I know everybody hates the new idrive but this review from Joe lorio from automobile magizine nails it right on.
"iDrive is ridiculous. So many functions are buried in submenus, which can be ccessed only through trial and error. Want to see the route directions for navigation? You have to hit 'revise route.' Want to tune in a radio station manually? It's a five-step process. But, you see, the modern way is far superior to the old-fashioned way of just turning a knob. The mondern way is also only slightly less distracting than unwrapping a cheseburger, talking on a cell phone, and sipping a beer. I can't wait until BMW designers redo the computer keyboard. They'll banish unsightly keys in favor of a single, brushed-metal knob, which we'll use to access letters, one at a time, from menus of vowels and consonats. Click a letter, select upper-case or lower-case, click again. We'll catch on."
"iDrive is ridiculous. So many functions are buried in submenus, which can be ccessed only through trial and error. Want to see the route directions for navigation? You have to hit 'revise route.' Want to tune in a radio station manually? It's a five-step process. But, you see, the modern way is far superior to the old-fashioned way of just turning a knob. The mondern way is also only slightly less distracting than unwrapping a cheseburger, talking on a cell phone, and sipping a beer. I can't wait until BMW designers redo the computer keyboard. They'll banish unsightly keys in favor of a single, brushed-metal knob, which we'll use to access letters, one at a time, from menus of vowels and consonats. Click a letter, select upper-case or lower-case, click again. We'll catch on."
