More on using your iPod in the M5

[Marchitect]

One of the things I was really excited about with my new 08 - M5 was the iPod integration. I was so excited to have over 30GB of my music, audio books, etc available to me as I make my long commute to work every day.
FYI, my 40GB iPod has about 1000 different artists to choose from. And that seems to be the proplem.
This eveing I was in the mood for some Stevie Wonder. I tried to access Stevie under the list of "Artists". Holy crap, I was spinning the iDrive controler for about 4 minutes straight, trying to make my way down from "A" to the "S's".
This is a crazy waist of time.
Also, your iPod isn't accessable while hooked up to BMW's USB cable, so you can't use your iPod directly, like you can on a bluetooth phone.
Unless I'm missing something, I can't see how this iPod integration is helpfull at all.
especially if you have a big iPod with 1000's of songs and/or artists.

Hopefully I'm missing something.
Anyone know of a voice command that will help navigate the iPod. such as >Audio - Aux - Stevie Wonder< ???
Or some other trick to get around a large selection of music.

Thanks

[bodaddy]

People here have found that organizing your music into playlists saves a lot of time when searching. My suggestion would be to make some playlists and all will be well.

[RussRamz]

Originally Posted by bodaddy

People here have found that organizing your music into playlists saves a lot of time when searching. My suggestion would be to make some playlists and all will be well.

Yes, playlists are the way to go. I have also experienced the frustrations of trying to search for music. Good luck!

[Robert]

It works for me too!

[doogles]

Originally Posted by Marchitect

One of the things I was really excited about with my new 08 - M5 was the iPod integration. I was so excited to have over 30GB of my music, audio books, etc available to me as I make my long commute to work every day.
FYI, my 40GB iPod has about 1000 different artists to choose from. And that seems to be the proplem.
This eveing I was in the mood for some Stevie Wonder. I tried to access Stevie under the list of "Artists". Holy crap, I was spinning the iDrive controler for about 4 minutes straight, trying to make my way down from "A" to the "S's".
This is a crazy waist of time.
Also, your iPod isn't accessable while hooked up to BMW's USB cable, so you can't use your iPod directly, like you can on a bluetooth phone.
Unless I'm missing something, I can't see how this iPod integration is helpfull at all.
especially if you have a big iPod with 1000's of songs and/or artists.

Hopefully I'm missing something.
Anyone know of a voice command that will help navigate the iPod. such as >Audio - Aux - Stevie Wonder< ???
Or some other trick to get around a large selection of music.

Thanks

I think it's generally accepted that BMW should add a mechanism to jump to a particular letter -- much like the A-Z in the Telephone List. On larger lists perhaps even accept multiple letters of input (but eliminating the options that don't exist) like when searching for a city or street.

-jd

[Marchitect]

Doogles,
That would make total sense. Good idea. In the mean time I'll work on more play lists.
Thanks

[RedmondM5]

One other thing I discuvered today is how to keep it on random. If you don't have it set on th eiPod to Shuffle Songs, then everytime you get in the car you have to click on the current song and select "Random". It was really annoying me and finally today while riding in my wife's new X5 (she wouldn't let me drive, since I barely let her drive mine...) on a long trip I was playing with it and figured that one out.

Since you can name the iPod's, mine is named BEAST and her's is named BEAUTY. Kind of funny since it shows up in the lower left hand corner on the screen while you are in that section of iDrive.