From the McGyver files...iPhone docking in the car, and how it totally changed my usage pattern

Why am I writing about something as mundane as an iPod dock in my car? Because it totally transformed my usage of the device. More on that below. But first, I'll share my docking method.

I'm not a big fan of the Frankenstein look, when it comes to technology in the car. So I didn't want the phone-dock-in-cupholder-with-lots-of-wires thing. I looked and looked for an elegant and low-cost solution to dock my iPhone in my car. My simple requirements:

• Not ugly
• Powers the phone
• Lets me see and control the phone
• Undocks easily, 'cause I get in and out of the car a lot
• Pipes the phone's audio to the car stereo with a decent connection, for listening to music, podcasts, Internet radio, etc. from the phone.

This last requirement was made harder by my car, because despite being a late-model Lexus hybrid, it doesn't have an AUX jack (which is pretty hard to understand).

I shopped all around, and found no product that fits the bill perfectly. What happened to capitalism? Am I the only one with this list of requirements? Is this not now the best-selling phone in the U.S.? And people go around in cars, right?

For now, I solved it (almost literally) with duct tape and wires.

Here's the photo:

So, crazy as it sounds, the best solution for me turned out to be a plain old Apple dock, along with a Griffin iPhone car charger (black, hidden under the dock), and a cassette tape adapter (black, see wires, arrgh). And here's the McGyver part, I mounted it to the console with a commercial velcro-type of fastener called 3M dual lock (expensive but awesome stuff for all kinds of applications).

The cassette tape adapter plugs into the back of the dock discreetly, as does the car charger. I wish the dock was black, but well, that's Apple for ya.

Since doing this, a number of the commercial car docks have started supporting the 3G, so I'd consider them. The one that caught my eye was this one from Kensington. Still, it is a little higher profile and I don't have an Aux jack so I'd still need the cassette tape thing. Seems like a tad more work to get it in and out of the dock, too.

The my phone's display is showing Pandora Radio, and outstanding website and web app. Pandora fits the "great consumer technology products" bill, so I'll write about it separately at some point.

Here's the main point. It turns out that the iPhone is an amazing Internet radio device. Who could have predicted that this would be one of it's major scenarios? And how many other people use it this way? The magic of the Internet, and therefore of Internet devices, is that everyone gets a different benefit. There are as many use-cases as there are people. So why are there so many fixed-function, walled-garden devices coming out, when people really just want the Internet? If the developers of iPhone hadn't realized this, I wouldn't be able to listen to Pandora or NPR News or CNN (via Stitcher, another recommended app), or various other Internet radio things just by dropping my phone into a dock, and driving off.