Quote:
Originally Posted by drob23
Wow...those are some pretty nice hardware upgrades. Brings it into borderline pc specs.
OK, I'll play devils advocate and say why do you need those kind of upgrades??? Are you really going to be multitasking or launching software other than the included stuff? People gonna run PS2 emulators on their cars!?!? Admittedly I haven't read all the details of the updates beyond the improved navigation look.
I for one would never want to deal with software updates on a car computer...it's bad enough dealing with android and ios upgrades, but on a car?? You want it to work like advertised, nothing more nothing less. IMO the biggest area of improvement would have to be UI/integration within the car itself.
The extra hard drive size is great though!
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Well you have to put it in perspective. First, BMW has to keep up with features offered by competitors, apps and such. That type of integration needs processing power. Second, these Nav systems typically have 5 year lifespans before they appear dated. The current system was introduced for MY2009, and surely was in development for 1-2 years prior. Several MY2013 and MY2014 cars will still use the current system, so they got a solid 5 years out of it. Now, with the new system, they have to build it fast enough now to support 5 more years of use/applications.
I've updated the software on my '12 M3, it was painless.
If you want to see the new iDrive in action, here is a video
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/05/bmw-idrive-4x/
If you're familiar with the current-gen system, you'll immediately notice the increase speed based on user input, as well as more detail in the maps.