[s-cars] Review: Dension Gateway 300 ipod/USB Music Link

[JC]

Just to add my experience and a warning away from Alpine iPod heads for any
other readers watching this threat...
- I am a iPod type mostly because I wanted to minimize having to have 2 or 3
types of devices and methods to have to sync my master library, and having
iPhone/iPod/iTunes they got me on the 'predominant paradigm' standard thing
- I put in an Alpine with iPod compatibility a couple years ago. it works
but only just. Navigation is dumb in a few ways, kinda sux actually.  Some
is the Alpine native navigation (there's a knob that clicks in that would be
a perfect 'mouse click' function but they make you click a different 'Enter'
button insetad) and other things are the iPod interface design they've used.
Takes lots of clicks to navigate down into the iPod and find sstuff. Then
there's the whole old-vs-new iPod compatibility probably (even though the
new iPods were out at the time it was still only compatible with the old
ones - aarrgh stupid).  And although the head unit supports doing it Alpine
apparently doesn't release firmware upgrades that could enhance bugs and
menus and features ('don't upgrade for people who paid already! then they
won't buy a new one!)  Basically I'd never ever buy an Alpine again. fault
my 1980's brand loyalty from when they made good stuff... OK I still have a
unit from 2000 in the wife's car that was decent too, but although I was
happy at first this thing verges on being a bag of suck over the long haul.
- This head also has a USB connect and I tried that for a while but it was
too much hassle. Although apparently it can be made to work with just the
right stuff stupid Alpine dones't provide enough current on the USB to drive
just any external HD and is even sometimes fussy about solid state
devices... In the end it was too much hassle to continually re-sync/re-load
the other USB stick device when I already have iPod/iPhone that sync
semi-automatically when I charge 'em...
- FYI you CAN get adapters to get old-iPod cables to work with new ones -
it's a little dongle thing that makes each side happy. That's what I'm
running now and I find a few bugs with them like sometimes I have to take
mine off the Alpine cable  and re-plug it to apparently 'reboot' the
connection or something. But it does work mostly.

Sadly from my experience the car audio industry is living in 1982 and think
they can drag their feet and try to stick with proprietary bullcrap and
upgrades and calling half-assed bullshit "iPod compatibility"... the other
brands I looked at were equally flawed just in different ways.  BTW I was
shocked to find after the fact that this Alpine doesn't even have FM radio
RDS built-in! They want you to BUY AN EXTERNAL ACCESSORY BOX that plugs into
the expansion bus system to give you HD radio and RDS... and then you need
to cable it up and find a place under the dash to stick it... retarded...

Next time I'm shooting for a head that is fully iPhone compatible aka phone
function + iPod function built-in... I hope somebody will have figured it
out by then aside from the Auto OEM's like Audi/BMW...

BTW, I completely understand why others want to go anti-iPod, and for those
that put custom Linux solutions in their trunk with Wifi sync and things I
give full thumbs up... just not for me (guess I've reluctantly been
converted to the dumb 'easy, pretty, and just works' Apple dark-side for my
expectations)



>
> Either way, I agree with avoiding the iPod.  Lots of people
> want that option though, mine definitely does not have that
> capability any more.  I could add it with an extra cable for
> the Gateway, but I had no interest in it at the time.
>
> Sean


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