I ended up mounting my upfront and looking back I'm glad I did. From the best I can tell if you are using the head unit to access songs it must be done via playlists that you setup in the ipod. I have found that I like getting to my tunes directly through the ipod and not relying on narrowing down my 100+ albums to 5 playlists. The head unit and steering wheel still allows to control volume and scroll through songs on an album.

I originally mounted to right of shifter. Hated it, almost crashed. Moved up to vent above radio and works fine. Now I can find songs and still look out windshield.