[minicooperobsessive]

I have been waiting ages for the news that BMW would officially fit an iPOD to the radio boost system in the MINI. However, the set up seems completely pointless.

The iPOD is designed not just as a simple hard drive which carries thousands of songs in a compressed format, but instead is lauded for it's simplicity of choosing track, artists and albums. With the current set up offered by BMW you don't get this at all.

Whilst I think it is preferable that the iPOD is installed in the glove box for security reasons, this takes away the iPOD interface completely. Surely the approach offered by BMW should allow for the screen of the head unit to display the song tracks at the very least.

A cheaper alternative to what BMW is offering is an MP3 cd which can store 500 songs on average. More than enough for the average car journey. Difficult to navigate through, but no different in theory to the official iPOD interface offered.

And to top all this off, I was was quoted £200 to supply and fit a cable by my local dealership.

How can they seriously justify this?

[Mike Edwards]

Well, the interface is a little bit more than "just" a cable - leading in part to the purchase price.

Fitting it is an hours work leading to the figure you quote.

[rentagas]

You are absolutely right that the BMW ipod interface does not display tag information on the head unit or nav screen, nor does it display the info on the ipod itself when connected. It does fully interface with the stereo and wheel controls however and the quality is better than with the same track played through the boost cd head unit on an MP3 CD. It is extremely expensive however. By updating all tacks with a playlist that contains all my most recently added albums, albums form 2005, 2004 and favourites it is significantly more up to date than the CDRW in the CD player I updated when I could remember or indeed the multi CD magazine in the boot of my Golf that I never update.
The failure to display tag information IS a major ommission (which I suspect is technically possible to achieve). The Denison ICE link plus will do what you want for less money-but I would get someone else to set it up. It IS possible for the unit to perform flawlessly and to display tag information and many forum members have spent several hours achieving this.

[minicooperobsessive]

Mikeedwards: do you work for BMW, because it sounds like it

[brett]

Go for the Icelink plus. all the bugs appear to be sorted and it mounts where you can see the Ipod clearly , it's controlled by the radio- MFSW and ID3 tags will eventually appear infact some people allready have them running

[Mike Edwards]

Nope.

You?