iLounge

Jeremy,

The iPhone 3G does not work with the iPod Hi-Fi. It plays music, but does not charge.

Are they going to somehow fix the issue or are we out of luck?

This product is too new for Apple to drop support.

Apple’s not acknowledging it and no sites even mention it.

Please help and get Apple to fix this.

- Privateshares

Hi Privateshares,

We originally mentioned this issue in our coverage of the iPhone 3G, but you’re right, it’s not getting much attention elsewhere. Without telling buyers of iPods, iPhones, or accessories beforehand, Apple has been making subtle electrical changes to its hardware that create unexpected incompatibilities, effectively “breaking” the ability of past accessories to work with new Apple hardware. The problem you are experiencing is just the latest such change, but it is particularly unwelcome since it affects buyers of the iPod Hi-Fi and the Bose SoundDock, two expensive speaker systems that were pushed heavily in Apple Stores, as well as a number of other popular products.

Specifically, this change affects “FireWire charging,” and was discussed in our review of the iPhone 3G. FireWire was the original iPod electrical interface, which supplied a certain amount of power to the iPod’s battery, but has since been replaced by the lower-powered USB charging standard. For years, Apple allowed devices to send either the higher FireWire-level power or the lower USB-level power to most iPods or the iPhone, but with the iPhone 3G, Apple cut off the more powerful charging standard. It had previously warned developers that it would do this, initially discontinuing the iPod’s ability to synchronize using a computer’s FireWire port, and then telling developers that future devices would not use FireWire charging. However, it did not warn consumers of the change, and apparently kept on selling products—including iPod Hi-Fi—that used the old FireWire standard.

The simple answer to your question is that, absent spending some additional money, buyers of past accessories that use FireWire charging will be out of luck. They can choose to spend $40-45 for a third-party adapter such as this one, or purchase a different accessory that is compatible with the iPhone 3G. This sort of disappointing forced obsolescence unfortunately works against consumers’ interests but in Apple’s short-term favor, driving the sale of more accessories as replacements for otherwise functional and in many cases expensive past ones. An obvious solution, and one that we think users have been gravitating towards, is to stop buying expensive accessories because of the high risk that they will not work with future Apple products. It’s unfortunate that this is a concern, but it is.

We should also mention that after receiving your e-mail, we contacted Apple to ask whether an “official” solution was coming, as USA Today had been told by the company that charging adapters would be made available for some products. Apple did not respond to our request for comment; make of that what you will.

Jeremy,

I’ve been a loyal follower since the iPodlounge days, and I really have to say, I would be really lost without you guys. I’m the “tech support” of the family, and am constantly asked questions about iPods and accessories and such. If I don’t know it, I automatically pull up iLounge and search for the answer. Without your reviews, I wouldn’t have most of my iPod accessories!

I wanted to know why you have been reviewing multiple products at the same time. I’ve begun to notice this, especially in iPhone-related reviews. To me, this is more of an annoyance than a good thing.
Your loyal reader,

- Faisal

Hi Faisal,

Thanks for your support over the years. There are two reasons that we’ve published multi-product reviews so much over the last couple of years: first, the dramatic upswing in the total number of products released for iPods and iPhones, and second, the sheer number of “me-too” releases that are out there.

Most weeks, we receive not one but five or ten items that are supposedly different from each other, but are really almost identical except for really small changes. The amount of true innovation we have seen in recent years has been diminishing, and instead, companies seem to be competing with each other to release products that they believe will sell well—because similar products have already been released and sold well. Thus, this week, we saw five iPhone 3G cases that were all the same except for small differences such as texture, color, and pricing. Is it really worth writing five separate reviews?

We try to answer “yes” as often and as much as possible, so even if some reviews start with the same introductory text, they go on to explain the important differences between products on an individual basis. But with so many highly similar products out there, we will combine some information and coverage on me-too offerings in order to focus more of our energy on items that are really standouts. The alternative is to just stop covering the me-too products at all, and we’d prefer not to do that.

Jeremy,

In all the years your staff has been reviewing products, what have been some of the most outrageous or ridiculous ones?

- Rockmyplimsoul

Rockmyplimsoul,

Actually, there was a tipping point when we decided that we weren’t going to cover the most outrageous items out there. This was a couple of years ago, when the iPod gold rush was going on and every person with $100 and a dream was trying to get attention as an “iPod accessory maker.” Companies had figured out that just getting featured in our First Looks section was enough to get their sales rolling, and as the word spread, we started to receive items that were stupider and stupider—anything that someone could mark up 20 or more times actual value and resell as an iAccessory.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when we received a package of adhesive rubber dots with an iName and a ridiculous price tag. A quick search revealed that the cost of 1000 of these dots was $10.00, or 1 cent a piece. They were being sold in their iPackage for over 40 cents a piece. That day, we had an internal discussion about whether we really wanted to help someone get the word out about something so ridiculous, and the answer was no. We’ve only done that a handful of times since, and it has tended to be stuff that both (a) bothers us in some way and (b) is not worth telling readers to avoid. On each occasion, we’ve subsequently seen other people write about the items, and are amazed when they try to find nice things to say about such obvious rip-offs. That’s just not our style.

Here are a few items that we covered in the past that struck us as sort of ridiculous. Griffin’s iBeam is a historical standout. Intuitive Design’s iBlinkit, a subsequent light flasher, was one of a number of subsequent products that used the iPod as little more than a power source for other gadgets. Speck’s iGuy cases were initially funny and crazy, but became stupid with the release of iKitty. And don’t get us started on iLoad. Ugh.

