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Technology

Computers and Cars: A Maddening Experience? 465

Posted by timothy from the not-entirely-unlike-tea dept.
Johnny writes "The nytimes has a review of the new BMW 745i iDrive system. The iDrive system combines some 270 functions, some accessable by voice, into one tactile feedback joystick mouse thingy. While maybe easier for computer junkies, the reviewer finds the interface 'maddening, especially at first' and wonders out loud what a car from Microsoft might be like, citing that the 745i offers a clue. Without a key, a floor shifter or really any buttons, this might be the future for cars, are the masses ready to wrestle with computers just to go to Wawa for milk?"
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Computers and Cars: A Maddening Experience? More

Computers and Cars: A Maddening Experience?

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  • holy... (Score:2, Funny)

    by AnimeFreak ( 223792 )
    ...the reviewer finds the interface 'maddening, especially at first' and wonders out loud what a car from Microsoft might be like...
    Well, the car would require you to entre a product code every time you placed your key into a key hole, let that be the ignition or the car door. The thing would BSOD if you pressed on the brake too hard...

    I think you get my drift. Driving a Microsoft car would be annoying and at the same time, dangerous.
    • Well, the car would require you to entre a product code every time you placed your key into a key hole, let that be the ignition or the car door. The thing would BSOD if you pressed on the brake too hard...

      No, it wouldn't be that bad. They'd only make you click yes on the EULA every time you start the ignition. The car wouldn't start otherwise.

    • *sigh* (Score:3, Funny)

      by dattaway ( 3088 )
      Pessimists... you need to consider the advantages of a Microsoft car:

      your car would seek out and destroy the competition.

      the hood would be welded shut. No worrying about it ending up at the chop shop for parts.

      its sheer size will trump any SUV on the road today.
      • Pessimists... you need to consider the advantages of a Microsoft car:

        your car would seek out and destroy the competition.

        the hood would be welded shut. No worrying about it ending up at the chop shop for parts.

        its sheer size will trump any SUV on the road today.

        Damn right. The Microsoft car will be the size of a van for the "Mini" version. The later versions will be the size of a tractor and require the engine of a tractor. In fact it will be a tractor - just called a car because that is what Microsoft does. The sad thing is that the Microsoft "car" will be slower driving than walking, guzzle 3 gallons of gasoline per mile, catch fire frequently, explode once a month, be built entirely of plastic and plaster, and stop working for no fathomable reason.

        The future version of the Microsoft "car" will be the size of a bus, be on fire all of the time, emit choking fumes, screech violently and constantly, and will require the driver to put it in "reverse" just to move forward. It will also cost $18 million dollars per "car" and Bill Gates will say, "All of your problems with our automobile are *user* problems not software & hardware issues." Then Microsoft will be AMAZED and AMUSED that the government ends up investigating them and Microsoft will act like asses in the courtroom and dance about saying, "If you hurt us the American economy will go into depression and Republicans will defend us, as all junkie whores defend the pimps that use & abuse them so long as they get their hourly cocaine dosages."
    • Dear Customer,

      We regret to announce that Microsoft Brakes 1.0 has a minor flaw which, under certain circumstances, will cause the car to accelerate instead of slow down. We advise all users to install the Brakes 1.1 patch to remedy this situation.

      Thank you for using Microsoft Brakes!

    • MS-DOS: You get in the car and try to remember where you put your keys. Failing to find them, you climb on your bike and pedal over. You have to make several trips since you can only carry one thing at a time.

      OS/2: It's a great car, it drives well, but it will only work on 70% or the roads in your area. After fueling up with 6,000 gallons of gas, you get in the car and drive to the store with a motorcycle escort and a marching band on parade. Halfway there, the car blows up, killing you and half the town.

      WINDOWS: You get in the car and drive to the store very slowly; because attached to the back of the car is a freight train. Other than that, it's pretty neat; it's all run by pushbuttons, but it only goes about 35mph, you gotta warm it up for twenty minutes before it'll run, and it manages to hit 3 phone poles, a mail box, a stop sign, and two other cars on the way.

      WINDOWS NT: It LOOKS really fast, like a Formula 1 car, and it's built so low to the ground that you can't take it out of the driveway. You get in the car and write a letter that says "Go to the store". Then you get out, and mail the letter to your dashboard.

      WINDOWS 95: You call the garage to find out it isn't fixed yet, but you can keep the Windows loaner until it is.

      MACINTOSH SYSTEM 7: You get in the car to go to the store. The car drives you to church, because the store has mysteriously exploded.

      UNIX - You get in the car and type "GREP STORE". You screech off at 200 miles per hour, and arrive at the barber shop.

      UNIX-WARE - Great deal, and looks really cool. Doesn't have an engine, though... Call Novell, buy an engine. No tires. Call Novell. No transmission. Call Novell. No clutch. Call Novell. No carbs. Call Novell. They don't support carbs anymore. Buy a fuel injector. No steering wheel ...

      NETWARE - You have to hire a CNE to chauffeur you around, but he keeps wrecking the car.

      AMIGA - You get in the car and tell it to go to the store. It takes you to a shopping mall on the moon.

      TALIGENT/PINK: You walk to the store with Ricardo Montelban, who tells you how wonderful it will be when he can fly you to the store in his Learjet.

      AIX - Cool. A cross between a BMW and a Hyundai pickup truck.

      LINUX - The developers have been here overnight and changed everything again. You wonder what the new cattle-catcher front end and rear gun turret are for. Car won't start. Hot-wire the ignition. No oil pressure. Add oil. Bad backfire, injection system needs adjusting. Check manual - nope, manual's three months out of date. Tune injectors by ear. Stereo is missing the left channel, tire pressure seems low, needs a good wax job ... the hell with it, I'm gonna stay home and play with the car ...

  • Don't we all know the Microsoft car? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Byteme ( 6617 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @06:44PM (#3507525) Homepage
    At a recent computer expo (Comdex), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that get 100 miles to the gallon." Recently,General Motors addresses this comment by releasing this statement, "yes, but would you want your car to crash twice a day?" Below is a synopsis of the Microsoft Car: Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail, and you would have to re-install the engine. for some strange reason, you would accept this too. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT". But then you would have to buy more seats. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times faster, twice as easy to drive, but would only run on 5% of the roads. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades for their cars, which would make their cars run much slower. The oil, gas and alternator lights would be replaced with single "general car fault" lights. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
    • I once stated that an M$ car would stop three times on the way to work and run out of gas in the parking lot. I am indebted to James for pointing out that any attempt to run errands or stop for a cool one would result in a blank windshield. The problem would be fixed in the next model release of the Vaporware Irrelevant, arriving about two years after the promised date.

