The man who changed everything: Steve Jobs

October 06,2011

The man who revolutionized in-car entertainment, Steve Jobs, chairman of Apple Inc., has died at age 56 after a battle with cancer. Oh, and he also made some neat computers and cellphones. The product that marked the beginning of Apple’s comeback, the iPod, also revolutionized the way we interacted with our cars.

Not too long ago, we would lug around this thing called a Case Logic—a case containing ten or more CDs. No road trip would begin without checking and refilling one’s Case Logic. Then the iPod came along, and, as Apple likes to say, changed everything. No car should now be caught with its pants down without a way to interface with an iPod. This brought back the previously useless Aux jack—the simplest way to pipe music into your car audio.

The iPod also gave rise to an entire industry of iPod adaptors—from mini-radios that broadcast the iPod’s output to an unused station, to the ubiquitous cables and jacks. Most new cars are now “iPod-ready”, meaning they can control the music right from the dashboard. Some systems can do it wirelessly, via Bluetooth. In any case, no drive was ever the same again. Now, vehicles are integrating the iPad tablet into their cars. BMW has an interface where the rear passengers can mount their iPads onto the seat in front of them, giving them an enormous screen for surfing and video.

We could even say that Steve Jobs has reduced road rage by making one’s own choice of music always accessible. A long commute is always more tolerable if you can choose your own music. Good music sooths the savage beast (or breast, according to some men), whereas an inane radio station might magnify one’s anger. Who can get mad at the undisciplined drivers around them when listening to Norah Jones?

We should also not underestimate the value of having your passenger being able to play Angry Birds or My Little Restaurant in heavy traffic–to the sanity of both passenger and driver.

The iPhone (and its competitors) has also created new ways of interacting with one’s vehicle. The most basic use is to log down mileage and fuel consumption. Now, the iPhone can act as a data logger, using its gyroscope and GPS to record 0-100 km/h acceleration and the like—some comparisons have found it nearly as accurate as a dedicated performance-logging device. Volvo has an app that allows remote restarting of your car and its heater—useful in the company’s home country of Sweden. Not only has one man changed so much of the way we use our gadgets; the gadgets he envisioned changed the way we interact with the rest of our world—in our example, the automobile.

What he could have invented with another thirty or forty years of life, we can only speculate. Goodbye, Mr. Jobs. You will be missed.

Posted by: Jason K. Ang

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