Rig Intelligence

With my new setup at the office and while I’m developing iPhone and iPad applications, I’ve been trying out the Rocketfish Component Cable System (pictured).  It’s been a great solution for me since I have an odd setup with a MacBook Pro, secondary monitor, iPhone 4, iPad 2 and Panasonic (non VGA) monitor.  The Rocketfish system doesn’t do everything I’d like for it to do, however it does allow for:

• Showing Netflix on the monitor via A/V component cables
• Connecting to the Macbook via USB for Xcode project testing
• Playing Youtube videos with controls on the iPad
• Playing Vevo videos with controls on the iPad

Here are a few of the drawbacks I’ve found:

• I have to disconnect the iPad if it goes to sleep while I have a Netflix video on pause
• I have to disconnect the iPad if I want to listen to Pandora or iTunes
• Surprisingly Hulu is blocking this capability, so it won’t work on playing Hulu Plus videos from the iPad
• The iPad won’t charge through the USB connection, so battery life does become an issue and I have to stop using the device and plug it in separately throughout the day

Overall I think it’s a great tool, and hopefully future versions will fix some of the bugs.