What's the difference between an Alpine usb/ipod cable and regular apple ipod cable?
 

Anyone know the difference between an Alpine usb/ipod cable VS a regular apple usb ipod cable? both look the same on the outside but are not compatible. is it just pinouts or is there more to it?

I'm no Alpine wiz but every other headunit I've used/sold that has a usb input and supported ipod worked just fine with the apple cable.

It's Alpine's way of sucking more money out of you. I was never an Alpine fan, but went with their products because of the F#1 Status line. Everything is proprietary and the added costs of peripheral devices add up quickly. You want navigation and integration, it'll cost you an arm, a leg, and one of your nuts. When their navi is out of date, you find out there's no update available.

I bought a W505 double din deck for my daily driver. Nice screen, with awesome resolution. The navi unit I got, the Blackbird, was the only one available at the time for the W505. The map was fricken three years old when I got it. This was over a year ago, so it's four years out of date now. They still don't have an update. When someone buys a Garmin or whatever, you get free updates for 30, 60, 90 days or whatever from the time of purchase. Well, the Alpine doesn't have a freaking update, period. By the sounds of it, they won't - ever. They now have a new navi unit for the W505. I bet it isn't upgradeable, either. At this rate, they are going to lose a lot of customers. I know I won't buy their shit anymore.

As for their iPod cables, the one that came with the W505 happened to be compatible with my model iPod, but there are some minor issues.

Anyway, sorry for the rant.............. I do love the features of the Alpine, but.

Well, we definitely feel your pain. I am not an Alpine dealer but I do install Alpine gear. Its very frustrating especially their wacky bluetooth modules or add-ons. If you have an Iphone and want bluetooth then it may or may not work. Also, the microphones are different between some models posing an impedance issue. lame.

Anyways, most decks I find have a special Ipod cable/USB input. None of the new Pioneer video screens have just a straight up USB input. You need a USB/audio/video adaptor for sound and/or video to work. Luckily this cable that you buy (which is about $40-50) replaces your Ipod cabel that hooks up to your computer. The crappy thing is, they are often not compatible between models. There are about 4-5 different Pioneer A/V/USB cables out there. Clarion has around 8 or 9 cables last time I heard (Clarence can chime in on this one).

I wish there was an Ipod cable standard that all these decks would share but then again, they wouldn't be able to make money on that. :p

made my own cable...thanks for looking :)

regular ipod cables are not compatible w/ the ida decks