The iPhone line-out CABLE Saga
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 at 9:51AM Well I recently migrated from my old iPhone EDGE/2.5G/1.0/whatever to a new iPhone 3GS. All in all I have to say it has been a great update and I'm enjoying the little things I didn't have before like GPS, 3G, etc. The 32GB of additional storage has been nice as well since I am, maybe one of the crazy few, who actually uses my iPhone as my primary iPod as well.
Prior to the 3GS I had put a dock in my car and where the astray would normally go and used that to dock my phone. One big advantage of this approach besides the connivence factor was the ability of the dock to provide a line-level out audio connection which is the ideal way to connect a device into an AUX port for example. Line-level audio provides a consistent level of audio out and relies on the amplification, etc. of the stereo the device is being connected to.
Okay fine so when I got the 3GS I decided I wanted it placed elsewhere on the dash so I could access it easier without reaching down at and arms length. I figured, obviously very naively, that I could simply order a dock cable that would provide the equivalent of a physical dock. When I had a real iPod I had several of these cables that were a dock connector with a simple USB pigtail and another for line-out. What I have discovered after hours of Googling is that these cables simply don't exist for the 3G or 3GS.
Now technically the various iPod cables that provide this might work but you will get the message "This device is not compatible with the iPhone, blah, blah, blah." Why? Because Apple has included a chip in the "authorized" devices that these cables simply don't include. I suppose this perhaps might rationalize the upwards of $50 that apple charges for the one cable even remotely close to what I want to do, known as the "Apple Composite A/V Cable" but really $50 dollars!?!
What does all this ranting really get me? Well in reality nothing I'm going to be forced to connect my iPhone to the AUX jack through the less than ideal headphone jack on the iPhone. I suppose the reality is that the vast majority of the population wouldn't even think twice about this and just accept it as the way things are, which I am loathe to do.
Ideally there would be a cable like the one I described above with a USB connection and a line-out and it would cost about $20 or so and be compatible with the iPhone and not throw up any warnings. But of course for as much as I wouldn't trade my MacBook or iPhone for anything this is Apple and the iPhone we're talking about here, I can hear the favorite refrain of a friend of mine, "It's not about what you want it's about what Apple wants you to want."