  • for those not from the mid-atlantic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffy124 ( 453342 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @06:45PM (#3507526) Homepage Journal
    a WaWa is basically a 7-11 in the mid-atlantic states, and they seem to be everywhere (and I do mean EVERYWHERE). Some jokes regarding this include "You're from South Jersey if .... you know what a WaWa is, and can name the locations of about 10 of them," "You can give directions by where the WaWas are"
    • You're from South Jersey if .... you know what a WaWa is, and can name the locations of about 10 of them

      The sad thing is I actually sat and thought about it and I can name the locations of 10 wawas... The newer ones have gas stations and all too.
    • As much as it's a joke about South Jersey, Wawa is actually a Southeastern Pennsylvania phenomenon. The corporate headquarters [wawa.com] is located in Wawa Pennsylvania (near Media [mediapa.com], if that helps any), site of the original Wawa dairy farms.

      Believe me when I tell you that there are an assload of Wawas in my neck of the woods. In my twenty-minute commute to work, I pass three of them, and there are two additional ones in easy driving range from my office.

      Tack on to your list of "you know you're in [insert Wawa area name here]" quips: "...when you say to your friend, "let's go pick up a couple of shorties [wawa.com]," and he knows you're not talking about children [theonion.com] or skateboards [shortysinc.com]."
    • a WaWa is basically a 7-11 in the mid-atlantic states, and they seem to be everywhere (and I do mean EVERYWHERE).
      Funny. Up here, a "wawa" is a jitney...

  • iDrive (Score:2, Insightful)

    by saveth ( 416302 )
    Yes, the BMW iDrive is really nifty. I remember reading about it in a Popular Science, for the first time, about a year ago. I enjoy cars, and I enjoy gadgets. The new BMWs, equipped with the iDrive, combine both into a powerful beast, worthy of only the best drivers. Then again, don't all new BMWs fit this shoe?

    I can't wait to test drive one. A maddening experience it may be, but I'm sure years of gaming will help me get the hang of it quickly.

  • CLI for me! (Score:3, Funny)

    by eugene ts wong ( 231154 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @06:51PM (#3507545) Homepage Journal
    I hope that they have a cli version of the interface. I'd be quite disappointed if I had to use the mouse and/or joystick. After all, if you saw a child dart across the road chasing his ball, wouldn't you want to just type in, "killall -9 movement"?

    ;^P

    • That's assuming that you're a perfect typist and CLI user. But what would you do if by any chance you typed "rm -rf /*" while on the expressway? Does it mean that you'd irreversibly end up sitting on the asphalt?

      • I'm not sure how you 'accidentally' type rm -rf /*, however I would be worried about someone inadvertantly typing 'eject'.

        /me executes ln /dev/seat1 /dev/cdrom :-)

  • Good Article at K5 (Score:5, Informative)

    by geoffsmith ( 161376 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @06:51PM (#3507548) Homepage
    There's another fairly balanced article and discussion [kuro5hin.org] about iDrive over at Kuro5hin that's worth checking out. The author has similar mixed feelings about the technology, and talks about how other car manufacturers like Saab and Audi are developing similar systems.

    Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon [stumbleupon.com]

  • Hmmm ... Ultimate Driving Experience (Score:3, Funny)

    by cvanaver ( 247568 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @06:52PM (#3507553)
    Lessee...need to move my seat back...ummm.

    U-U-D-L-L-RF-D-L-U

    dang..scissor-kicked the driver.
    Oh well...might as well finish him.

    D-D-L-U-LF-UF-D-U--D-L-L

    Thwack!
  • I mean, aside from the gizmos like car stereo, seat adjustments etc. The standard interface to using a car is round steering wheel and foot pedals. Many people say that computers should be as easy to use as cars.

    Now I'm not saying cars aren't easy to use. However, one cant compare it to computers that easily. (the iDrive can be compared though). The main reason that the interface to cars has not changed in almost a 100 years is simple. Backwards compatibility, and consumer familiarity. Thats right.. It has nothing to do with how easy or hard it is. After all, a consumer cant be expected to take multiple driving tests in order to get a license for each make of car. They had to standardize it so that a person who has driven one car can drive just about ANY car. They cant have licenses that say "Okay for Toyota, Chrysler, and Dodge only".

    Its interesting how familiarity with the interface also happens to be one of the BIGGEST problems that linux faces when trying to enter the desktop market. People who have taken the effort to learn or attend courses on using computers learnt the Microsoft interface to software. When they come across a unix one, they aren't familiar with it, and cant use it as well.. regardless of whether its better or not.

    The iDrive is like linux. Sure its harder to use in the beginning, but once you get the hang of it, you'll wonder how you managed to get by without it.

    Just my 2 cents worth.

    • Don't really agree (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Spinality ( 214521 )
      Car controls have changed dramatically through the years. The high-beams used to be via a footswitch. Windshield wipers only moved onto a stalk on the console very recently. Transmission controls have varied widely: stalks, buttons, levers, etc. True, the main controls (wheel, throttle, brake) haven't moved too much, but one might argue there aren't many variations possible if you a) want to steer with two hands and b) want to speed up/slow down with your feet. There were tillers on some early cars, but the public tended to prefer the wheel. Also, remember that engine controls in the old days were incredibly complex, letting you adjust engine timing, butterfly valve settings, and myriad other features.

      I think we've seen plenty of change. Just try to drive a car from the twenties or thirties some time.

      • And not always for the better (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Cars have changed many times. I have driven cars from the 30's and it isn't that much more complicated if you already know how to drive a car with a standard with partial or no synchro on the manual transmission and with manual choke. If you can't do that, what the heck are they doing letting you drive an 1800 kg hopefully-guided missile?

