Mark, yes, and now I actually remember talking with you about this when you were here. The reason why I went back thinking that the iPod would do the decoding is that I read some old Alpine specs, and the early units were not decoding the mp3s. And I did not read anything else on this, so that I assumed that's the way it still was.
Instead it seems that one of the major developments of the new USB connection (which is more advanced of the first iPod dedicated interface boxes that Alpine and others used to have) is exactly that it allows full access to the MP3s on the iPod.

Which brings us back to what we were saying few weeks ago: why on earth do Alpine and others stick to replicating visually the iPod interface, then? Or, even better, why don't they add features? I'd love to see improvements in that...

Still, I have to say that current iPod interface is not terrible. I still do wrong things with it, but I am getting used.

Now, I am really curious to find our if the Alpine is just as good with a Zune.