I have the 9880R, it's a cracking headunit. The problem however was the cable, I got a 4th gen nano and it played but didn't charge, this was due to the cable no being compatible with the slightly modified dock Apple put in the nano.
However Alpine sent me an attachment that goes in between the headunit and the main cable which cured this, mind you I got rid of the nano and got a 120GB Classic instead lol! Needless to say, it would be better going for one of the newer units purely for compatibility.