Apple announced to much excitement to developers in mid-March the ability to tap into the iPhone via its dock connector with the release of iPhone OS 3.0. Examples of uses that wooed the crowd was a blood pressure cuff when connected to the iPhone displaying a patients systolic and diastolic pressures right on the devices screen. Instantly turning the iPhone into a sphygmomanometer! Another a great app shown was an EQ controller for a speaker system (see photo) and an FM transmitter application that would find the best position on your radio for clear transmission and tune to it for iPod playback. But here we are half a year later from the announcement and a few months since the release of OS 3.0 and there’s nothing to be found of any sort in the AppStore that utilizes this ingenious feature. Nothing.

In the recent return of Steve Jobs running the dog and pony show for the Designed in Cupertino company, Apple’s iCEO positioned the iPod touch, running the iPhone OS, as a gaming device more than just an iPhone minus the phone at last months iPod update gala. That said, there was no mention of taking games to the next level with a gamepad accessory that would just attach to that connector port on the iPod touch or iPhone. One will find a developer showing off their, excuse the pun, fruits in the tune of a video featuring the iControlPad playing a first-person shooter…via a jailbroken iPhone…with no availability date. Proof of concept but Scott Forstall of Apple did the same thing with the blood pressure slide at the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement, too.

But wait! There is hope. TomTom has a nice video on its site featuring a cradle for the iPhone that assists its iPhone GPS application that I told you about way back in March. My source at TomTom tells me that this cradle, which possess a GPS antenna and speaker, that uses the iPhone Connector will be out sometime this month. If this become reality, then TomTom will be the first application to speak to hardware via the iPhone Connector on the market. I would caution you not look for it at Best Buy anytime soon but it might just show up in your pillow case while trick-or-treating at the end of the month….at Best Buy, of course.

Hopefully we’ll see a flurry of hardware devices that will take advantage of Apple’s gateway to all-things accessories such as keyboards, gamepads, speakers, and maybe even monitors for video viewing (Virgin America are you reading this?!) I have to think that Apple didn’t just put an API into the iPhone to only let a good thing die. No, I think something wonderful is upon the horizon but gosh darn it, I want it now!

3 Responses to “Where’s the iPhone Dock Connector Accessories?”

1. SubGenius Says:
   March 25th, 2010 at 6:28

   Sven,

   Here we are over a year after the announcement of 3.0 and you can count all the products that use the 30-pin dock connector on one hand.

   I’m still waiting for the blood pressure cuff.

2. Sven Says:
   March 25th, 2010 at 9:58

   Hahaha, I totally forgot about the blood pressure cuff!

3. NLP Courses · Says:
   November 8th, 2010 at 5:36

   GPS antennas can really help improve the reception of your GPS signal `