Maybe this has been posted before, but does everyone else think that the way lexus interacts with the iPod completely destroys all the elegant functionality of the iPod? Does anyone know of good workarounds? Has anyone ever complained to lexus and gotten a response. Some (a small sampling) of problems:

1) Scrolling through lists (of songs, artists, or whatever) takes forever if using the mouse to click down one page at a time. God forbid you want to get to the letter "R"!

1a) You can use the dial button on the dash to quickly scroll far ahead, but the display doesn't update, so while you may have moved to "R" and are now listening to a song that starts with "R", the screen is still on page one of the "A's"

2) If you've managed to get to a letter by advancing to "R", and then click the back arrow to switch to an artist who begins with "S", you're taken to "A" again and have to go through the whole process.

3) Hitting the "RAND" button randomizes all songs on the iPod, even if you've selected a playlist and want to listen only to songs in that playlist randomly.

4) The playlist is always played alphabetically.

I could go on and on. Quite simply, the easiest thing for them to do would be to get rid of the control on the car, and just allow the iPod to be controlled from the iPod itself. They may say that's risky because you'll be looking at your iPod while driving, but it'll be for 3 seconds, instead of looking at the car's navigation screen for minutes trying to find what you want. Which is safer?

Do people just listen to the iPod through the aux port to avoid the dumb Lexus software?

 

I just sent this to Lexus:

iPods are awesome because the people who designed the software allow the user to have tens of thousands of songs on hand, and access all of them LOGICALLY and QUICKLY!

Connecting an iPod to a Lexus (in may case a 2010 RX350) completely eliminates this. Once the Lexus takes control of the iPod, everything is painfully slow and completely illogical.

Has any of your engineers (and an iPod lover) sat in the car with an iPod and tried to control it through the stereo/navigation system?

I could list DOZENS of problems. But let me just throw out one for now:

If I pick "artist" and want to get to "R", I can click on the down arrow on the screen, which takes me down one page of 5 artists at a time at a galacial pace! I could literally take 5 minutes or more (of distracted driving) to get to the band Rush on my iPod.

Or, I can use the dial on the dashboard to move forward very quickly through the list, but the screen on the car doesn't update (it stays on the first page of the A's), so I have no idea where I am except to guess (by the fact that in the top left corner it might say 532/765 if I'm on artist 532 alphabetically out of 765 artists on my iPod).

This is just ONE example of many of how stupid this is. What are Lexus's plans to make this interface as natural as the iPods? Could you subcontract some folks from Apple for a month or two to fix it all?

 

Good luck getting Lexus to beg/borrow/steal some folks from Apple to work on the fixes. I just listen through the Aux port. Let us know how Lexus responds to your query.

 

This is really dissappointing. I thougt of the ipod interface as a plus but haven't used it since trying it on the second day of ownership and noticing all of the issues. Especially the scrolling.

We use the XM a lot as our local radio stations are worthless but it would have been nice to listen to the ipod. We would use the AUX but I don't want to put my wife and kids in danger as she frives it 90% of the time.

 

vais probably has an after market update for the ipod interface

http://www.vaistech.com/products/home.php

 

Yes, it stinks. I often find myself using my iPhone connected via bluetooth (instead of my iPod Classic connected via USB) so that I can quickly access my playlists. I have all my music on my iPod Classic but since I also have AudioGalaxy running on my iPhone I can also stream that same library over 3G (from my computer at home). Sure the quality isn't as good but I don't have to fight that horribly cumbersome UI.

 

We will have ML Plus available for your cars very soon guys!

 

Maybe a software update in the future? It would be nice to have it like the phone contact list, at least there you can skip around to the first or last name of the Artist.

 

VAISTECH dude,

I'll get it as soon as you have it, because I notice from your website that it will also allow playback of .wav files!

I got rid of all my (~1000) CDs, copying them (bit-for-bit perfectly of course using EAC and Accuraterip) onto a 1 TB hard-drive (well, two mirrored hard drives in case one crashes) in native .wav (CD) format. One hard drive is hooked up to my amplifier at home. The other I want to use in the car, but even though the Lexus audio system can obviously go digitial>analog for .wav files off a CD and play them, it cannot handle (or see) .wav files on a hard drive hooked up through the USB port. How dumb is that? So, I'd have to convert all of them to .mp3 which would just be a pain in the butt.

If you're telling me I can hook that 1TB hard drive (with everything neatly organized into folders) into your product, use the mouse on the navigation system to click through the directory and pick a folder (album) to play, and listen to those .wavs through your D>A processor, I'm sold.

Maybe to make getting through the drive faster, I should start with 26 folders by letter, then put the artists into those folders (so that I can get to the end of the alphabet faster if I need to?)

 

I just put my songs on random and live with it. I agree it totally blows big time. It needs to be fluid and fast like the ipod not super slow and going to cause my death looking for a song.