To enhance in-car entertainment of their productions, BMW officially announced support for new iPod Out feature for iPhone and iPod touch. iPod Out feature enables you to control your tunes on your iPod or iPhone through BMW iDrive and MINI infotainment systems. This system has been developed by BMW’s eggheads at their Silicon Valley technology center, same guys who came up with the iDrive,  so it must be complicating and hard to use!

Press Release:

The new interface technology developed for this purpose by the BMW Group enables continued availability of iPod Out features of iPhone and iPod touch in vehicles and represents a new milestone in consumer electronic device vehicle integration. Future vehicles equipped with this technology will be able to adapt more quickly to the software lifecycles of iPod touch and iPhone. The new interface technology was developed by an international cooperation of the BMW Research and Development Centre in Munich, Germany and the BMW Group Technology Office Palo Alto in Silicon Valley, California.

Once again the BMW Group takes a leading role in the Infotainment integration of iPhone and iPod touch. In 2004, BMW was the first automobile manufacturer in the world to integrate iPod in the audio system. In the following year a corresponding solution was presented for MINI. Right on time for the market launch of iPhone in 2007, the BMW Group once again offered an exclusive technological solution for integrating iPhone in the infotainment system of its vehicles.

The new BMW Group iPod Out support mirrors the innovation strategy of BMW ConnectedDrive for the BMW brand and will be part of the new offer called MINI Connected for the MINI brand. Both brands aim at connecting driver and passengers to their personal infotainment world in an intuitive and non-distracting way while on board. The optimized use of consumer mobile devices in an on-board environment play a central role in this connection.