You may know that I am some sort of dock fiend – if I own a gadget, I’d like to have a dock for it. At least, if it’s a gadget that I actually like. My 3G iPod came with a dock; I bought one with my 5G iPod, and I bought a dock with the iPhone.
I was happy to learn that the two iPod docks were basically interchangeable, which meant that the older one always stayed at work while the newer lived on my desk at home. But what makes me even happier is that the iPhone 3G works in both, in addition to its own. This is good news, but it’s not without its hangups:
- The “work” dock was plugged into a wall charger – the FireWire charger that came with my first iPod. It always worked to charge the two iPods, but will not charge the iPhone – you’ll need a USB charger for that.
- My stereo at work is unshielded, which means some nasty GSM buzz in the speakers every so often. This isn’t a symptom of the dock so much as two incompatible technologies having it out, but it’s worth mentioning. I’m still trying to figure out how I want to approach that.
Still though, it works out nicely – for whatever it costs me to buy a new USB cable I can now have a nice charger for my phone at work, and there’s no additional unplugging going on when I need to sync the iPhone or the iPod at home.