BMW iDrive
Nobody asked me but . . .
Is there a BMW owner out there who really understands and—more importantly—likes iDrive? I remember the first time I ran into iDrive. It was at the Detroit auto show. After listening to a 5-minute spiel from the BMW pitchman, I moseyed over to one of the BMW PR guys hanging around the stand and said, “iDrive is the answer to the question nobody ever posed. If BMW is the Ultimate Driving Machine, why do I need the Ultimate Riding Mechanic sitting next to me to explain how to operate the car? If it ain’t intuitive, it doesn’t belong in the car, much less the ULTIMATE DRIVING MACHINE.”
My PR friend stood there stunned. After about 30 seconds he said, “How can you say that? You haven’t even driven a car with iDrive. You’ll love it. It makes total sense. It frees up space in the dash and center stack. It’s got one simple, handy control to make it easy to set the audio system, heating and cooling, navigation and a bunch of other functions that are normally spread around the interior.”
That simple handy control was a landlubber’s version of a compass rose. Originally you could move it in 16 points of a compass. More than quickly, users found that the control might have been German but it certainly wasn’t germane. If the driver’s hand-eye coordination was a little off—easy to understand when you realize that the driver ought to have his eyes on the road, not on the Ultimate Driving Machine’s magic controller—he probably caught NNE instead of NE. That meant that instead of “finding” the HVAC system to set the mode to “Defrost,” he’d actually opened a window into the wonderful world of BMW navigation. Meanwhile, the windshield was fogging over to the point of zero outside visibility.
“Make your next left turn.” Left turn? Hell, I can’t even see the road!
iDrive gen one was quickly followed by a more user-friendly (read less complicated) iDrive gen two in which the number of directions you could move the controller was halved. I would have been much happier if BMW’s iDrivers back in Munich hadn’t stopped there. Halve it again. And then again. Then, for good measure, chuck the whole device through my fogged-up windshield. I’d gladly pay for a new windshield not to have the nuisance and frustration of iDrive staring at me like a maniacal HAL every time I plopped into the driver’s seat.
Please, if someone, anyone out there really likes iDrive (no BMW engineers or PR persons allowed, thank you), I’d like to know who you are and why. For the rest of us, consider this the start of a petition designed to wipe iDrive off the face of this . . . er, every BMW. Our motto: Leave no kidney-shaped grille unstoned!
Is there a BMW owner out there who really understands and—more importantly—likes iDrive? I remember the first time I ran into iDrive. It was at the Detroit auto show. After listening to a 5-minute spiel from the BMW pitchman, I moseyed over to one of the BMW PR guys hanging around the stand and said, “iDrive is the answer to the question nobody ever posed. If BMW is the Ultimate Driving Machine, why do I need the Ultimate Riding Mechanic sitting next to me to explain how to operate the car? If it ain’t intuitive, it doesn’t belong in the car, much less the ULTIMATE DRIVING MACHINE.”
My PR friend stood there stunned. After about 30 seconds he said, “How can you say that? You haven’t even driven a car with iDrive. You’ll love it. It makes total sense. It frees up space in the dash and center stack. It’s got one simple, handy control to make it easy to set the audio system, heating and cooling, navigation and a bunch of other functions that are normally spread around the interior.”
That simple handy control was a landlubber’s version of a compass rose. Originally you could move it in 16 points of a compass. More than quickly, users found that the control might have been German but it certainly wasn’t germane. If the driver’s hand-eye coordination was a little off—easy to understand when you realize that the driver ought to have his eyes on the road, not on the Ultimate Driving Machine’s magic controller—he probably caught NNE instead of NE. That meant that instead of “finding” the HVAC system to set the mode to “Defrost,” he’d actually opened a window into the wonderful world of BMW navigation. Meanwhile, the windshield was fogging over to the point of zero outside visibility.
“Make your next left turn.” Left turn? Hell, I can’t even see the road!
iDrive gen one was quickly followed by a more user-friendly (read less complicated) iDrive gen two in which the number of directions you could move the controller was halved. I would have been much happier if BMW’s iDrivers back in Munich hadn’t stopped there. Halve it again. And then again. Then, for good measure, chuck the whole device through my fogged-up windshield. I’d gladly pay for a new windshield not to have the nuisance and frustration of iDrive staring at me like a maniacal HAL every time I plopped into the driver’s seat.
Please, if someone, anyone out there really likes iDrive (no BMW engineers or PR persons allowed, thank you), I’d like to know who you are and why. For the rest of us, consider this the start of a petition designed to wipe iDrive off the face of this . . . er, every BMW. Our motto: Leave no kidney-shaped grille unstoned!
posted by Jim at
2:51 PM
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