Monster Cable’s a pretty loathsome company, suing pretty much everyone who dares put the word “monster” in their names while selling absurdly overpriced copper under advertising claims that border on the pseudo-science employed by snake oil salesmen. I hate these guys… which is part of the reason why I’m so shocked by how neat I think their latest product is.
Ludicrously called the Monster iMotion CarPlay 3000, the cable is a car charger for your iPhone or iPod with one neat little extra: it allows you to control your music without ever touching your device just by making gestures in mid-air as you drive.
The cable includes the usual cigarette lighter port, dock connector and 3.5mm audio jack for plugging into the car stereo, along wit a crude sensor detector which detects your hand movements. To control your music, you just wave right or left to skip tracks, or hold your hand up to stop your music.
The product? Neat. The price? Absurd. $130 absurd, in fact. My guess is a hacker could make something that does much the same thing out of an Altoids tin for less than $10.
[via Charlie Sorrel, who claims to “think cars are for driving… and that distracting stereos should be in there in the first place,” yet is able to reconcile this with his own habit of barreling down the streets of Barcelona at extreme velocity on a fixed-gear with while wearing headphones).
