What Would You Reprogram on the iDrive?

[pinmagic]

I never cease to be amazed by some of the poor programming choices BMW made with the iDrive. Here are some of the things I'd like to see addressed in an update (tho I doubt sincerely it's gonna happen). You got any to add to the list? Trust me, I have more - I'll add them as I think of them.

- As I've said many times on this forum, the Nav System is class-action bad. Tonight, it once again tried to turn a simple 15 minute trip (pretty much a straight shot) into a 40 minute roundabout trip. It's inexcusable, and BMW needs to address it.

- So many things require too many button presses. For example, after entering a nav address, you press "Start Navigation," but guess what - nav doesn't start. Instead, you're brought to another screen, where you select "Start Navigation." Hmmmm...thought I already chose that. BMW needs to "flatten" the options - fewer levels with more choices on each.

- My $50 XM receiver (in my previous car) let you scroll thru the stations, and see what was playing on each one before you selected it. Surprise of all surprises, the $2000 BMW iDrive's Sirius system requires you to select a station before it tells you what's playing.

- In each mode, you can press "Option," but there's rarely anything useful there. Most glaring omission: in the music modes, "Option" doesn't bring up the tone controls. Instead, you have to scroll through about - oh - 342 screens to get to the tone controls.

- A $79 Garmin nav system has automatic day/night mode. A $2000 BMW iDrive requires you to scroll through numerous screens to manually toggle to night mode. Honestly, does anyone bother?

- There are TONS of coding options for this car. Would have been nice if BMW would have made more of them accessible thru the iDrive.

I swear, this thing was designed and programmed by a roomful of trunk monkeys.