        Turning cars into things idiots can drive has very much turned the roadways into the home of the idiot. ABS, automatic transmissions, cruise control (this one not so much), traction control, etc. are the kind of things that have lowered the bar of driver competence. And they give illusions of capability that aren't always accurate. ABS works better under some conditions than standard brakes, but not always. In slush or gravel, it actually has longer braking distance (as O.P.P. studies discovered). For some reason, vehicles got from A to B for years without a lot of these features and yet we have them now. Computer control is another example.

        Take your example of the dimmer switch. Remove the floor switch (not too hard to replace) and put it (linked to the windshield wipers/etc) on the control yoke (not as easy to replace) and this is an improvement? And what happened to automatic headlight dimmers like those used by Cadillac? The auto-industry has had any number of good ideas that for mysterious reasons have vanished, and a lot of hairbrained ones that stuck around.

        Once upon a time, car manuals listed technical specs like compression, gear ratios, horsepower and torque curves (not just single rpm quotations), bore and stroke, etc. Now, you get told about the cup holders. Need I say more?

        And I found it interesting that a some of the head safety guys for NASCAR and CART utterly disagree with some of the current design practices for cars. They _know_ about high speed collisions with other cars and with concrete walls, and they have a rather different philosophy on how to protect the passangers than most car manufacturers.

        Car manufacturers are in business to make money, not necessarily to make the best car and sometimes that means gizmos, even if they are a bad idea. If it were otherwise, someone can explain to me why a ten year old F150 supercab with a 2.5 ton truck 4 speed and a carbuerated 351 gets better MPG than a standard cab F150 with a 5 speed with overdrive and fuel injection and a 302? New ain't always better.
  • Can't wait till someone gets Linux running it. Imagine a BMWolf Clust.... ah, forget it...

  • The hidden costs of automation (Score:5, Informative)

    by b.foster ( 543648 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:00PM (#3507584)
    One of my college buddies is an actuary now, and he works for a large insurer [allstate.com] to set rates and assess risk in automotive applications. When this car first came out, we had a good talk about it, and I learned some interesting things that may sway consumers away from computerized car interfaces. Among his comments:
    • The electronic parking brake is unintuitive and dangerous. One of the factors that make some cars safer than others is the ease of use of the parking break in situations in which the main brake lines lose pressure or the pedal snaps off. This causes the liability and collision insurance rates to be slightly higher.
    • A standard shift lever on an automatic transmission is considered a safety feature, as both the position and the dash lights make it immediately apparent to the driver that the car is in gear. The 745i has only the light, and even at that, the light is stuck in the middle of a confusing, crowded console. This also increases risk and thus insurance rates.
    • The fact that many Americans are afraid of technology and unable to perform a task as simple as changing their VCR clock or installing a new hard drive is a chilling reminder of the fact that valets, test drivers, and other "guest drivers" of the 745i will be putting the driving public at risk and increasing the owner's insurance rates.
    • Since it is extraordinarily difficult to do something as simple as turning on headlights or changing the radio station, the driver's attention is likely to be diverted from the road.
    All told, my actuary friend told me that the insurance rates for the first year that a driver owns a 745i are going to be astronomical. Rates for successive years are slightly lower, although the vehicle is generally regarded in the community to be a threat to life and property, and a lawsuit waiting to happen.

    • Re:The hidden costs of automation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:35PM (#3507711)
      The electronic parking brake is unintuitive and dangerous.

      Why? In the BMW if you punch the parking brake button (not controlled by the main iDrive controls, but with a dedicated button on the driver's left hand) while moving, you induce a computer-controlled panic stop on all four wheels. This is way better than a lever-controlled rear-wheel parking brake, because in a panic situation the driver is likely to pull it up too hard, lock up the rear end, and spin.

      I'll agree that the rest of the car sucks. Even the seating is cramped!

      • I think he was referring to the fact that because it's computer controlled and unintuitive, you can't automatically just reef it on when you pull over like you've been doing for years, not that it's worse than a cable for doing handbrakies ;-)
      • I haven't driven one, but one pulled up behind me on the expressway this afternoon. Black. Like a spaceship. I thought Hotblack Desiato was trying to overtake and pass...
      • How do you UN-punch this button when you've hit it by accident, in traffic?

      • (to repeat something critically important that the other guy said)

        Parking brakes are also for emergency use. What is the driver of this new fangled car going to do with the elecrtical system shorts out completly and there is no power. Not only does he have a fire under the hood, but there is no way to stop the car. Or what happens when the brake line break? Mechanical systems are subject to breakage you know.


        • "Parking brakes are also for emergency use. What is the driver of this new fangled car going to do with the elecrtical system shorts out completly and there is no power. Not only does he have a fire under the hood, but there is no way to stop the car. Or what happens when the brake line break? Mechanical systems are subject to breakage you know."

          A few things about the goodness of mechanical emergency brakes...

          They lock up only the rear wheels, this is actually better than all four. You can still steer with your front wheels rolling, but not without any wheels rolling.

          Mechanical Brakes are SIMPLE. This matters when your car is inspected, and the LCD(Lowest Common D...) mechanic is quickly sweeping over a clueless drivers car. He might yank on the phsical cable and see that it it loose. But you can bet he won't spot the short in the wiring harness. By the way, auto wiring harnesses are now more expensive than most drivetrains in most cars.

          If you battery fails and the car stalls will the E-brake still work?

          Sounds to me like this beamer might be headed for trouble. Simple systems fail simply and predictably, complex systems might die giving the driver no clue on how to proceed.

          I am not a mechanic, but I have worked as one in the past. I have disasembled cars put them back together and they worked. (mostly) :)

    • the light is stuck in the middle of a confusing, crowded console.

      This says it all. Have we learned nothing from the aviation industry? Studies showed that too much computerisation and increasingly complex HUDS were shown be be if anything, counter-productive for pilots - both in civil and military aviation. When a pilot is flying, he (or she - hello linux-loving Jane who flies Airbuses :) need as little distraction as possible.

      This also applies to fly by wire. When you fly a manually controlled aircraft like a Tiger Moth, a hang glider or a Cessna, you can feel at all times what the aircraft is doing. As soon as that gets replaced with a computerised system, you're removing the pilot's senses from the equation - a Bad Thing.

