Macworld reviews a little dongle that I’ve been curious about for some time: the Scosche Passport, a Firewire-to-USB converter. It doesn’t seem to do what I want it to do — transform my dustily unplunged Firewire port into a more useful USB slot — but it seems invaluable for owners of iPod-compatible audio systems who have been bitten by Apple’s new iPod charging circuitry
The Passport is a 1.5-inch-long adapter that essentially routes FireWire-circuitry power to the USB-power pins of your iPod or iPhone’s dock-connector port. You just plug your car audio system’s dock-connector cable into the bottom of the Passport, and then plug the Passport’s dock-connector plug into the bottom of your iPod or iPhone. Your new iPod or iPhone now charges properly. (Scosche lists compatible car-audio systems on the product’s Web site; there are a small number of car systems it doesn’t work with.)
In my testing with a range of older iPod accessories, the Passport worked well, letting me charge and play the latest iPod and iPhone models. The Passport even worked with the new video-output circuitry on these iPod and iPhone models, which require dock-connector video accessories to include special “authentication” circuitry; accessories that included this circuitry successfully accessed the player’s video output through the Passport.
Scosche Passport [Macworld via Engadget]
I got one and it works as advertised. WAY cheaper than the alternatives.
Unfortunately, the length of this thing is such that it seems like it might put a lot of strain on the dock connector on my iPhone if it gets bounced around in the car.