Disabling Vehicle iPod Device Control

Question

Hi all,
I recently purchased a 2008 Merecedes Benz C300 with the iPod connector built in. When my iphone is connected the vehicle instructs the iPod app to immediately start playing content. There's no way to stop it, but there are some rudimentary controls that can be accessed through the steering wheel.
As I'm starting to use more and more audio based apps (audible, etc), things are getting complicated. Quicktime audio playback through Safari or iTunes for podcasts often gets overridden by the iPod app almost immediately after the play button is pressed. Some apps do work, others immediately surrender to the iPod app.
My question is what pins pass device control data between the phone and vehicle? I recently purchased an extension cable (by default the cable lives only in the glove box) so my plan was to snip the wires from the extension cable that carry the device control data.
I have a feeling audio will continue to feed through the vehicle when the aux mode is selected regardless of whether or not it can talk to the iPhone. I'd prefer to risk my $30 cable than spend another $200 to uninstall the iPod integration kit.

Answer 1

Hi there:
Sorry to trouble you again with this but you have been the only person to respond to my earlier query with a sensible and helpful response. Following your suggestion earlier I went to an Apple store intending to buy a new cable but thought I would check with the Genius Bar anyway. As it turns out both my itunes and my ipod are fine as is my cable so there was no need to buy a new one. The assistant there suggested that there wasn't enough power coming through my laptop USB port to power my ipod device. For lack of an alternative explanation, this seems acceptable to me but entirely inexplicable as I work off my 1TB external hard drive with my laptop ALL the time and never have a problem powering that. I fail to understand how a laptop USB port that emits enough power to read a 1TB device can fail to read a 120GB ipod.
However as an alternative the genius bar assistant suggested the following: - He said that I could still continue to download new music on my problem laptop but could simply copy and paste the itunes library folder into another laptop to PC under the My Music area and then sync my ipod with that. It seems like a sensible alternative but having heard horror stories of people struggling to sync different computers and devices with Apple content, I would like a second opinion from you if you think this would work. I once had trouble moving my itunes library from my D drive to C drive in the same laptop so the thought of copying my itunes library into an entirely different computer terrifies me. I dont want to lose my music on which I have spent a fortune. Do you think the genius bar assistant's suggestion would work?
Really sorry for the trouble but I would really appreciate a second opinion. Thanks.