      I expect car manufacturers to go through the same learning process - and wind up diverting processing power and features into simpler displays. Why they haven't researched it properly is beyond me - after all it's a human controlling a complex machine which takes time to learn etc. - not much different from flying.
      • It is my understanding that it isn't all that uncommon to have new flight students close their eyes while flying a plane. They are then put into a dive, or some other orientation and asked to correct it, without opening their eyes. They fail. Why? Because you don't have as much feeling as you think and they are told to trust, and use their instruments. (And yes, looking is important as well.)

      • This says it all. Have we learned nothing from the aviation industry? Studies showed that too much computerisation and increasingly complex HUDS were shown be be if anything, counter-productive for pilots - both in civil and military aviation. When a pilot is flying, he (or she - hello linux-loving Jane who flies Airbuses :) need as little distraction as possible.

        This also applies to fly by wire. When you fly a manually controlled aircraft like a Tiger Moth, a hang glider or a Cessna, you can feel at all times what the aircraft is doing. As soon as that gets replaced with a computerised system, you're removing the pilot's senses from the equation - a Bad Thing.


        I couldn't agree with you more. Instead of the pilot 'fly the plane' the driver needs to 'drive the car'. Even with HUDS, it's in the windshield retaining some continued visual contact with the outside. If someone has to go through menus just to tune a radio or change the fan on the A/C, they are distracted both visually and mentally when driving a car. After one has driven a car (other than this one) one knows very quickly how to change the radio station or volume or change the a/c without even looking, and it's done in a fraction of a second (And some innovation like volume and channel tuning on the steering wheel makes it even easier). This reminds me a bit of 'faulty' innovation/automation from Chrysler (or possibly Lincoln) who had power steering back in the 50's that was SO 'powered' that there was no feel left in the steering wheel. It didn't last long and people considered it dangerous... you need to 'feel' the car through the wheel just like you need the feedback in a plane through the yoke or rudder pedals. They think cell phone usage can be dangerous? This sounds 100 times worse. I'm a geek/tech oriented as most here, but give me a car with buttons, easy controls, hence a generally longer MTBF, but also easier to maintain and use.

      • The new BMW (unless its a new Mercedes... I actually can't remember now, but its unimportant anyway) has brake-by-wire brakes. When I read about that, I really had to wonder what the brake feel would be like and how drivers would really like it.
      • When a pilot is flying, he (or she - hello linux-loving Jane who flies Airbuses :) need as little distraction as possible.
        Tell her to say "hi" to Cathy; she flies airbuses, too. No, not that Cathy, the other one whose husband is an astro-nut...
    • Some of us aren't big star wars geeks that must know everything in advance. I hope that's just a joke.

  • Maddening it is... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xenophrak ( 457095 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:05PM (#3507609)
    I consider myself a computer junkie, and I also have a smaller version of said company's cars. While I was waiting for the service to be finished one day, I hopped into a new 745i that they had on the floor.

    The car is a real technology lover's paradise: active suspension, GPS, umpteen dozen little controls over everwhere. And yes, there is a key, but it's just a little puck that you insert into the dash. It has it's own little computer and calculates rolling security codes on the fly to foil car theives.

    Now about the only thing I didn't like was the stinking iDrive system. It just plain sucks!! It way to hard to control things that I used to be able to push a button and do. Like surfing through three levels of menus just to turn on the defroster. Stupid.

    The interface itself is ok, the button is hard to get used to becuase it is a joystick and wheel/button in one. And when you do something illegal it vibrates. Slick enough, but the interface is god awful.

    Luckily this thing controls non-critical functions, I could see lawsuits brought if it controlled the gear selection or traction system.

    Someone also told me that the software inside the iDrive is actually WinCE, can anyone verify this? If so, it would be truly a MS car after all.

    BMW has a good track record of innovation, but I think this is a serious detour.

    • >Someone also told me that the software inside the iDrive is actually WinCE, can anyone verify this? If so, it would be truly a MS car after all

      Yes, it runs Windows CE for Automotive V3.5. [microsoft.com] (see also) [microsoft.com] The system was done by Siemens VDO Automotive AG.

      Also, the iDrive demo kiosk runs a windows variant (it was crashed one day, surprise!). I don't know if it shares any of the code with the real product, but it looked pretty functional, so either it does, someone spent a lot of work, or they had a UI-design tool that could spit out both WinCE and Flash.

    • Re:Maddening it is... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cookd ( 72933 )
      So why are we blaming Microsoft for the iDrive? MS wrote the Windows CE OS that powers it, but BMW developed the iDrive interface. Why does that make it Microsoft's fault?

      Not that I'm trying to defend MS, just if you are going to attack MS, do it from a rational reason, not a irrational one. Tell me about why Windows CE makes it bad (MS's fault), not why iDrive is bad (BMW's fault) before telling me it sucks because it uses MS.

      (I do have a history of defending Microsoft by trashing irrational arguments, but mainly because I would prefer to see more intelligent discussion of why they suck and what they need to do better rather than knee-jerk anti-MS zealotry.)
      • This sucks because of all the times I've seen Windows CE devices lock up, or just turn off for no reason at all. Would you want to be in the pouring rain and have the OS that runs your wipers die?

  • "European Car" magazine (Score:5, Insightful)

    by singularity ( 2031 ) <nowalmartNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:08PM (#3507618) Homepage Journal
    "European Car" magazine reviewed the new 7 series in their February, 2002 issue.

    They mention that in 1953, the BWM 502 had 26 control and indicator functions. In the late 90's, the 7-series had over 70 functions, with as many indicators, and over 35 control elements (buttons, etc.)

    Something *had* to be done to reduce the complexity of the cockpit. While driving down the road you do not want the person in the car next to you trying to figure out which of the 40 buttons on the dash controls what. You can do it by feel with more simple cars, but cars as advanced as the 7-series will be simply too much.

    Most reviews I have read (I am a big car buff, especially BMWs) all say that once you get used to the system (go out in your driveway for a Saturday), you can figure the system out fairly quickly, and that using it (once you have it figured out) is actually easier than a bunch of buttons.

    Also realize this is the first generation of the system. User interface will only get better.

    I recently drove a Mercedes Benz C320 with the navigation system and cell phone options. They were all combined with the stereo onto one LCD. Once I figured out the relatively easy interface, I was able to do more by touch than I have been able to with other cars using buttons.

