So I got my first AppRadio a week ago.... I thought I did a thorough job documenting my thoughts/gripes on it from an installation standpoint, while some people may or may not have agreed, that wasn't what I was after... my thoughts were simply to make people aware of the AppRadio's shortcomings...

And sorry, people seem to be downplaying that it isn't a big deal the radio has a single set of RCA outputs, that is a HUGE deal in that 99.5% of the other radios on the market have dedicated Front, Rear, and Sub outputs.... this isn't 1991 where multi RCA outs are a high end feature...

Anyways, after only 20 minutes of use over 1.5 days for this first deck, the volume buttons and home buttons completely stopped working..... called Amazon on Saturday, they shipped me out a replacement that I received on Tuesday..... put it in that night....

Things have been well so far, buttons work, got a Scosche Line Level converter in so i can continue to use my 5 channel amp (and as a result, my front and rear speakers are not playing full range anymore)....

So now that I have had a little time to actually use the interface/software/UI, I just wanted to say: Pioneer has a TON of work to do...

Again, maybe you do not agree with what I am about to point out... that's fine

So here we go:

GOOD:

- Inrix is SUPER helpful... this could very well be the "killer app" of this radio.... i love it

- MotionX looks pretty cool, except I haven't really gone that far or anywhere I don't know where I am going to use it yet

- I can't wait to see what other programmers/companies have in store for the AppRadio.. hopefully there are some

BAD:

- Responsiveness of touch screen:

slow... there is no other way to put it.... it makes it ESPECIALLY hard when in something like the iPod "app" where you want to get to the "Album" item, but because the first press didn't register fast enough, i pressed it multiple times to (over) compensate

- NO CLOCK on anything but the main home screen:

ugghh, this is something that just completely boggles my mind... I've had the D1, D3 and F700 and they all had the clock on (1) the Map screen, (2) the Radio screen, (3) iPod screen..... sure, it's just a home button press away to see the huge digital clock, but now you have to click again to get back to where you were

- Shitty single RCA out:

hardware wise, inexcusable as pointed out above... this radio is obviously not aimed and audiophiles.... fine, that's the way it is, but the radio ALSO lacks: (1) any sort of crossover for the speaker outputs, again like my previous D1, D3 and F700 ALL had, (2) any sort of level adjustment for the crappy single RCA output... making "on the fly" subwoofer adjustments an impossible task unless your sub amp has a remote knob for it..... in these days of iPods and CD's full of mp3s, people's collections must vary considerably... so we have to compromise our sound tastes to account for Black Eyed Peas vs Godsmack vs Ferry Corsten vs Tiesto vs Blink 182 vs whatever else we have in our collection.... pretty much the single RCA output and lack of control is my least favorite thing about the radio....

iPod control/"app":

- first off, the screen itself looks like crap, it's not very sharp at all... if you want a mental comparison, think of what happens when you have a 22" 1680x1050 monitor and run your desktop at 800x600... that's about what it looks like

- less control than any previous Pioneer radio: what i mean by this, on older models, say you have 20 playlists... to get to "Various - Rock", you could click "up" on the first page of the list and it would bring you to the last page of the list... the AppRadio doesn't, you are forced to go page by page by page to go to the end

- I've never seen any of my Pioneers be able to do this, and can't understand why this continues to be the case, but if you start the car and the iPod/iPhone resumes playing, it has no idea what album or playlist you are in.. so you can't just "back out" of that list, you have to start at the top level list (Albums/Playlists/Genre/etc) all over again

- and a huge WTF: if you are listening to music from the iPod, turn off the car, leave the phone hooked up, leave car, come back, start car, the iPod app *never* stopped playing while you were gone...

Contacts:

- Pioneer's software still sucks at importing

- Just like the iPod app, if you need to get to the end of the list, you're going to be clicking "Down" a lot of times to get there... there is no way to jump to a letter, or even a group of letters, like older models have.....

- Since this radio is so wound tightly around iOS, why couldn't this be something over-the-dock-connector-and-not-using-Bluetooth instead? there *are* API's available is the iOS SDK to talk with the Contact List

Map apps:

- You can "pinch to zoom" on the MotionX app but cannot do so on the Google Maps app... that makes no sense

and lastly

- I have no idea what other people's experience with this is, but i've had two of these radios now and both do the same thing: make the iPhone run hot to the touch... i was just out driving around for ~ 25 mins at lunch... just using the iPod part of the AppRadio/iPhone.. no data stuff, no video out stuff, just playing music from the iPhone, and the iPhone was inexcusably hot to the touch when I got home.....

Despite all these gripes, I am still excited for the future of this great idea of a radio, as the F700 I had previous also had a ton bugs upon launch, I have hope that over the course of a software update (or two or three) that Pioneer will fix some of this stuff that quite frankly qualifies right now as nothing more than "half-assed".... there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this radio was rushed to market......

this review (not by me) on the iTunes store sums it up pretty good (his whole entire review on the AppStore is great and detailed):

This post is just my opinion, I am not saying anyone needs to agree with me or whatever, but I want to make people looking for some experience and opinions to be able to see some, and also, who knows, maybe Pioneer is out looking at forums like this making notes.... who knows?

