14. A method for efficiently navigating an audible user interface at a portable computing device arranged to store a plurality of media items, the method comprising: (a) determining most frequently used top-level menu items; (b) storing the most frequently used top-level menu items in a cache memory; (c) displaying a menu having a list of menu items; (d) navigating the list of menu items by receiving a user touch event on one of the list of menu items; (e) in response to (d), retrieving an audio prompt associated with the menu item on which the user touch event is received, from the cache memory, wherein the cache memory contains audio prompts for frequently used top-level menu items; (f) after retrieval of the audio prompt, playing the audio prompt, wherein the playing is performed only during the touch event, wherein if the user decides not to select the associated menu item, then the user terminates the touch event prior to the completion of the playing of the audio prompt; and wherein the audio prompt for each menu item is generated via text-to-speech processing, and wherein the voice used in the audio prompts varies based on the type of the menu item, as indicated by customized settings input by the user.
14. A method for efficiently navigating an audible user interface at a portable computing device arranged to store a plurality of media items, the method comprising: (a) determining most frequently used top-level menu items; (b) storing the most frequently used top-level menu items in a cache memory; (c) displaying a menu having a list of menu items; (d) navigating the list of menu items by receiving a user touch event on one of the list of menu items; (e) in response to (d), retrieving an audio prompt associated with the menu item on which the user touch event is received, from the cache memory, wherein the cache memory contains audio prompts for frequently used top-level menu items; (f) after retrieval of the audio prompt, playing the audio prompt, wherein the playing is performed only during the touch event, wherein if the user decides not to select the associated menu item, then the user terminates the touch event prior to the completion of the playing of the audio prompt; and wherein the audio prompt for each menu item is generated via text-to-speech processing, and wherein the voice used in the audio prompts varies based on the type of the menu item, as indicated by customized settings input by the user. 17. The method of claim 14 , wherein the audio prompts vary by having a different gender.