    Having one consistent interface made things much easier.

    About the only problem I foud, and the only problem mentioned in most reviews, is the ability to do multiple thigns at once. You cannot raise the stero's volume at the exact same time as you adjust the passenger-side heat.

    • Useless features? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by xixax ( 44677 )
      And has driving really got any more complicted than in 1953?

      OK, there may be some genuine safety advances that make the car more complicated, for example and air-conditioning system will help keep the windscreen from fogging up. But what functions do you need to drive a car safely?

      BMW et al. can make running the stereo and other non-essential features as interesting as they want, so long as they don't mix them up with essential functions. People who get used to a particular UI aren't going to be the only people driving this car. Nor do we particlarly need a situation where you need a certification in a particular model of car before you can drive it safely.

      Xix.

      • Interestingly, in my Escort, the air conditioning tends to cause the window to freeze up instead of having the salutory effect of taking the moisture out of the air it is blowing up on the windshield. That particular feature seems to be a bit of a pox on a lot of damp cool Canadian fall days. Oh, and since they've thoughtfully wired your A/C to any setting that puts air out over the windshield, you're pretty much screwed unless you pull the A/C fuse. Nice design, that.
      • BMW et al. can make running the stereo and other non-essential features as interesting as they want, so long as they don't mix them up with essential functions

        In the case of the BMW iDrive system, all driving functions (lights/turn signals, gear shift, parking brake, steering) are centered around the steering wheel and dash cluster. All non-essential features (AC, stereo, phone, etc.) are controlled with the iDrive controller near the armrest.

        -Spyky

    • Re:"European Car" magazine (Score:5, Funny)

      by sg3000 ( 87992 ) <<sg_public> <at> <mac.com>> on Sunday May 12, 2002 @09:33PM (#3508030)
      > They mention that in 1953, the BWM 502 had 26
      > control and indicator functions. In the late
      > 90's, the 7-series had over 70 functions, with
      > as many indicators, and over 35 control elements
      > (buttons, etc.)
      > Something *had* to be done to reduce the complexity of the cockpit.

      Clearly the next step is to have each car come with a a midget or a hyper-intelligent monkey that carries out your direct voice commands.

      "Antonio, please find me a soft jazz station and adjust my headrest. Then massage my buttocks."

  • Really really bad design. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:13PM (#3507633) Homepage
    the reviewer finds the interface 'maddening

    I can see why, if the interface was designed by the same people who designed their website. [bmw.com]

    When I pulled up their site I got the worst mis-rendered disaster I have ever seen. I got a column of text wordwrapped at !!14!! characters. Some of the text was invisible on black background. I got random little lines all over the screen. I don't know if it's because I'm using Netscape. I don't konw it it's because I have cookies shut off. But I *do* know it's not just because I have JavaScripting shut off. How do I know? I tried turning it Java script on and reloading. It actually wound up rendering *less* of the page.

    -
    • I can see why, if the interface was designed by the same people who designed their website. [bmw.com]
      I think the vast majority of their audience will be viewing this site using IE on 2K, XP or OSX. Those users (90+ percent of users on servers I manage) will be presented with an extremely cool website.

      I bet many true customers will look at the website once at the dealer. I ordered a Mini [miniusa.com] at our local BMW dealership a few months ago and they had me do all the configuration online via a slick IBM workstation, running 2K and IE.
  • "press OK to open the air-bag"

    QED

  • They can take my manual transmission away... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spinality ( 214521 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:14PM (#3507637) Homepage
    ...when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Wait...come to think of it, that's probably just how it would happen. But I guess I wouldn't need it then.

    I hate cars that try to be smarter than the driver. Give me my old Morgan any time. I do miss it so. <sigh>

  • Registration-free link (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:19PM (#3507650) Journal
    Registration-free link [nytimes.com]

  • BMW 745i (Score:3, Informative)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:22PM (#3507662) Homepage Journal
    On a recent business trip, I had the opportunity to drive a new 745i. All I have to say it what in the hell was BMW thinking? My first impression of the car walking up to it was, wow.....it's ugly. My next impression was sitting in the drivers seat and wondering how to turn on the headlights. (it was night) I kept thinking that this was absolutely like a Microsoft designed interface.

    Any vehicle that has a user interface so non-intuitive that one needs to pull out the owners manual to adjust the mirrors, figure out how to shift, and turn on headlights is just plain bad design. And what is up with the parking brake?!!? Furthermore, I like being able to determine what gear I am in by touch, not having to look at a display someplace. BMW vehicles in the past have had wonderful driving experiences with intuitive placement of controls, but if this is the way things are going with BMW, I will be looking at Audi (the A8 is a wonderfully understated and competent automobile with a superlative driving environment.) BMW should know what they are doing and I can only hope this is an accidental release. (They got it right with the Mini afterall.)

    Quirky is one thing (Porshe and Saab with weird places for the ignition key), but the 745i's interface is downright unacceptable, bordering on dangerous.

    • Re:BMW 745i (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Osty ( 16825 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:48PM (#3507748)

      Any vehicle that has a user interface so non-intuitive that one needs to pull out the owners manual to adjust the mirrors, figure out how to shift, and turn on headlights is just plain bad design.

      Current car layouts (gear shifter generally obvious, steering wheel, key ignition in one of several common places, etc) are not "intuitive", either. Rather, they're "comfortable", because they don't deviate much from what you've been driving. Think about it. A Ford Model T and a Porsche 911 are still pretty similar in layout of the steering wheel, gear shift, gas, breaks, etc. Yes, the 911 may have things in slightly different places, and it certainly has many more options, but the point is that the layout is still similar to everything that's come before.


      Now, before you say that the reason cars have the layout they do is because that layout is intuitive, let me say instead that that's certainly not the case. When cars were first being made, why didn't they use a "horse reigns"-like steering system, since that's what everybody was using before and thus must've been "intuitive"? Or why not a rudder lever like on a smaller boat, rather than the steering wheel from larger boats? Why gas on the right, break on the left? These things are not intuitive, but they're ingrained in us from long use. Think back when you first started driving. Did you just hop in the car and know how to do everything? Of course not, because it's not intuitive. But you learned, and having learned a certain way that's what you're comfortable with. And so, when a company tries to innovate and do something new, you complain because you have to read the manual to do what you think are "intuitive" tasks, even though you should be reading that manual anyway before driving the car away from the dealer.


