Hi all,
I've had my F30 320d Sport for nearly a year now, and am at my wit's end with the iDrive and how it handles (or rather, doesn't handle!) my Apple devices.
I have the basic setup (6NH?) and encounter a number of problems when streaming audio - be it through my iPod Touch, iPad, or iPod Nano.
In this case in particular, I'm referring to my iPod Touch; 32GB capacity, with about 18GB in MP3 audio. In the past year I've experienced:
- iPod frequently 'disconnects' from iDrive.
- On car start, a playlist, album or artist playback only shows one song in the playback list (although the rest can be played using the skip/back buttons on the dash).
- On car start, can't access the 'Current Playback' tab, even though music is playing.
- When searching by album or artist, the iDrive returns 'No entries' when attempting to playback.
- The 'now playing tick' marker is one song behind in a playback list.
- Last few characters ocassionally missing from titles and playlist names.
- 'Please Wait...' appearing indefinitely on changing album/artist/playlist.
- Scrolling through artists or albums, the database numbers appear for a very long time before showing the name of the album/artist.
Some occur more than others, some simultaneously.
My dealer have had the car twice, for a total of 6 days, to figure out the problem; checking every physical element between the Y-cable and the iDrive's computer. I'm not sure why, as it's clearly a computer memory problem, as opposed to a hardware problem; it seems obvious that the 6NH computer isn't fully capable of running an iPod effectively - despite BMW selling these £50 cables that are meant to do just that.
The worst part is that the dealership agree there is a problem when they see it happening, but when they can't find out why there's a problem, they regard it as "no fault" in the end.
The first excuse was "your iPod has too many songs on it", then it was "the Y-cable has its limitations and can't keep up", and then "there are too many sub-directories for the iDrive to look through to find your music"... all of which I have proved to be nonsense, because the same iPod and Y-Cable work flawlessly in my father's 2013 F10, with none of the above issues occurring. I even sent the dealership some video footage from both cars with the same iPod and Y-cable.
Yes, the 5 series has a different system and version of iDrive under the hood, but it doesn't excuse the fact that these occurrences are
faults in the F30's basic iDrive system.
At the moment BMW are completely stuck with my case; knowing there's a problem, but evidently don't want to invest in the time or assets to correct it by acknowledging in their analysis that there is a fault.
I can't be only one experiencing issues with this, and would love to hear from anyone else who has had any of these issues, or similar, with the iDrive's behaviour with Apple devices. Trying to get as much feedback as possible, even from those who have their music collections working flawlessly on the 6NH system.
Many thanks in advance,
D.