jdloaner

Why...WHY isn't there a plug, a harness, a port, a slot, a dial-up bbs, a null-modem cable, a WHATEVER... that I can either plug into, piggyback, replace, splice, solder, god damn tie a square-knot to... that will let me have AUX in?! This is 2011.

Yes my car was built in 2006, but so were the first 3D LED Flat Panels. Our cars have arguably some of the most advanced automotive technology ever created, including some of that "old" stuff, you know.. like... Speech Recognition, GPS, Satellite Radio, Bluetooth, DVD, compressed digital audio decoding/processing, along with way too much to list.

I drive to work every day staring at a ~7" wide screen flat panel monitor that displays the output from the computer that controls my car and handles other necessary tasks like wirelessly monitoring the PSI of each individual tire. As if the run-flats that come pre-installed weren't going to take care of problems relating to low tire pressure.

We are talking about AUX here folks; the same analog connector that allowed the Baby Boomer generation to rev up their 8-Track and Record Players, themselves... Believe it: people five decades ago not only had the available technology, but they were able and allowed to insert their very own phono plug! Crazy. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, these are the "exact" same type of connections that allowed Ma-Bell to function in the early 20th Century, back into the late-1800's even.

Bottom line. The fact I have to order/buy a $100 cord, make an appointment, drive to the dealership, leave my car there for hours on end, then pick it back up; cut another check for probably $150 for someone to PROGRAM an interface for this overpriced cord to even work properly, is.. how can I put it.. weird. Actually... it's F*!#ing annoying. and almost mind-boggling.

How a person could sit in a 1990's Chrysler and have that little 3.5mm hole staring them in the face, while not being able to even "dig one up" in a loaded 2006 550 BMW E60 is quite frustrating to put it gently. And that's all I have to say about that.

</rant>


(sorry... it's been a long Tuesday. For any of you in the Cisco world, my Intern accidentally typed 'wr er' instead of 'wr me' into our primary Firewall just before rebooting it. fun.)

healthservices

turboawd

i agree.
would be nice to have a usb input too.

Will Greer

Your complaint has two parts:

1. Why didn't BMW include an auxiliary input as standard equipment in 2009, when most cars costing half as much had one at the time?

I agree. A CD player was optional on my 2001 X5, which was equally silly. BMW is not generous at all in this area.

2. Why does BMW require such an involved procedure to install an auxiliary input if the vehicle did not have one initially?

This is somewhat more defensible. As consumers, we buy computers and plug lots of stuff into them, so the PC industry made the computers very good at recognizing whatever we plug into them, installing the drivers automatically, and allowing us to use them without so much as a reboot. It wasn't always like this, though - I remember in the early 90s, it would take all afternoon to get a computer and a printer to communicate. And at that time they used an essentially proprietary connection (a serial port) rather than the multi-use USB they use now.

The auto industry hasn't had to provide this kind of flexibility in the in-car computer operating systems to satisfy consumer demand, so they haven't done it. To get a BMW's computer system to recognize a new device (even an analog one), someone has to go in there and more or less manually reconfigure the thing to do that. It isn't that it's not capable - it's just not set up to respond to that kind of change on the fly.

I guess it won't always be this way, and soon we will probably stream connectivity from one digital device to another in cars using wi-fi, Bluetooth, or something we don't have yet. I'm waiting for the first car company smart enough to make a car with a dedicated iPad cradle in it, where the iPad can serve as the graphical front end for the car's systems. I bet that won't be BMW!

Orin

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/09/20...t-integration/

AchtungE60

I agree with you. I've been trying to figure all of this out myself. Actually there are ways to work around all of this. you can connect the ipod (after you buy the nice little female plug from the dealer, strip the pins out, place it into your own harness and then plug that harness into your CCC/M-ASK) and you'll also have to bridge another pin over to ground....then you can use your aux everytime you push 'mute' it will switch over...not ideal but you don't have to do any programming. if you have OCD then you have to pay for programming.

Me? I'm looking for mid 80's/early 90's nissan or toyota pickup with only A/C, power steering as an option.

Will Greer

Nice, but not what I meant. That interface's purpose is to channel the iPad or iPod's output through the car. I see it going the other direction, where the iPad becomes the dashboard for the car's computer system. The car's data comes to the user via the iPad.