      • Re:BMW 745i (Score:4, Insightful)

        by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @08:47PM (#3507912) Journal
        Okay, so you wrote a long skreed about how "intuitive" is a fundamentally meaningless term. Unfortunately, I think that's because you're confused about what "intuitive" means, as applied to technology and whatnot.

        When I sat down at my first Mac in the summer of '84, I went through a fairly lengthy training program about how to use the mouse. It was the first thing that popped up when you turned on the computer, and it covered stuff like what "click" means, versus "click-and-hold," "click-and-drag," or "double-click." It pointed out the fact that you can pick up the mouse and move it to another place on the table without moving the pointer. These things weren't obvious. They had to be taught.

        Years later, pretty much everybody in the 6-60 age bracket knows how to use a computer mouse. We think of computer mice as being "intuitive" because using them involves applying skills that we all acquired long ago.

        But change some fundamental way that the mouse works. Say instead of using a button to click, you had to push the mouse forward slightly, then pull it back toward you. This would strike you as awkward and-- presto!-- unintuitive.

        In this context, "unintuitive" means "differs from established custom in a significant and noticeable way."
        • > When I sat down at my first Mac in the summer of
          > '84, I went through a fairly lengthy training
          > program about how to use the mouse.

          "Fairly lengthy"? You mean the "Mousing Around" tutorial? The one with the fish bowl and the little piano keyboard? I'm not sure I'd describe it as "lengthy".

          How many times did you have to do it before you finally got the hang of it? I mean, we're talking about the proverbial single-button mouse. A la Homer Simpson: mouse goes up, mouse goes down. Cursor goes up, cursor goes down.
          • "Fairly lengthy"? You mean the "Mousing Around" tutorial? The one with the fish bowl and the little piano keyboard? I'm not sure I'd describe it as "lengthy".

            If memory serves me right, it was about five minutes or so, maybe even longer than that. For something which, twenty years later, we call "intuitive," that's pretty extensive training.
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:BMW 745i (Score:3, Interesting)

          by swillden ( 191260 )

          Okay, so you wrote a long skreed about how "intuitive" is a fundamentally meaningless term. Unfortunately, I think that's because you're confused about what "intuitive" means, as applied to technology and whatnot.

          When I was studying mathematics years ago, one of my profs gave me the best definition of the term "intuition" that I've ever come across.

          For a young mathematician, there are a few words that seem puzzling and out of place in the mathematical vocabulary; "elegant" and "intuitive" are among them. Many times I heard some step in a proof described as "intuitively obvious", when (a) it was *not* obvious to me and (b) the notion of "intuition" didn't seem to fit well into the world of mathematical rigor. I quickly gained an understanding of what was meant by "intuition" in the context of math; mathematicians who've been around for a while gain a "feel" for things and know what's likely to be true without laboriously working it out (and intuition is critically important to research -- doing a depth-first search of the space of possible proofs looking for interesting theorems would be... tedious ;-) ).

          When I asked my prof about it, though, he gave me a precise, concise and absolutely correct definition. "Intuition," he said, "is nothing more or less than applied experience." He went on to point out that "experience" is completely different from "knowledge"; in fact they're nearly orthogonal.

          So, when trying to decide if something will be intuitive to some person, you just need to consider whether or not they have significant applicable experience, which is to say, how similar it is to what they've used before. It's also a good idea to consider if it might have misleading similarities. Apparently applicable experience which is nevertheless wrong makes the new thing seem "counter intuitive".

          This is exactly what you said, I just thought you might find it useful to have a precise yet usable definition of the term.

          Unfortunately, this definition points out that one of my favorite quotes is, in fact, wrong. Bruce Edigar said that "The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned". But the nipple isn't an intuitive interface. Babies don't start sucking because they have experience with something fairly similar. The nipple is an *instinctive* interface; people come into the world with that knowledge hard-wired.

      • Most of the ideas you mention (reins to steer, rudder to steer) _were_ tried in the early automotive days. Likewise, 'break on left, gas on right' wasn't the original concept, each car had a different method and often used levers or such for throttles instead of pedals. Also, there is lineage-- bikes used handlebars, so some cars tried that, too.

        The current layout came mostly from a small handful of manufacturers suddenly making very standardized cars, and became the default setup.

        Like any good mechanical design, the final layout succeeded because it:

        * was mechanically feasible

        * mapped well to the problem

        * effectively represented the function (i.e. wheel turns = car turns, as opposed to, oh, push level forward=left).

        So design isn't just "people are used to it", there are (*gasp*) actual thought processes behind it.
  • I remember another car with a similar system, perhaps Alfa Romeo. The problem with a "one knob control" is that
    a) Many functions will be not directly accessible, but in a submenu. Instead of just turning up the heat you have to go Climate control->Temperature-> and then adjust. This puts some strain on the driver I imagine, much like handling a mobile phone.

    b) Because of that, one needs feedback in order to know what one is doing. You will either have to look at a little screen (like in the Alpha Romeo) and take your eyes of the road (very dangerous), or listen to voice feedback and go through the menus that way (very annoying and slooow).

    I much prefer old-style controls, so I can just blindly reach for the various buttons. No need to look at them even briefly. By all means improve the controls by laying them out well, or automating part of it, like for example the climatronic system. But please leave me with ordinary buttons and knows, don't make me use some daft menu. I am all for gadgets and such but this is plain dangerous.
  • A bit off-topic, but amusing. Here's a little known but interesting fact. GT bikes [gtmountainbikes.com] patented (and trademarked) the "iDrive" name for its race-level full-suspension mountain bikes (and they're beauties!). BMW came up with the same iDrive name a few months later and thought they'd roll it into production. GT, of course, put the brakes on, but they came to a friendly understanding and now BMW licenses the iDrive name from GT.

    So the next time any of you especially wealthy ones are out cruising in your iDrive-equipped BMWs, just remember the name (like all things great ;-) started with mountain bikes.
  • Just give me the basics, wheel, clutch, brake, gas, and a gear shift....

