The iDrive concept has today been adopted by many vehicle manufactures. An innovation that was initially seen as highly unfriendly and in this case perfected by the late adopters e.g. Audi, Mercedes etc. in your opinion, what are the floors with iDrive and how can it be improved to meet the functionality it intended to achieve:

1. Reduce number of buttons and controls cluttered over the dashboard
2. Central management of cars options
3. Provide for easy wiring
4. Introduce the concept of a Car mouse/pointer?

The iDrive needs to be maintained but improved. They have to ditch the Windows OS and use Linux. :D

At least it'd go faster. And we'd have thousands of open source mods :) to really interfere wit CIP updates :'(

I think the screen should be touch sensitive. That is my biggest issue with it.

The iDrive is a great concept but BMW definitely missed the mark on designing a menu structure that is intuitive. They need to throw out the old design and start again with a clean sheet of paper, rather than try to beat on a dead horse.

Voted the same.

It's really hard to see how modern cars with such extended features
could be handled in any other way.

I.e. the E-series M-B has so many buttoms, that I do not understand how
anyone can handle them all.

Many on you may not remember when the first computers and Windows
was introduced.
It was a shock for many adults, including me!

I believe that iDrive as is, for a Gen Xer like myself, is quite intuitive. My only gripe is that the system needs a more powerful processor for quicker boot-up and reponse to input. On a side note, I have been training myself to rely on Voice Commands and find myself interacting with iDrive less and less daily. Speak up people! :)

Right :thumbsup: Linux is much faster than windows. Do you have Linux? If so, what distribution? I use Debian.

iDrive is a great idea. But BMW still has a long way to go to make it good.

It is too slow and therefore distracting. It is a cost saving measure to enable features to be added and modified at little expense. Because it runs the MP3 and Navigations it runs slowly. Route calculation is slow and sometimes extremely inaccurate (try it in central Nottingham if you really need a laugh).

It is a nice idea. But poorly thought out, very poorly executed and in reality of limited benefit to the consumer. We aren't able to change element that we are dissatisfied with for superior items, eg radio and cd player.

I'd personally rather have buttons than crap.