So I was posed an interesting question this morning in email. My uncle has an ipod and my grandpa has the Ford Sync. So my uncle wanted to show my grandpa how to use the music play part of the sync. I wonder if he can put the music on a thumb drive and stick that right into the usb port on the Sync? This site says that AAC file format works great. Of course the music would need to be DRM free I would imagine. But the only inhibitor would be a password protected usb drive. like the U3 from sandisk i think. http://www.syncmyride.com/Own/Modules/FaqManagement/FaqList.aspx?tagId=23#question57 this leads me to believe that a USB drive all by itself with just music files on it would work.
At one time I was told that it actually copies the files from the device to the Hard Drive of the Sync. After looking over the http://Syncmyride.com for a minute, and seeing bluetooth streaming, I think that rules out copying the music over. The Sync would have to have some sort of hard drive though to store the music information so voice commands could control and use those files on the device.
so the meat and potatoes came in this question i found on the Sync FAQ: http://www.syncmyride.com/Own/Modules/FaqManagement/FaqList.aspx?tagId=131#question26
this question and the next one are the key to all the answers I had.