They both "features USB input". The difference is 3 pre-out and 2 pre-in (rear/front) for iDA-X200 vs only one pre-out for iDA-X300

I wonder if it's ever occurred to the people at Alpine - and several other manufacturers, to be sure - that there are people out here who are not into Apple's proprietary data encoding nonsense and therefore use standard MP3 players (I use Creative's Zen, happily,) who therefore are far more interested in a simple front-panel Aux jack - which this unit, conspicuously, doesn't have.

It's what... a hardware item costing pennies to a manufacturer in bulk; a front panel real estate consumption of perhaps 10 square millimeters; maybe a week's worth of design alteration by an engineering team. And... it can't be managed?

Am I the only one who is consistently appalled at the fact that car audio manufacturers can't seem to pull any closer than some two years behind standard music technology?

To wit: I was looking for a head unit with a simple FRONT PANEL SD card slot, a simple FRONT PANEL Aux jack, a simple integration of removable faceplate with portable MP3 player, an elimination of the soon-to-be anachronistic CD/moving parts player, a consequent unit downsizing, a simple return to the driver-friendly GRAPHIC rather than parametric EQ - about the time I first started using SD media and flash MP3 players, which I put at: mid-2005.

Why is an unknown French brand - Parrot - the only company so far to clue into any of this? (Though not enough.)

Why is Pioneer the only brand that offers the choice of graphic EQ on its receivers, and that on only a couple of its units?

How long will we have to wait for these dinosaurs to...catch up to the rest of the world?

Enough already - can anybody else spell
"foresight?" "Innovation?" "Perspective?"

Venting - sorry. Somebody's gotta do it.