I've always been a gadget person and have spent quite a lot on them over the years. PC's when each new generation was released, laptops, PDA's in the 90's, early cell phones and smart phones, tablets, and a fully automated home -- the automation part cost far more than what my X1 did but it greatly simplifies every day living and was a good value. Thing is, I've learned there are gadgets that are useful and there are ones that waste your time and money. iDrive IMO and especially for NAV, is far inferior to other products out there which cost much less.
I think the idea of having to look at a screen to select options or features in a car is a passing phase in technology and will be outdated sooner than later. Personally I find easy (and even sometimes more complicated) to use tactile buttons that don't require looking at something more ideal in a car. iDrive nav requires far too many user inputs and visual time to start navigation to a new location and I'm not inclined to wait to drive until I've entered a location. Also the database for locations in iDrive is also inferior to online search databases. Products like Google speech to text, Siri, and BB talk I think quickly outdate hand input of information in car environments. Company R&D groups like BMW's Voice Activation will never be able to compete on a level as much larger and broader customer base companies like Google. If Apple or Google decided to get into the head unit business for cars, you'd laugh at BMW's voice activation, Ford Sync and every other other "advanced" head unit being marketed today, but Google (and Apple to some degree) are Software companies, not hardware companies. But if say Samsung decided to create a head unit (or BMW made a phone mount where the head unit is) and Google partnered with BMW to create a software API between a BMW onboard computer and Android, that would be something. IMO a head unit is an outdated component of a car like carburetors.
To go slightly off topic, I will note there are some built in functions of iDrive I find quite useful where a phone and app doesn't integrate as well and that's a backup camera and PDC. Also, almost all other information in iDrive about the car is actually part of the "onboard computer" that can be accessed through the instrument display, which does take more steps but options aren't typically adjusted during driving. iDrive does give slightly more information than the instrument cluster but a code reader would also provide far more information than iDrive.
Personally I'd rather have an ugly window mount for my phone and use Google Maps, Waze, Trapster, iOnRoad, or the next latest and greatest app that's connected to 'the cloud' and has a lower cost of ownership due to it being usable in any car.
Pressing a voice command button that's connected to the internet and saying "Navigate to Seasons near Orlando" or "Navigate to the nearest gas station" is the closest thing we can do until brain reading technology comes further along. Since iDrive doesn't do this, to me it's not worth more than $500 and only then if it primarily came with PDC.
