An interesting evaluation of the BMW iDrive system by AY, a real frustrated user and editor of the Mobile Experience.

A summary of his points of frustration:

• “Too Slow: The iDrive is too damn slow to react… I constantly find myself sitting in a parking spot idling five+ minutes for the system to load up the information from the map in the DVD drive.”
• “Crappy Control: The iDrive counts on the jog selector for almost everything, between rotating the knob and selecting in 8 directions, this is how you scroll through the menus, input street addresses and more. It is often that you find yourself scrolling forever to go back and forth between the alphabets or and numerical values.”
• “Not Informational: (pull)The iDrive is so freaking useless(/pull), while searching for a destination or Point-of-Interest (POI), it wouldn’t display the physical address or phone number for your confirmation, your only option is looking at approximately how far it is from your current position (which is often off) and select it as destination.“

When I asked Chris Bangle of BMW about the iDrive, he said:

“Our customers cover a wide spectrum of experience and expectations, but usually they rely on BMW engineers to “do the right thing�?. The fact that all premium manufacturers have some sort of I-Drive probably shows we were on the right track, just ahead of the game. I wouldn’t want a car without it and neither would my wife (I asked), so is this a question about scorecards or about what is the proper way to multitask on the current and future driving environment? Criticism is welcome and feedback is useful, and I guarantee you it will be developed and improved and evolved until it really is near perfect…“

It seems that the system hasn’t been improved enough yet, looking at Ay’s critique. Let’s hope it will be one day “near perfect” for all of us to enjoy. Til that time, I drive a Volvo

[tags]iDrive, BMW, Chris Bangle, Car navigation[/tags]