Sirius SkyDock Turns iPhones into Satellite Radio Receivers — Sorta
I opted to kill my XM satellite radio subscription last year in favor of using Pandora and my own MP3 library, but this new SkyDock from Sirius has me considering a return. All Things Digital points out that the SkyDock is among the first hardware accessories to take advantage of the iPhone 3.0 operating system and will cost $119.99 when it arrives this fall. The dock includes an integrated satellite radio receiver and plugs into your vehicle’s cigarette adapter. All iPhone and iPod Touch models are supported — provided they have the iPhone 3.0 software or better — and fit in the dock. While the device charges your iPhone or Touch, it also provides control over the satellite radio in either portrait or landscape modes.
Sirius says the dock works with your vehicle’s speakers through an included cable that routes music through your radio’s auxiliary input jack. Some older vehicles and radios don’t support such a jack, so you’ll want to double-check on that before buying. When I had XM, I used a wired cassette adapter, which would likely still work — I could plug the adapter in the iPhone headset jack and pipe tunes to the speakers. The supplemental iPhone application used to control the radio can also be used to tag songs for later download via iTunes. I’m still a die-hard Amazon MP3 store shopper, so while that’s not particularly appealing to me, it probably is to the instant gratification types out there.
This is going on my Christmas Wish List! For all the problems Sirius XM is having with subscribership, I’m still a fan of satellite radio. And this would mean only one device mounted in the car instead of the phone and the radio receiver.
If backgrounding of this app isn’t supported then fail!
I think most folks will want music in background while they’re checking email, etc.
i don’t think any 3rd party apps are allowed to run in the background. hopefully apple will change this.
What I want to know is, does the Sirius app let you control the Docks XM output such that I can change to another app like TomTom and still have the XM playing while I use the turn-by-turn features of the TomTom app? It could then fade the music when the iPhone sends out audio too. That would be sweet.
There’s no mention on how that might or might not work, but I suspect it won’t. Wouldn’t the Sirius app have to run in the background while you’re using TomTom?
tomtom dock has enhance gps signal strength booster i think…if it ever comes out. wish they could combine dock features as one would have windshield dock adapters for xm radio and one for tomtom. wish apple would organize these people into making a universal dock of some sort. i am glad more company are jumping on board the iphone to make products tailed to it. i also hope one could answer the phone and still hear the xm. maybe xm would just lower the volume when a call comes in.