Car Computer vs. Droid

I've been meaning to post something about this for some time, but haven't had a chance...

Last year, I was making some plans to install a computer in my car, to use for navigation, entertainment, etc.

However, in February, I upgraded my cell phone to an Android phone, a Motorola Droid from Verizon.

What I've realized is that everything that I wanted to do with the car computer, Droid does!

I was planning to take my old G4 Mac Mini, and mount it in the trunk. I found a power supply from Carnetix that works with the Mini, and will wake or sleep the computer with the ignition. I found a head unit from Xenarc that is a standard DIN unit that would fit in the dash of my Jetta. The Xenarc has a DVI input to connect for the video on the Mini. It uses a touch screen, which connects to the computer as a USB mouse. It has the amplifier and radio tuner, a volume control, balance and fader, tone controls, etc. so that it works as the head unit even without using the computer.

I have an old Garmin GPS-III, with a serial cable and USB adaptor to use for navigation, using RouteBuddy as the software.

Since the Mac Mini can play DVD's, and has iTunes for music, it would be easy to use for in-dash entertainment. I was thinking that Front Row would make a decent interface to use in the car. I found a plug-in framework called FrontPython that allows adding other applications to Front Row. I was going to build a FrontPython plug-in to add RouteBuddy to Front Row to make it easy to access.

When I got my Droid, I also got the car dock, which is a suction-cup mount that the Droid clips into while driving. The phone works well enough using the speakerphone that I use it for hands-free operation. The Google Maps navigation works great, especially with the voice search. I have used DoubleTwist to sync my iTunes library to the Droid, so I have music available if I wanted. Since the Droid uses a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, I could plug the Droid into auxiliary input on my existing car stereo. I can also stream video from a variety of sources, so I can get plenty of entertainment from the Droid, including email, web, testing, twitter, etc.

Part of my reason for wanting the car computer was to keep me occupied on the frequent occasions that I was sitting in the car waiting for kids. With the Dorid, I have plenty of entertainment, and navigation, in my pocket at all times.

Pay Attention, People!

OK, its April 1st, and the dreaded Windows virus "Conficker" is supposed to awaken.

The article on this story at CNN.com discusses the virus, and mentions that it only affects PC's running Windows, and doesn't affect the Macintosh.

However, the photograph that they choose to illustrate the article is a late-1990's Apple Power Macintosh G3 Desktop! I recognized the machine in the picture right away, because I have one, and its still in use as one of my home servers...

While I think its great that the media often uses images of Apple products in technology stories, it doesn't seem right when the story is about another Windows virus! ;-)

This update addresses compatibility with Mac OS X

In the past two days, Apple has released updates to Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and tonight for iWeb, stating only that "This update addresses compatibility with Mac OS X."

Since these Apple applications only run on OS X, what else could it possibly be? I can't recall the last time that any software vendor was so vague about what was contained in an update... If they said that it was to improve compatibility with Leopard, I might understand, but they don't even specify what version of OS X is affected.

Last week, many issues with incompatibility related to the QuickTime 7.4 update were reported...

I know that we've had trouble with Numbers consuming large amounts of disk space before crashing when we try to print. I can't say that we have had any particular issues with the other apps, but I haven't tried using them much since I upgraded to Leopard.

I did have issues with iPhoto not being able to print. It would complain that "There are no themes installed" despite nearly 300 folders of themes in the /Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Themes directory. After repeatedly deleting all of the components, prefs and receipts for iPhoto, and repairing permissions, then reinstalling, and repairing permissions again, I was finally able to get it to recognize that the themes were indeed installed.

Its making me wonder if Apple has reached "critical mass" or "terminal velocity?"