Well since I got my Avic installed yesterday, I've had a complete blast messing around with it. At first I didn't think the iPod interface was as bad as everyone said it was, and I didn't mind waiting the quarter second it took to scroll down. That is until I started driving. It is kinda annoying and was wondering what the possible solutions are. Could this be solved with a firmware update that allows the Z1 to scroll down to say, a letter. It's a real pain having the scroll all the way down every time I want a certain song. Or do you guys think that this should be solved with another faster interface?

I assume that when you want a certain song, you scroll by artist, and then go to the song, right? If you're scrolling by song, you're wasting a lot of time.

Well I have playlists that are over 200 songs, so unless Im missing something, the only way to get to a song I want on one of these playlists is by having to scroll all the way down till I hit the song right? Having to go to a specific artist every time I want a specific song defeats one of the great features of the iPod.

Pretty much the only solution is to locate the song on your ipod unplugged from the Z1, then plug in the ipod to the Z1.

Or create smaller playlists.

people found that creating smaller playlists helped. What they did was have a playlist for A - Z. SO 26 playlists. They listed them byt artist into each of the categories. They said it took an hour or two to do that but the time saving factor in the car was well worth it.

I'm a big fan of the unplug-find-replug method of listening. This way, I don't have to keep updating all the playlists and such.

I actually had a Pioneer support representative suggest the unplug-find-replug method to me on one of my many calls to them complaining about how they need to improve their iPod interface.

And while it works great, it's not something I'd recommend doing while driving!

Actually, the A-Z playlists is a good idea. I thought it would take a lot of work, however I finally figured it out on iTunes.

So, for the rest of you idiots like me who thought you had to add everything manually,

File --> New Smart Playlist

Then "Artist Begins with "

Make sure to check "only checked items" for the playlist

Since I'm one of the aforementioned "idiots" I won't feel bad asking a stupid question.

But how exactly does the 26 playlists method make things a lot faster?

As a test I created a smart playlist for Artists starting with "B", which gave me a list of 193 songs.

Let's say I'm in the mood for Billy Joel, so I pull up my B Artist playlist and have to scroll down 84 songs (5 at a time) till I got to Billy Joel's songs.

And while I can see this would be faster than getting to Billy Joel via the Artist Search, I would still have to know the name of every Billy Joel song I have so I would know to stop scrolling, otherwise I'm just going to stop scrolling at the first Billy Joel song I recognize.

OK, now I'm ready for someone to reply back with "You're such an idiot..."

You're not an idiot, but this isn't going to work with 30+ gigs of music. You might have the break down the artists even further inbetween letters.

yea... the smaller playlists dont help if your small playlists as as big as everyone elses combine. Just try arranging them in such a way where there are so many songs to scroll through.

Have you guys seen the hack in the xm section of this forum, works great. You can select music from the avic or the ipod. My wife did it first try from the directions listed in the xm forum. She has the 80 gb ipod.

correction that was the ipod section, here is the link...

works great.

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3505

Kind of defeats the purpose of the Z1 with the ipod adapter. That is Pioneer's fault though, so I guess it's better then the present situation.

Thats a good idea for when someone else is in the passenger seat and wants to pick specific songs that aren't related to play. Like Friday nights on the way to a bar or club, haha