Thanks for reading...

- Steve

You would probably do better to get your message across with a series of demo vids uploaded to Youtube. Regardless, this is typical of Pioneer in recent years with new concepts. To me it seems clear that they have several different design teams that are responsible for different products and apparently none of them "talk" to each other or pick up where previous units left off.

Sorry for the background noise, it was raining pretty good while I was recording this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z5C5S0Jwmc

Yeah they certainly could have done better then that. Doesn't surprise me though.

I will agree with you on many subject. The ipod app is crap. It really is. The biggest flaw is you cant just click ON the name. Even if it is on the screen you have to use the arrow buttons to toggle to it then press ok. Making a one press item possible a 5 press item.

With that said i have been using the RDIO app and i really like that. After setting up to sync my iTunes with their library i now have my entire library on there and can find other albums by that artist quickly or even set up a pandora like station for them. But with this you can skip songs, start over songs, and jump to other ones. Pretty cool idea though the 9.99 a month will turn some off.

The Pandora app looks pretty good in comparison to the iPod app.

I tried netflix through it and it worked great also.

I agree there are a few glaring WTF issues but overall im excited to see if anyone else comes up with some innovative apps for this.

The iPod 'app' you're referring to is Apple's iPod out interface. The crappy interface designed on Apple's end (if you don't believe me, Google 'Apple iPod Out')- the AppRadio just adds the small command buttons to the left and the right of the image.

Since the video interface is designed by Apple, that's probably why there's no touch-scrolling or pressing of any of the information.

Absolutely not true. There are many other head units from Pioneer and others that have a much better iPod interface that has scrolling capabilities. The interface on the App Radio is basic and appears to have been created in a lazy manner.

actually, i think ibcr8iv is right on point..

Pioneer seemed to have ditched their custom iPod interface for this generic "iPod out" functionality... which works great in a car like a BMW since they have the knob to easily go up and down the menus.... but Pioneer's choice to use this functionality while making the controls for it virtual up/down arrows is just flat out moronic...

I swear, they released this thing with absolutely zero input from user testing.... there is no other explanation

MorningZ, I have been following your comments and reviews on the App Radio since before I got mine and installed it. Thanks for the updates. I agree totally with you on the user interface. Mine seems slow to respond to presses. I also hate the fact that there is no clock on any menus but the home screen. I was very excited for this model when reading about it, but am constantly disappointed. Yesterday I had to plug in and unplug my phone several times before it actually recognized I had an Iphone plugged in. I also hate having to switch between apps from the phone and not the HU. I am trying to hold out on returning the unit to see if any updates from Pioneer are coming down the pipe line soon that may make it more user friendly. However, with the App Radio you have to use the phone primarly to control the unit, so I may exchange it for another Pioneer unit. The AVH-P3300BT seems to do almost everything the app radio does and is in the same price range. Anyone messed around with this unit?

wow this thing is a peice of crap! so dissapointing...

MorningZ, I have been following your comments and reviews on the App Radio since before I got mine and installed it. Thanks for the updates. I agree totally with you on the user interface. Mine seems slow to respond to presses. I also hate the fact that there is no clock on any menus but the home screen. I was very excited for this model when reading about it, but am constantly disappointed. Yesterday I had to plug in and unplug my phone several times before it actually recognized I had an Iphone plugged in. I also hate having to switch between apps from the phone and not the HU. I am trying to hold out on returning the unit to see if any updates from Pioneer are coming down the pipe line soon that may make it more user friendly. However, with the App Radio you have to use the phone primarly to control the unit, so I may exchange it for another Pioneer unit. The AVH-P3300BT seems to do almost everything the app radio does and is in the same price range. Anyone messed around with this unit?

I ended up returning my AppRadio and got an Clarion NX501 instead.... it has Nav, Bluetooth, audio-over-Bluetooth (AVTCP protocol too, meaning one can fast forward/rewind/play/pause apps like Spotify and Pandora on the phone) and even has a bunch of places where you can "flick" through stuff (like the AppRadio *should*) like music and contacts...

The end of my time with the radio was for the situation you describe above, the AppRadio sometimes just wouldn't recognize the iPhone..... making itself a $400 FM tuner....

Anyways, good luck....

count me in as another dissatisfied user who returned the appradio. a lot of potential but it falls right on it's face when it comes to actual use.

just got mine, despite the warnings. I think it's a great concept and that's why i got it...but man are Pioneer's software developers unskilled. the implementation is simply poor. which is odd -- if you're selling a product to IPHONE users, then it should match the expected quality of an IPHONE! which means sensible scrolling & flicking UI, screen and button design, etc.... to not do so is to set yourself up for failure. expectations, people.

Pioneer needs to get its act together, hire some talented UI & software developers, and fix the interface.