But what's the percentage of BMW drivers are HN readers/tech savvy? I would guess pretty small. The BMW salesman will probably say "This car comes with CarPlay, you can connect your iPhone to it, it costs $80 per year. And they will either pay it because if they can afford a BMW they'll think that's cheap; or they won't pay for it and just use BMW's iDrive (will they even get rid of iDrive on CarPlay-enabled cars?).
Later BMW can say, "Hey Apple, only x% of buyers want CarPlay". Speaking of iDrive, I wonder if this decision was forced by whichever C-level-guy (or whatever level) sees iDrive as his baby project.
I've recently been looking to hack CarPlay into my 2007 BMW. There are 3rd party upgrades of the nav system, in addition to companies like Pioneer selling multimedia units that include it.
It'd be pretty pissed if BMW wanted to charge me yearly for it. Really all I want is decent maps support / siri integration that doesn't require me touching my phone.
Put a Pioneer system with CarPlay in my 2010 Porsche. I am pretty happy with it. I need to figure out a better mic, as Siri is bad enough most times, but with the top down...well....
Later BMW can say, "Hey Apple, only x% of buyers want CarPlay". Speaking of iDrive, I wonder if this decision was forced by whichever C-level-guy (or whatever level) sees iDrive as his baby project.