BMW and Apple

[joejoejoe]

hope this is the right section of the forum for this...

I'm a big fan of both fans, and have always noticed that they're really similar and occasionally follow the same philosophies.

A prime example is BMW's iDrive and the iPod's clickwheel, almost essentially the same thing, both born from the companies' value of ease and utter simplicity.

Today I was surfing the net and came across this:

https://www.macrumors.com/2007/08/02/apple-exploring-multitouch-interface-gestures/

and noticed how much it reminded me of this:

http://www.bmwusa.com/BMW2003/Templ...uelybmw/future_technologies&NRCACHEHINT=Guest

now, why aren't these companies working together more? I know that BMW was first to have iPod and iPhone compatibility, but why not do more? Why not develop a multi-touch iDive navigation system together? I heard apple is working on a new nav system for mercedes.... why not BMW?

Just thought the comparison was interesting... any thoughts?

edit: on the BMW link, you need to click on "head hand gestures" next to "alternative fuels" and watch the video to see what i'm talking about.

 

[d_and_n5000]

Hmm, good question - I know that Steve has drawn his own parallels to BMW before. I think that BMW and Apple would play really nicely together—both place design and aesthetics rather high on their priority list, and both have a small but very devoted following.

On a side note, that Head, Hand Input is really funky, I didn't think that that would work very well at first, but now that I've seen the video, it looks like it could be the 'next big thing' for cars. Certainly safer than mucking with a bunch of buttons. It also seems that it would be much easier to work this system without taking your eyes off of the road.