<story><title>BMW&apos;s Apple CarPlay annual fee is next-level gouging</title><url>https://www.cnet.com/g00/roadshow/news/bmw-carplay-fee-highway-robbery/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sjwright</author><text>I agree it&amp;#x27;s stupid (and there&amp;#x27;s no question this move won&amp;#x27;t survive in the long term) but there&amp;#x27;s one thing to keep in mind:&lt;p&gt;BMW&amp;#x27;s iDrive is better than CarPlay. As someone who very much likes Apple&amp;#x27;s current iOS and Mac UI, this feels absurd to say but iDrive is just that good. Of course choice always preferable, but unless CarPlay is extended to allow me to use Waze maps, I can&amp;#x27;t imagine why I&amp;#x27;d ever use it.&lt;p&gt;Unlike CarPlay, iDrive has a well-resolved, tactile and &lt;i&gt;customisable physical&lt;/i&gt; interface. It&amp;#x27;s just better suited for someone who&amp;#x27;s driving.&lt;p&gt;Tesla doesn&amp;#x27;t support CarPlay at all, but you don&amp;#x27;t hear about hoards of people boycotting Telsa: because their system is also better than CarPlay. (Though at least BMW gives you the &lt;i&gt;option,&lt;/i&gt; even if they do so in a weirdly customer-hostile way.)&lt;p&gt;The only clear advantage of CarPlay is that the software is being continually updated and improved. Perhaps when your 2018 model is seven years old, the features of CarPlay in &lt;i&gt;iOS 16&lt;/i&gt; running on your &lt;i&gt;iPhone Xs Edition&lt;/i&gt; would be preferred. And by then BMW will have been shamed into aborting this annual fee joke.</text></comment>
<story><title>BMW&apos;s Apple CarPlay annual fee is next-level gouging</title><url>https://www.cnet.com/g00/roadshow/news/bmw-carplay-fee-highway-robbery/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>skywhopper</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s so bizarre. There&amp;#x27;s no reasonable fiscal reason for BMW to require this. The only reason to implement something like this would be just to establish the precedent of paying a subscription to the carmaker so they can add on easy-to-pay-for additional features and one-time expenses later. Micropayments and loot boxes for your car.</text></comment>