    My Corvette has 5 different computers in it. They monitor everything. It has a central DIC, driver information center, for most things. It tells you all stats on the car as well as any warnings or problems. The good part is the Active Handling system. The computers in the car constantly monitor many things... lateral G's, accelaration, braking, tire slippage, etc. Unlike other cars with basic traction control is that the Vette will correct problems for you. If it senses the back end coming around it'll independantly brake a single will to bring the car inline. Very handy, and has saved me before when hitting loose gravel or water.

    The bad part is that everything is computer controlled. Want to put in a good alarm system? Good luck. :) It has also caused some cars to have electrical gremlins..very hard to track down.
  • The Bruce Schneir book "Secrets and lies" talks about one of the models of Porsche which had a bug where in which if the gas tank has less than one litre of gas and takes a real hard swerve, the subsequent accumulation of gas in the tank to one side, would confuse the onboard chip to believe that the tank is empty and thereby shutting down the car immediately.

    I can imagine a couple of new born dot com millionaires who had no clue what the fuck just happened.
  • I'm sure most of you are familiar with the belief that nothing should ever be more than five clicks into a website. In the case of a car, nothing should ever be more than *two* clicks in.

    Why two? Because typically, you only have to frob ONE control in a car to accomplish your goal. Want to increase the fan speed? Slide over the lever or twist the knob. Activate the hazard lights? Push or pull the control, or flip a switch. And so on. The electric e-brake is a big mistake too, but I won't go into that yet.

    The ONLY reasonable way to have a LCD interface in a car is to have a row of mode buttons; One for environmental controls, one for stereo controls, one for navigation, et cetera; And have all the controls for that mode available once you enter it. Personally I am a big favor of real buttons, but i know they're somewhat impractical here. You COULD easily have a row of physical buttons down the side of the screen with changing labels next to them, but you must NOT have the top and bottom buttons scroll the list up and down. The whole point of having "hard" buttons is that you can reach for them by touch and not have to look at the panel.

    Voice recognition is a good idea, at least in a luxury car like this one designed to be quiet inside. With the use of a DSP you should even be able to make it work nicely while the radio is playing. But it doesn't solve this problem at all.

    The fact that you have to enter a sub-screen of a settings screen to access some functions is just wrong. BMW should know better than that. Also, using a mouse-type interface is stupid; It should be a touch-screen, period. If you use a pointer, you have to watch the pointer, which is going to divert your attention from the road. Pure idiocy.

  • Well, this has already been seen around here before, but this always gets a good chukle:

    http://m-a-t.com/msgates/ [m-a-t.com]

  • Side article (Score:4, Funny)

    by axlrosen ( 88070 ) on Sunday May 12, 2002 @07:58PM (#3507786) Homepage
    Be sure and click on the "related article" too, Menus Behaving Badly [nytimes.com]:

    My beagle, whose job description is "scan roadsides for squirrels," is in the back, moving from one side window to the other. Each time he shifts, sensors in the seat take note, and the right rear headrest whirrs up as the left one whirrs down. For the next two hours, the headrests dance in tandem, as if trying to provide comfort for restless spirits.
  • In my last car, I had an aftermarket radio that I bought without thinking about it too much. Instead of a volume control knob, it had volume up and volume down buttons. They tried to make it clever, with one of those controlled-backlash features--that is, each UP press would take you up four units in volume, then each DOWN press would take you down a single unit.

    It drove me bananas. I can't believe just how annoying and distracting it was to use that thing.

    Plus, it had one of these deals where you can set eighteen FM stations and six AM stations--there's a row of six station buttons and another button that cycles you through FM-1, FM-2, FM-3, and AM. After about a month I finally got clued in and set FM-1, FM-2, and FM-3 each to the SAME set of stations. _I_ can't remember an arbitrary four-by-six array of stations and I don't think anyone else can, either.

    Setting the clock for daylight savings time? Twice a year I would say "this CAN'T be that hard, I'm SURE I can remember enough from last time to figure it out. Let's see, you press and hold the TIME button for three seconds and then hold the station 1 button while you press the "volume up" button? Nope, not it." And twice a year I'd have to stumble into my house and try to find where I had left the manual for the thing...

    What WILL Donald Norman do when EVERYTHING in the world is a badly-designed computer interface and there ARE no natural objects with plain "affordances" to point do?
  • wait until somebody rear ends you one day because they were busy reading their 20 volume instruction manual trying to figure out how to put the window down.

  • The BMW engineers desperately need to read The Humane Interface [amazon.com] by Jef Raskin. He knows a lot more about interfaces than they do. Computers are cool and all, but WIMP interfaces are hardly the pinnacle of good design.

  • Even in this day and age, many of us still decry the evils of the automatic transmission (me being one of them). There are reasons why a great many cars are still made with a stickshift, the main one being that those of us who know how to drive a stickshift find that the automatic transmission tries to second-guess the driver too much and ends up getting things wrong, or at least not as smooth as they could have been. Even those "auto-stick" things they put in newer cars aren't capable of shifting at different RPM speeds very well. The only coding analogy I can think of is comparing HTML coding in Notepad to HTML coding in FrontPage.

    I think BMW is really shooting themselves in the foot with this idea. Sure, this technology will probably eventually catch on much like the automatic transmission did (I expect to see this idea flourish in the "family vehicle" market), but it will generally be detested by those drivers that like having an honest-to-God interface with the car instead of having to deal with a machine that assumes too much. And seeing as how BMW typically markets themselves to the sports car user...

    If this was something like cruise control, where I could push a button, turn off the computer and do the driving myself... maybe. But even then there's no way you'd see a device like this in a manual transmission. And if it doesn't have three pedals, I refuse to use it.
    • And seeing as how BMW typically markets themselves to the sports car user...

      No BMW typically markets themselves to car users who have enough money to buy BMWs. And this useful piece of technology will certainly cost more than your average heater lever and hazard light knob, so BMW will market the iDrive cars to car users who have enough money to buy iDrive cars. And then these users will naturally deselect themselves as they cruise down the road trying to find the submenu for airconditioning. Which will naturally allow the population of car users without enough money for iDrives, but enough money for a standard BMW to grow, due to fewer natural predators. It is really a brilliant marketing strategy on BMW's part.
  • In my opinion, the worst flaw in automobile user interface design in history is that headlights stay on by default, even with the key removed, unless you explicitly turn them off. Does anyone have a good example why you would want a car's headlights to stay on (permanently until the battery runs out) after you have left the car and taken the keys with you? Please let the discussion begin.

