A Day Late, A Dollar Short

One the features I like about the Lexus navigation system is the traffic display. However, it has shortcomings. It's never helped me to avoid traffic problems. Usually it tells me about traffic problems after I'm already stuck. I hear the same complaint from other Lexus and Toyota owners with the satellite traffic option. Oh wait, dare I mention that the Toyota and Lexus systems are exactly the same?

The Right of Entitlement

Blossom and I were having lunch today. As we were leaving we saw a colleague of ours standing in front of the Apple Store chatting with someone. We stopped to say hello.  While we were talking it occurred to me that our  colleague already had his iPad even though he wasn't carrying it with him. He's one of those guys that has everything. The odd part is that it just seems right that he has everything. As we left he confirmed my suspicion.

Anyway, that got me thinking about why I'm upset about the navigation system. Buying the Lexus I had high hopes that I would get everything I paid for, everything that I wanted in a car, but I was let down. Yes there are hacks to fix motion lock on the navigation system. Yes, I can probably buy lots of things to fix the other shortcomings. But shouldn't I be entitled to something nice? Don't we all deserve something that makes us a little happier?

VAIS Technology VML (MultiMediaLinQ) to the Rescue

About a month ago I had a VAIS Technology VML (MultiMediaLinQ) installed in my Lexus. The VAISTech device adds a USB interface to Generation 5 Lexus Navigation systems like mine. The USB interface allows you to hook up an iPod, iPhone, iPad (haven't actually tried it yet), other random portable music player, or USB disk drive to your Lexus audio system.

I ordered it through the dealer and had them do the install. I was too lazy to pull out the navigation system on my own. Having the dealer do the install basically doubled the cost. On the plus side, they did a great job and after a few weeks of waiting for the parts and a four hour install I now have a cool USB port in my center console.

For the first week I had my iPod connected. This worked great. I used iTunes to manage playlists which show up as MP3 CD Folders on the Lexus Navigation interface. I could use all the normal steering wheel mounted controls to switch songs etc. I was pretty happy except that I was limited by the size of my iPod disk and I didn't want to upgrade. I also noticed a few sound issues. Some songs with a wide dynamic range were having their audio clipped.

I switched to using a 2.5" notebook drive I had laying around. The advantage of using the notebook drive is that it has more capacity than my iPod, primary drive partitions show up as CDs, I can use FLAC for my favorite music, I can organize files with or without iTunes, and I can hear the sound without distortion introduced by the iPod.

So far I'm sticking with the USB disk approach. Though I think I may be open to having passengers connect their iPods. I still use iTunes to create Genius playlists (just like Pandora but with your music library). I also use Playlist Creator to manage m3u playlists that the VAIS VML supports.

The VML isn't without quirks. Managing music on a USB disk drive requires that you manually update playlists or that you delete cached data in the multimedialinq folder on the USB disk partition. You only need to do this when you're adding or deleting music or playlists. It's manual because there is no desktop software for managing USB disks. I also had some issues with the USB port not providing enough power for a big disk. I connected a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent Go drive. It worked but occasionally went offline. I was able to get it working reliably by adding power from a car charger USB port. And speaking of large disk drives, the VML requires FAT32 which really isn't ideal for 1TB drives. And because FAT32 isn't supported in the Windows 7 GUI disk management tools it is hard to prep the drive. Finally, VAIS provides firmware updates through a secure FTP site. Which is a bit weird because you have to email a request for access. That said, once you get access you can download updates that provide new functionality and improvements. Try getting an update for Lexus components without a forced recall in effect. Overall, even with the quirks the VML is still pretty cool.

At this point, all my music is in the car. I can't readily access a specific song because the Lexus user interface locks down while the car is moving, and apparently the user interface is not extensible by third parties (why not?), but at least it's easy to scan through and play my music library for my occasional hour long commute.

The Devil Made Me Do It

I bought a VAIS technology MediaLinQ instead of buying a new car. More on that later.

iPad Mania

With the release of iPad coming in a couple of days we were discussing potentially cool applications. Mostly we were trying to think of the equivalent of the iPad Snuggie. We definitely have productive lunch time conversations.

One thing that came up was the idea of using an iPad in your car. iPad has great turn by turn navigation powered by TomTom and maybe someday Google will port their Andriod navigation. You can have all your music loaded or available through "Pandora." You can even watch movies on an awesome screen.

The only problem with the iPad solution is that you'd need to attach it with a huge wad of duct tape, crazy glue, or some suction cup and cradle thing available at Best Buy or your local Apple store. Then you would need to worry that every time you parked your car someone would break your window and rip it off. It's too big to hide or take with you all the time.

Thieves wouldn't bother if it was hooked into your car more permanently, was paired to only worked with your car, or some other security mechanism that made it not worth reselling. These are things that a car manufacturer could do.

I really hope that Apple is working with some car manufacturer to bring us the iAuto.