Take a tour of BMW’s new Mog online music system
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
BMW is the first automaker to integrate an online music selection service into a production car.
My iPhone, with 8GB of memory, can hold about 1,700 tracks. A BMW’s internal hard drive has room for almost 3,000 tracks. Now, BMW’s new Mog integration puts 14 million tracks at a driver’s fingertips.
I sat in the driver’s seat of a 2012 BMW 650i, with Robert Passaro, the head of BMW’s App Center, in the passenger seat. But we weren’t going anywhere. Our entire focus was on the stereo.
Passaro slotted an iPhone 4S into the BMW’s cradle, nestled in the console compartment. Tapping the Mog icon on the phone, the app launched, but showed a custom graphic with the BMW logo instead of the standard Mog iPhone interface.
On the wide, 10.2-inch LCD mounted in the 650i’s dashboard, a Mog entry asserted itself among the list of onboard audio sources. With the car’s iDrive controller, I selected it and was treated to a screen showing cover art for the current track, along with a set of icons on the left for search, track skipping, marking a track as a favorite, and reviewing the current playlist. The icons of this screen were all arranged in the familiar BMW iDrive format.
BMW integrated the Mog app with its latest cars late last year, making it the first automaker to integrate an online, on-demand music selection service. Many automakers have or are starting t… [Read more]
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