    Subarus are the only pre-1992 cars I've seen that do not exhibit this behavior. My next car will most likely be a Subaru, for this (among many other) reasons. :) I still see plenty of 2002 model cars with thier lights on in parking lots, so I know the problem is still not solved.

    No doubt this car still does this, and now you have to go though 5 menus or so to turn them off rather than just rotating a dial. :)
    • I have an '89 Cadillac DeVille with auto-on and auto-off headlights (the so-called "twilight sentinel", although I thought I beat him at the end of level 4...). The problem is that as of late the system has gotten rather sensitive. It will frequently not turn on for a long period of time unless it is extremely dark yet when confronted with bright light (i.e. going through the drivethrough) it shuts off and you have to go back to manual. Usually this means you forget to turn them off half the time expecting the car to do it automagically.

      The idea of lights that go off when you remove the key though sounds rather promising...
  • I think this is funny. Slashbot tries to slur Microsoft because of the BMW iDrive, yet doesn't even realize that the iDrive uses Windows CE.

    http://www.microsoft.com/insider/bmw7series.htm

    The system was actually built by Siemens along with all the custom software and such.

    Christ slashbot is so out of touch with the computing world it's not even funny, this thing has been in the news for the past year.
  • OK, what is Wawa and why would you go there for milk? We've got these great things called grocery stores here where I live and they have had milk for sale for as long as I have gone there. I often buy milk in large quanties (at a substantial discount!) and bring it home, where I place it in a personal cooling unit known as a refridgerator. The really great thing about this is that I can go get some and not have to wait for my car to boot up.
    • It is the Seven-Eleven of the Philly area. Seedy little places on every corner (I used to buy smokes at the one in Narberth) which seem to stock every known type of human or otherwise grub at inflated prices. Aimed primarily at the Smokedot [smokedot.org] crowd and skater kids who rip off parking meters.
  • You may find this frustrating. I can read my dashboard, but it takes several seconds for my eyes to adjust to dash distance from road distance. I couldn't possibly think about fighting with a UI like that.

    BTW, the UIs for autos were not standardized in their current form very early on. I got the explanation how to drive a 1920 Ford truck a couple of weeks ago. These were very strange to the modern driver. I'm not sure if anything besides the steering wheel was in the same place as it is on typical cars of today. I think there was a brake pedal, but it was rightmost. Other pedals did different things to the gears, but there were assorted levers involved in gear-shifting, too. So, it takes time for these things to get worked out. Nowadays, that means thousands of lawsuits while things get worked out.

  • > Without a key, a floor shifter or really any
    > buttons, this might be the future for cars, are
    > the masses ready to wrestle with computers just
    > to go to Wawa for milk?"

    I agree that this could be a problem.

    In the maddening drive for car manufacturers trying to differentiate their cars, they're going to end up causing more harm than good.

    The good thing about cars is they all generally have the same interface. So if you've got more than one car in the family or you're renting a car, you generally know how to use it without having to take a 3-hour class as suggested by BMW in the article.

    With each manufacturer trying to come up with their own nifty interface, you're suddenly going to have lots of cars with wildly different user interfaces. BMW with their weird iDrive thing, Mercedes with their voice recognition, and who knows what Audi and Lexus will come up with.

    Of course there are few chances for someone to rent a 740i as a rental, but if this sort of thing filters down to the entry level cars, expect chaos.

    Cars aren't like computers, where a non-standard interface causes a major catastrophe. Click the wrong button on a computer because you're unfamiliar with what it does may, at worst, delete a file you didn't intend to delete. In a car, unfamiliarity with the controls can cause an accident.

    Here's an example. After having all Japanese cars, I recently bought a German roadster. In my car the cruise control knob is right next to the turn signal, which is in turn mounted kind of low. When I first got it, the first few times I tried to make a right turn, I ended up engaging the cruise control. That was disorienting, to say the least. I eventually got used to it and it was just one interface problem.

    I can imagine what it'll be like if you can't work the iDrive dial-thingy.
  • This iDrive idiocy sounds a lot more like a GM "innovation" than a German one. Jesus, my 635 is about the simplest goddamn car ever designed. I'm a little surprised that BMW -- a company supposedly devoted to the art of driving -- would produce such an elephantine, Microsoftian nightmare.

    It bodes ill. Happily, I'll never have a buck and a quarter to drop on a 745 (or a 760), so it's not likely to bother me except it the abstract.

    Best,
    'jfb
  • I wouldn't let Bill Gates manage a WaWa.
  • PEOPLE seem to misinterpret complexity as sophistication," Niklaus Wirth, the Swiss computer scientist, once said.
    Now, the NY Times starts an article by quoting Niklaus Wirth... What is the world coming to???

    Who's next? Brian Kerningham???

  • It's basically been proven that the average person drives better drunk than while trying to operate a cell phone, and that's a pretty simple interface. Now BMW is coming along and giving people more reasons to take their eyes off the road? WTF are they thinking?

    I'm all for adding cool features to cars, but let's try to keep it in the realm of the practical, mmmkay? Otherwise, you're just asking for trouble. Having to navigate a complex GUI just to turn on the wipers or the rear defroster = bad idea.

    And not all computerization is a good thing-- although the antilock braking system in my '94 Grand Am has saved my ass a couple times over the years, a few years back I was lucky that it did not CAUSE an accident-- the chip that controlled it died in such a way that occasionally I would hit the brakes just to stop normally, or to slow for a turn, and the pedal would go straight to the floor without slowing the car!! Luckily, I quickly discovered that when this happened, lifting my foot from the brake and then stepping on the pedal again would engage the brakes-- and I got that problem taken care of damn quickly, within the car's original warranty period. But every now and then I'll think about how that simple problem could have had very unpleasant or even fatal results, and I'll shudder a little bit.

    On the plus side, if someone in their shiny new 745i plows into you because they were fiddling with their iDrive computer, at least you'll be able to sue with confidence that they can pay up. :-)
  • So how long before someone slaps Embedded Linux + Apache on, hooks it to a cellphone, and lets the world log in?

    If that happened, what would a Slashdotting do to the car?

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