $200. For an extra $60 you upgrade to theCDA-9827, which includes not only blue illumination, but MP3 from CD as well, which can be a nice bonus if you forget the iPod at home. If you’re buying today, don’t forget to grab the auxiliary input cable to get you through the long months until you can buy the control unit this fall.

Apple is in talk with auto makers to integrate iTunes into the automotive experience, and undoubtedly that will include iPod solutions and probably hard drive based stereos as well. With a great deal of new cars shipping with LCD panels, it shouldn’t be too long before we see a robust multimedia system shipping stock in cars. How long until standard gauges are replaced with LCDs that can display massive amounts of information based on context, like in planes, and also offer control over the stereo as well?

Posted by Joe Mullins at June 25, 2004 02:32 PM |TrackBack