[och]

So back over a decade ago BMW introduced Connected drive and BMW apps where you connect your phone to the car, start up an app and then control it in the iDrive screen. They had a pretty nice web radio that you can't get anymore unless you have the old app on your phone, and over time they introduced a few useful apps such as Tune in, Amazon music, Spotify, Pandora, and a few pretty useless apps. At one point they even had a GoPro app that also got discontinued.

They are still relying on the old convoluted approach of connecting the phone to the car, where in older models you had to use the cable and in newer they can do apps via bluetooth, and then firing the app on the phone and controlling it on the i-Drive screen. At least with iPhone this approached hasn't been the most reliable - sometimes the app fails to start, sometimes it disconnects, often times if you're streaming music it fails to resume playing after a phone call, or the whole app crashed after a phone call. Basically you always have to fiddle with your phone, despite the fact that it was meant to work seamlessly - start the app, tuck the phone away and use iDrive controls to communicate with the app.

I can't believe they are still using this same approach, and with latest iOS the process has become less reliable than ever. They also haven't update apps database in a long time. Why can't we have built in apps at least for music streaming? This is a huge inconvenience.