Awesome find on the slider, I must have missed that. As far as the iPod, this seems to be the disappointing normal workings of the unit. If the smart phone setup is on anything other than iPhone & usb then neither usb port to work with an iPod...
I was about to let people know about the slider. That's just another neat feature i've found in this GPS unit. I have to say i'm thoroughly impressed with the 8000nex unit over the z150BH by a very large margin. I keep finding all these little details in the GPS system that make it so much better than most others i've had. And i had a recent top of the line Garmin. There were a few things in the Garmin that i miss in the 8000nex unit, but the list is getting shorter by the day that i use it as i find features in the 8000nex that can do the same job, or make the previous feature in the Garmin moot.
I just did a 8 hour round trip to Atlanta all in one day yesterday and used the GPS and i was blown away at just how good it was once i got everything tweaked. Setting the speed slighter was a find on the way back. I set mine for 115%. So at 70mph i can do 80mph before it alerts me (and i only use the visual alerts, turned the audio ones off). When i'm doing 40mph it lets me know at 46mph which in and around towns i'm fine with. It's not perfect, i would like to have an option % or exactly 10mph over, but i can live with one, as it's better than none.
As to the iPod thing, i have 2 iPod touches in mine. 1 for my music (the larger one) and one for Audible (a smaller one). I wanted to be able to easily switch in the head unit between the Audible app and the Music app without having to pull my iPod out ever little while or mess with my phone. So i bought another iPod. I installed them both in ipod1 and ipod2 ran extension cables to the middle console and installed the extension USB female unit there. Then got a couple of expandable lightning cables and mounted my iPods there.
(note i use the Audible app instead of just using the Music app to select my audiobook as i like to use whispersync and sync my audiobook and kindle ebook when i read - i realize i could do the same thing and just use the music app to play my audiobook and it would work well and i could control it from the head unit but i need it for other reasons that some readers might or might not have)
Because of my dual iPod setup i was pissed to see that if i set my smartphone as BT none of the iPods would work. That's really freaking retarded. But anyway. I kinda go around it. I set my smart phone as iPod. But plugged in my 2 iPod touches as iPod 1 and 2. Both work great. I can easily and quickly switch between Music and Audible from the head unit. And my Siri (using the middle button in the 8000nex) still uses my iPhone which i paired using BT, still receives incoming calls, still makes calls from. I can send emails and texts from my phone using the built in microphone and Siri part of the 8000nex (as i did so several times on my trip) and have 2 iPods connected. Now, once they add this AVICSYNC stuff with internet for traffic/weather/etc... i'm not sure how that will work. I might not be able to do that with 2 iPods connected. I may have to live without that or come up with another alternative. But for now it does everything i want it to.
I have really really been enjoying my 8000nex by a huge margin over my old z150bh. Some people complained that the GPS was basically "useless" and i find it to be completely untrue. I've used it around town several times, and on a relatively long trip and i have to say it's pretty awesome. There are some features i'd love to see:
-Pause instead of Mute on GPS voice over directions (for my books, don't care about music, but i'd like my books paused while it wants to tell me to turn ahead)
-Waypoints are a little odd. You get the "most popular" groups to show up, but to filter through all the other ones (like shopping for example) you have to click in the search dialog box, then they keyboard shows up and either search by word, or dismiss the keyboard and then behind the keyboard overlay are all the categories. If you could ADD to the most popular catalogs that show up, that would be nice, or if they just all showed up, but it seems a little bit irksome the way it is.
-Waypoints, when you are in navigation mode (and have a route programmed) the default option for finding a local place (restaurant, shopping, etc..) is Nearby Places, and it should be Along Route. If you don't have a route programmed then Nearby Places is fine. This was kind of a pain as on my trip i needed to pickup a pair of shoes, and i didn't see this Nearby Places and it added 30 minutes to my trip as it wanted to take me 12 miles BACK the way i was coming to a shoe store i pass 12 miles ago, then 12 more miles back to where i was so about 30 minutes a waste of my time. After realizing this i killed the waypoint (which it audibly calls "via point" for some strange reason) and redid the "shoes" entry and clicked on the Nearby Places and chose "Along Route", that found a shoe store like 2 minutes off my route, but it was like 30 minutes from where i was at, which was perfect, i had to wait a little bit longer, but it didn't take me out of the way. (not too many shoe outlet places along interstate without hitting up a wally world or something).
-The quick nearby place needs to allow you to see more than just one. The little icon when navigating that is next to the progress bar on the right hand side that looks like a car and 2 roads i think, when you click that you have the choice of gas, food and gas&food. That's an awesome feature that my garmin didn't have, just find me the closest food place or the nearest gas station. That's an awesome feature, but at the same time if you don't like the "Subway" it found 1 exit down and there are other choices on that exit, it doesn't show you. It would be nice if it listed all the restaurants within 1 mile of that first one it found and let you pick. So a nice option that could be even better.
-End of navigation popup. Once you reach your destination a popup should come up that quickly lets you cancel the route. You are there or you passed it (because it stopped you 100ft before the house number or something) it should just popup and say Cancel Route? Yes/No. instead of my having to click Option -> Cancel Route -> Delete Route. 3 buttons when it could be solved by a popup and 1 button.
Another freaking awesome thing that i discovered. I set a feature in the Nav options called Show Realtime Alternative Routes or some such. Then about 2 hours into my drive i decided i needed to hit McDonalds. I pulled off interstate and instead of saying Recalculating Route, it popped up a menu of places nearby (several gas stations and several fast food places) with a title called something like "Off Route Reason" or some such. I then clicked the McDonalds selection and it automatically added that as a waypoint and drove me there without bitching at me the entire time that i was off route, and annoying me with recalculating every fifteen seconds.
So like i said there are a few options that i'd like on this until to make it the perfect GPS, while technically it's right now the best one i've used and i've used Garmins (top of the line units) and TomToms (middle units) and the z150BH GPS thing.
Also i used the bypass mentioned at the front of this forum to bypass the parking break issue. I did all my GPS navigation and selections while driving down the highway by myself. And it worked perfectly. It did tell me 2 times this weekend (one on the trip and one the day before) that it detected an issue with my parking break, but i click OK and was still allowed to do anything i wanted without stopping, slowing down or administering the parking break.