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Pods Unite
burgburgburg writes "Apple has released the QuickTime video of the new commercial they made in conjunction with Volkswagen. The connection between the two? Buy a New Beetle. Get a new iPod. Take a look at video.
It's the 15 GB iPod and all the accessories needed to hook it up to the new Volkswagen." It uses a casette adapter, which is really lame. Of course, I use a casette adapter with my iPod, but I am not a German engineer.
Why, oh why, can't they just start giving us a 1/8th input jack on car stereos?? I've been wanting this for years, before mp3 players even, becuase I had a car that didn't have a tape player in the stereo and at the time I wanted to plug one in.
You'd think that designing and implementing such a thing would cost a fraction of what it costs to make and run this advertisent.
I would like to see some kind of poll of which is more useful to people.. a tape player or a 1/8th inch stereo input jack. After all, you can plug an external tape player into a jack easier, with more elegance, and for about the same cost as you can plug an external mp3 player into the tape player.. and I don't have any tapes anymore...
If someone can afford to lay down the money for a new VW, couldn't they afford to get a new ipod if they really wanted to? I wonder then whether this is more of a promotion for apple than VW.
Granted, Most of the people on Slashdot are so concerned with there geek/nerd image to buy this car(I am among them).
Now... I think Apple is winning here... They get to expose even more people to there products. Remember... The people who buy these cars are your teeny bopper 16 year old girls... It is afterall a fashion statement.
Way to go Apple... What would of been nicer would of been a "matching" iPOD for the car. While we are at it... lets get an iPOD with every car we buy!
What's with all the gay comments? German engineering rocks. And the Turbo S Beetle is awesome. Have you driven one? At least it's not a rice-mobile or American junk.
There are also the FM senders that you can attach to the iPod, which then are received by the car's FM stereo -- a wireless connection -- but I have heard mixed reviews of the sound quality.
Speaking of sound quality, the song that plays in this commercial is horrible.
"First you gotta do the truffle shuffle."
FWIW, the quality through the cassette adapter and a local FM transmitter will be about equal, assuming you choose an FM frequency that will be uninterfered with.
Two problems.
1. Analogue freq dial thingies. Those radioshack 20$ FM transmitters are useless to get on an odd frequency [recall FM is on odd freqs, e.g 93.9, 94.1, etc...].
2. Most populated cities have one useless station after another throughout the bands. All either discussing the rhetoric of the day [newsradio] or playing the teeny-bopper-I-wish-upon-a-pair-of-nice-melons musak. Oh yeah,and don't forget that even if you find a relatively unused band the thing only has a 2 foot range so you better tape it to the hood of your car beside the attenna!
As another poster asked it "would it hurt to put a aux jack 1/8" in the front?". It makes sense and would allow people to plug in new shit much easier than via casettes [which can jam] and FM transmitters [which suck ass anyways].
Or just better yet, build mp3 pod players into cars all together. E.g. like a removable harddrive tray. Just remove it, take it inside, program it, boom.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Oh, I know, maybe you thought they were giving away the ipods.
For a group that does a lot of whining about generic music a la britney spears every time the music debates come up, slashdot sure has a nice way of playing the marionette whenever some new pseudo-kitsch gadget or anime box set comes out..
You're at the VW dealership, and you climb inside the brand new Beetle. And you see this little white thing near the stereo. You ask the dealer what that's all about, he encourages you to play with it. You see that it's filed with literally thousands of songs that you can play in the car's stereo instantly. You ask. He says it's yours with the car. You go across the street to anotehr car dealer. Inside the car you find the usual CD player with some lame CD they stuck in there. Just one CD at a time. It's all about overwhelming the prospective buyer with the experience. And the idea of all the music you could ever need at your fingertips is definitely a compelling one.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Wow!
I can't be the only slashdot poster to see past the technical aspects of hooking up an iPod in a car and see one very very beautifull add. Without looking it up my guess would be that the Volkswagen people put the add together, it's in their style.
With its style & music I put it on the same level as the recent technically cool Honda add.
You're thinking of the old bugs. Everyone knew they were shitty cars, but that's pretty much WHY people drove them. Also, because the engine was so easy to remove, repairs cost less. I'm not saying they're the best car ever, but if you were a college student in the 60s, it beats the hell out of mom and dad's old station wagon.
Why do marketing people still insist in talking like this?
"It was inevitable, really. When two groups of people have so much in common, eventually they find each other. Volkswagen and Apple. Buy a New Beetle. Get a new iPod. And the kit that brings them together (plus a lot of other cool stuff like free music and a $100 Apple Store coupon). Learn more about this special deal."
I noticed that if you want to generate a feeling in the reader's mind, lots of short sentence fragments really prevent that from happening.
If the world's safest compact, and the world's highest capacity sub 6 oz mp3 player, are underperforming technologies, I wonder what you consider the par to be.
You see, there are many different directions engineering goes in. Making faster engines or bigger SUVs is one direction. Making efficient engines and safer small cars is another. Making a high capacity hard drive is one. Making a regular capacity hard drive light enough to carry around is another.
But maybe you're right. Maybe there are some things we just shouldn't bother engineering. So, you know, all of these "feed the world" biotech kooks and "reduce the depletion of our natural resources" solar energy kooks should just give up.
Oh, and as for the "50% too high" comment: fuck you. You don't know what the margin is, know less about business than you do about engineering and Apple shouldn't drop the prices that are keeping them alive just to appease people who don't want an iPod anyway. My 30 gb iPod was the easiest $538.92 I ever spent (after selling four shitty mp3 players that were too big, bulky, poorly designer or low capacity, I found myself with over $600...enough to buy a couple CDs, too).
Hey freaks: now you're ju
And here's where the Bluetooth phone could shine, as the simple act of bringing the phone into or out of the car could magically set up forwarding for you.
And for that matter, if the car had Bluetooth to work with your phone, and your hypothetical third-generation iPod had Bluetooth support as well, then the need for the AUX jack would be very much diminished for you.
Someday, maybe...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Um, I like VW and Apple, and no way am I "left" or "liberal".
I think you should put down the crackpipe.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.