Technology Savvy??? My mom can't figure out tivo and still loves driving my car because she gets to use the D3. What exactly are you having trouble understanding?
Where do I start the list?
I guess essentially, to me good technology is not one that you have to spend hours and hours reading a manual on how to use it. For example.....if my Mother started to use the D3, there is nothing that tells her to apply the parking brake to access half the damn menus. Do not get me started on the political BS that has our society protecting us from ourselves. Okay so yes the parking brake issue is covered on the cover of the manual.....but lets say I am driving down the road and my passenger starts to toy with the D3.....do you think they are going to understand why they cannot input an address to navigate to until I pull off the road? No. It will require a discussion and explanation from me? That sucks. And thats is NOT intuitive. Period. You cannot even access the menu to change the time of day! Every car I have ever owned does not prevent you from changing the time unless the parking brake is applied. My 2004 BMW had no locked menus on its full double DIN screen.... Yes it made you read its silly little liability statement each time you started the unit, but that was the extent of it.
Many of my issues have to do with how poor the interface of the D3 is.....it is difficult for me to say sitting on my couch, exactly the issues...but the first one that comes to mind is the telephone call logs. When one navigates to the menu, where "log" is available....then one pushes this button, you get a list of calls....a history. The top of the screen shows you that it is for ...lets say....missed calls. 90% of the D3 screen has no other buttons.....its totally black and blank. So what if I want to get my received calls history? What about dialed calls history? Where is the button??? There is plenty of room for another stupid button on the menu...right beside"log"...but NOooooooooooooooooooo Pioneer had to make the navigation such that one MUST continue to push "LOG" then you get dialed call history....push again.....then you received call history. How intutitive is that? It is not.....Period. Bad design....and not easy to figure out without reading well into the manual for something that could have been handled with a better interface.
I remember when web page design was in its infancy....one of the original, fundamental schools of design thought was that in your quest for a user interface, if the user has to navigate through more than three menus to get to the desired information, then you should reconsider your design. You have to navigate through three buttons just to get to the last call history I described above. Maybe I am just not as accepting of bad design and whereas some are more willing to overlook silly flaws in the name of the rest of the D3 goodies.....I dunno.
Next is the fact that ones preset telephone numbers cannot be labeled with a name (yes I know they CAN come from your bt transmitted phone book). Since I am unable to send my phone book....I have six 10 digit telephone numbers programmed into my presets.....and am not ashamed to admit I don't have all six recognized by number alone...so (today for example) my sister calls me from her cell phone....before I pushed the answer button I had to stare at this strange number of an incoming call. Only when I answered it did I know who it was. Please dont tell me if I had a newer cell phone this would not be an issue! If Pioneer had added an edit button to the interface it would be INTUITIVE to use...but NOPE....they could not do it. YET....YET....one can edit addressed in navi, edit your VIN number in set up.....edit the clock...add telephone numbers to addresses in the Navi.....direct dial a number by pushing on the keypad....etc. Come on..this is terrible and you know it.
My 2004 BMW had better controls for its navigation and the only input device was a knob on the dash like the volume knob on the D3. Tell me how that is possible with a touch screen? I have to touch more buttons just to get to a menu point on a touch screen than with an analog control knob?
To me, this is all very sad. Because the D3 has some very strong points, mainly in the control department. Control an ipod, a phone, major tweaking of the audio, sub, staging, etc. The list goes on.
I feel like the D3 just had an 90 yard pass and fell short of the goal line. All because of a small set of fundamental oversights. Poor, very poor.
So yes....very technologically savvy.....but obviously more observant than some.