After having several crappy FM tuners, and basically giving up the dream of being able to play my ipod in my car with decent sound, I have, ladies and gentlemen, WON the battle.
From the time I got my first ipod MANY years ago, I have always loved having my entire music library at my fingertips; in fact, I am rarely without one of my many ipods. The damn things are so handy. If I didn’t have to use iTunes to update them, they would be perfect; but that is a different post for a different day. In my old car, I had a tape player, so I used the cassette adapter with much success, but I was forced to bid it farewell when I upgraded to my fancy new Acura; leading to much dismay and disappointment when said FM tuners turned out to be complete and utter shit.
Cut to last week, when I finally decided to take the plunge, give up XM, and get the iSimple installed. I bought the kit, and set up an appointment, and started to say my bittersweet farewell to XM, all the while convincing myself that I wouldn’t miss it anyway. It was like turning my back on a child, so as to make them hate me, so they would leave for their own good. But here’s the kicker, I WAS MISINFORMED.
What is that you say? Someone working at Best Buy gave me blatant misinformation, which is no more useful than a off handed guess?! Say it isn’t so! Well, ladies and gents, it is true; the iSimple allows you to keep XM, and adds the ipod functionality; which is controlled through the radio, and displays the name of the track and artist information right there in your factory radio display!!! I honestly would have bought this thing YEARS ago if I would have known, but because of some dumb half-wit that worked in the audio section of Best Buy and touted themselves as an audio “expert”, I have written off this product for all of this time.
Shame. For real shame.
Now, I have the power to use my ipod in my car with crystal clear sound, sweetly coming from my speakers. Needless to say, I LOVE this feature, and even though iSimple’s interface is a bit wonky and hard to get used to, I am just pleased as punch that I have something that I have wanted for years back in my life.
Hear me Best Buy; I win this round. I WIN.
I just think it’s weird that they make such pomp and circumstance, and say “boom! bap! shazam!” and we are expected to be wowed; even when nothing major happened. The worst, is that I KNOW that as soon as I have had this ipod touch for 2 or 3 months, they will quietly release a 64GB version, and I will of course, be pissed that I didn’t wait. You are always doing this to me Apple! Every single ipod I have gotten since my 2nd Gen 10GB (which was $400 then!!), with the notable exception of my 3rd Gen Nano 8GB (probably because I bought it on a whim, just for fun), I have been “bested” by Apple mere months after I made my informed purchase. The worst was when I bought my 4th Gen one, and the photo one came out LITERALLY 35 days later (just long enough for me to be unable to return it). I wouldn’t bitch, but it isn’t like these are purchases around $100; all of the ipods I have gotten have been over $200; which is I guess a testament of being an early adopter of technology (hello $1000 Blu-Ray now being $300).