iPod

Did you ever have one of those projects that started simple and small, but somehow grew more and more complex? And very expensive?

I had an iPod Dock that I no longer use (it was replaced by one that came packaged with my iPhone), and I thought it would be fun to use it to watch video from the iPod and iPhone on the small TV in the kitchen. A quick five minutes of research found the cable I thought I would need to buy, for about $20.

Five more minutes of research, however, indicated that for the late-model iPod I had I'd need a different cable entirely — for $50. A review expressed concern that the connectors seemed somewhat delicate, so to avoid having to constantly plug and unplug the cables, I'd have to get an inexpensive switch — another $20.

But that seemed like a reasonable solution, so off I went to the Apple Store.

An hour or so later, all cables connected, and I'm trying to sort out why this is not working as planned.

Five more minutes of research reveals an important detail I'd missed: the older model of iPod Dock (iPod Universal Dock) is incompatible with both the iPod and iPhone for this purpose. It had since been superseded by another model (Apple Universal Dock), and that's what I'd need — for another $50.

So now everything works — only it ended up costing five or six times what I had expected it would. And I still have that unused iPod Dock, sitting in my closet. (Perhaps my five-year-old might have use for it in a few years, when he's old enough to have inherited his own iPod.)