Jeremy,

I am an iPod owner and iTunes user and was always a junkie for news about those products and even more so for news about the burgeoning field of digital download, from any store or format. At first the only clutter for me on the site was the mounting stories about iPod accessories that posed little interest for me. Now it seems there is so much iPhone news I rarely notice any headlines in my RSS feed that I want to click on, which leads me to look less often at the headlines.

I’d say I’m a bigger fan of the iTunes player than I am of even the iPod, so anything related to it or its competition, I always appreciate. And related to that would be news about at-home enjoyment of the digital music.  Be it through a computer program or new piece of stereo hardware. To me, it’s all related.

I suppose I see the above as such an exciting, changing world that even if I don’t buy every new gadget (my iPod is 3G from 5 years ago), I still love to know what’s going on. I certainly know the iPhone is part of that world, but with its navigator, camera, email, games, and well phone it just seems father and farther from anything I’ll devote much time to reading up on for fun.

Is there a way to compartmentalize the site for users like myself?

- Tim K

Hi Tim,

Thanks for reading, and also for writing about this. Every weekday—seriously—Senior Editor Bob Starrett and I have a discussion about which iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, and iTunes news is worth covering on iLounge. I also work with iLounge’s other editors to determine topics that might benefit from coverage in our review, article, editorial, and other sections. So you’re raising a topic that’s important to us collectively, and to me personally.

There’s a simple answer to your question, which would be to focus your attention on the “iPod” section of the iLounge.com homepage, which is found by clicking on “iPod” in the big moving box near the top of the page; another would be to pull only the iPod- or iTunes-specific stories from our news archives whenever you come and visit. There is a “Browse news by category” feature there. On our side, we could make this easier for users by creating an iPod + iTunes RSS feed that would screen out iPhone and Apple TV news stories. If this would be something of interest to readers, we can definitely consider it.

However, my more complex answer to your question is this. Over the past year and a half, the dominance of the iPod and iTunes, as well as Apple’s focus on the iPhone, have worked together to kill much of the frenzied iPod/iTunes developments that used to dominate our coverage. Specifically, what has happened since the January 2007 announcement of iPhone has been a profound shift in information out of Apple; “news” about the iPod or iTunes recently has tended to be little more than software bug fixes, sales statistics, minor feature additions, and patent filings. None of this is especially exciting to us, and obviously, it’s not mindblowing for you, either. Some of this is just the reality that goes along with a niche player becoming the industry’s 800-pound gorilla; the other part is due to fears that Apple has cultivated in developers and partners, in some cases stifling development, and in other cases its partners’ discussion of developments.

At the same time, there’s been more iPhone news and information to report, most recently on applications and the iPhone 3G, as well as a surge in the number of Apple-related rumors, speculative analyst comments, questionable survey findings, and other things that we’d categorize as “not news.” Our view has been that we can either keep our readers entertained by reporting on rumors and other “not news” topics, or take a higher road and not treat every little Apple-related whisper, comment, or supposed survey as worthy of coverage. We’ve tried to take the higher road, but obviously, Apple fans love to talk about rumors, and the lack of real news out of Apple and third-party developers has created a vacuum, so it’s a tough call.

The final issue is that the iPhone, to some extent, affects the destiny of the iPod. Apple has been committed for at least the last year to the idea that the most expensive iPods it sells will be stripped-down iPhones. Developments for the iPhone tend to have some importance to some iPod users, as well, but obviously, if you’re not an iPod touch owner, you probably couldn’t care less.

Please do know that we continue to take seriously the question of what information to present to our readers, and that we try our best to cover topics of interest to all iPod, iPhone, and iTunes users. While not every headline or article is going to interest you today, especially as an owner of an iPod that hasn’t been sold for four years—one that Apple has long encouraged developers to transition away from supporting, no less—our goal is to have a database of accurate information that will be useful in the event that you upgrade. We hope that you’ll continue to find us worth reading.

Jeremy,

Is the iPhone 3G compatible with the late-2007 updated release of Apple’s Universal Dock and accompanying (albeit sold separately) component/composite dock-connecting video cables?
Also, are there any other competing video-out type docks which are compatible with iPhone 3G, and if so, how do they compare with Apple’s own product?

- Steve Waters

Hi Steve,

Yes, the iPhone 3G works with both Apple’s 2007 Universal Dock and the two sets of Apple AV cables that were released alongside it. Together, the Dock and one set of cables provides an expensive $100 solution for connecting an iPhone 3G, iPhone, or recent iPod to a television set for watching video, as well as controlling playback from afar with an Infrared remote.

Ever since Apple added the requirement that developers include new authentication chips in their iPhone accessories, as well as special iPhone-specific shielding, both the iPhone and iPhone 3G have been rendered incompatible with past video docks and accessories containing video outputs. We’ve reviewed no docks and cables other than Apple’s, though companies such as Scosche and EZGear have released modestly less expensive cables as alternatives. The only non-dock devices that are known to work for iPhone video out are speakers we’ve reviewed with video output ports, typically composite rather than component, and they’ve tended to be okay rather than great. No iPhone-specific portable video display, or dedicated video dock, has yet crossed our desks.

Obviously, our hope is that this changes—and soon—but the last year has been extremely frustrating from an accessory standpoint for iPhone users. What was supposed to be Apple’s “best iPod ever” hasn’t really turned out to be a full-fledged iPod in terms of accessory compatibility, and the iPhone family may never wind up working with as many types of third-party add-ons as the iPods have. Keep your fingers crossed, and we will, too.