jk2317

Bear with me for a minute as I set up the scenario. Question follows, I promise!

I just got my 2004 545i (in-service 09/2004, NAV, not sure of its production date). It's a CPO car from a local dealer (Weatherford BMW, Berkeley). As part of my purchasing deal, I negotiated the free install of the iPod adapter. Last week, they'd just received the car, and I rather insisted to take it with me on purchase day. Therefore, earlier this week I dropped off the car for its just-purchased service, including detail, an adaptive headlight repair, and iPod install.

Of course, I've now gotten the call to tell me "uhh... we can't get the iPod adapter." (I warned them, but they didn't believe me! Go intarweb!).

Now, some facts about my iPod install:

• When I put an MP3 CD into my CD player, it gave me the message about "no supported audio disc."
• The CPO process should have given me the latest progman. My experience, compared to this awesome article, indicates that I have some recent version, at least.
• Reading all 17 pages of this thread [bimmerfest.com] (mods: cross-linking ok?) taught me that
  1. My car hasn't had the "MP3 retrofit" (hence, no MP3 CD)
  2. The iPod adapter hardware is currently out of stock for all of N. America

I told them to go ahead and do the MP3 retrofit. At the same time, I saw over on the classifieds forum here that there's probably a place I can call to order that part. As it happens, I'm leaving town in 2 hours until Monday night, so my car's there until Tuesday morning. I'm sure I could put my dealer in touch with that dealer and make this happen for me by Tuesday. But here's the rub (we're getting to that question I promised!):

Plausible rumor has it that the part is out of stock because it's due to be refreshed. Perhaps to the new USB/iPod factory option, possibly not. If history is any indication, the new adapter could take a while, and there's no guarantee it would even be software-compatible with my car for months, if ever.

That question I promised? There's a few:
* Any guesses to when this thing will arrive?
* If the adapter is improved, what are the chances it will be immediately compatible with my car?
* Is there any chance of them just cutting off the supply to the current iPod part compatible with my (early E60) car?
* Should try and get the current iPod adapter, which seems good but has some flaws, or take my now MP3-enabled (with CD changer) car home for a few weeks and wait to see about a new adapter?

It occurs to me to mention that a TON of my music is in AAC format, and I'm not interested in converting it to MP3 or using my Nav DVD drive for MP3's. So having the MP3 CD player without iPod adapter means having ~100 songs from the MP3 half of my collection. It's barely worth more than the CD changer alone, to me personally.

Thanks for your thoughts!