In-Car DVD? That’s So Last Year!

In my car at the moment I have a very limited array of gadgets and by very limited I mean the phone in my pocket and a CD player is all I have in the realm of ‘in-car entertainment’. The CD player isn’t even in my car most of the time as it is currently being swapped between my car and my housemates Golf because we’re too poor to buy one each!

My interior consists of a proper rubbishly made speakerbox/rear boot firewall, two recaro seats with blankets, half of a dash and the interchangeable CD player. It’s a bit empty to say the least. However new cars these days seem to come with more gadgets and comfort than my whole house has in it.

Have you been inside some of the newer people carriers and especially the big American SUV’s? They make my house look tiny and cramped! I’m fairly sure most of the seats in them are more comfortable and better made than most peoples sofas and the amount of pull out tables, cup trays and creature comforts make them more like a front room with plenty of nice furniture than a moving vehicle.

Obviously this quest for the ultimate comfort for drivers and passengers extends to in-car entertainment as well. Most well specced cars now come with some kind of built in computer that works as the CD player, sat nav and DVD player but with the success of tablet based computing thanks to the massively trendy iPad it wasn’t going to be long before car companies started offering special iPad ready cars with factory OEM docking stations and plug and play usability.

BMW turned up at the Paris Motor Show with two cars stuffed full of the latest Apple technology showing off what options they will have for the 2011 range. Now obviously you can just get a laptop out and use that instead but everyone loves perfectly integrating devices so I can see this becoming quite a big thing and obviously a massive bonus for Apple if it is all designed to fit and work perfectly with their devices.

Just think how much better long journeys to go on holiday with your parents would have been if you were just sat in the back playing on an iPad! I had to make do with a cassette player, headphones and a whole stack of spare batteries!

Phew I managed to get through the whole post without saying anything about the whole Apple/everything else fighting or the fact it is stupid to make it only work with one brand and not be compatible with everything…

Oh…