Ugh. The iDrive system in my 2013 F30 is juuuuuuust right. Easy to use, thoughtfully laid out, good mix of on-screen menus and tactile buttons / the jog wheel. The newer cars have touchscreens, which is a big step back, but thankfully you don't have to use them. (I heard they were recently removed from some cars due to supply chain issues.) There's just no way that Android is better.
I love my car, and the experience of driving and owning it has made me want to be a BMW customer for life. But if they ruin in it with this crap, I'll be looking elsewhere.
iDrive rocks. But I think something got lost in translation here. From the original press release it sounds like android automotive will be running alongside iDrive and both will be available? I don't see BMW just ditching iDrive, especially when carplay OS is coming too. Ideally we would just be able to choose between carplay OS, Android OS, and iDrive.
I'm largely ok with the infotainment in my Mazda. It's simple and to the point. I don't have any major complaints after it stopped crashing like it did for the first month i owned it (I have no idea why it stopped).
I'd really like car manufacturers to let me run whatever i want on it though. It's just a Linux box and since you can reboot it while driving the car, i know it's not safety critical. It would be cool if I could just load on a standard executable in whatever machine code it runs and make my own apps.
> I'm largely ok with the infotainment in my Mazda. It's simple and to the point. I don't have any major complaints after it stopped crashing like it did for the first month i owned it (I have no idea why it stopped).
You didn't happen to listen to 99% invisible did you[1]? IIRC there were also some FM stations that had RDS issues which triggered a similar problem in mazdas infotaiment.
I have a ‘15 F30 and a ‘22 G80. Nothing is better on the F30 and often touchscreen is really convenient compared to the puck. I will add that BMW iDrive feels massively more polished than the MMI in my recent model Audi, which also randomly needs soft/hard resets.
I love my car, and the experience of driving and owning it has made me want to be a BMW customer for life. But if they ruin in it with this crap, I'll be looking elsewhere.