I found this page today and according to that my iPod Classic should be fully functional in the X2 so I’ve pointed this out to the dealer asking the question again and waiting to hear back. Either the website is wrong and needs to be corrected, or there is something not right with the software in the car. I’ve tested two different iPods in my partner’s BMW and they both work perfectly so I’m sure the fault is not with the iPods.
Heck, that page says even the iPod Photo is fully compatible. I have an old one of them that has been lying in a drawer for years so I’m charging that one up to see if it works.
Folder syncing: In Windows you already have the command ROBOCOPY.EXE which is on all versions, and can be used to sync two different folder, e.g. from the location where iTunes stores its files, to say the USB drive. Use the /MIR switch ensures that you only sync what files have changed. Of course you need to ensure you get the command switches the right way around, as you dont want to sync an empty USB stick to your iTunes library.
Just had problems with my old iPod classic in our 19 plate BMW. On the outward journey it wouldn’t play anything. On the homeward journey we plugged in my iPhone Xs which worked as expected. With that working we unplugged it and re-plugged the old iPod. This time we tried setting the iPod to play before we connected the cable. And it worked!
I use a 120gb ipod ( recently had the HDD changed out for an internal SD card. Not that it matters for this). And, it connects to my Audi A6 fine. As it connects via a regular usb b it should not matter what the other end looks like. I’ve used my iPod in the last 4? cars that were vw before the Audi. The car just sees it as an organised mass drive.
So, it should work on your BMW. Sounds like your dealer needs to do something to make your car recognise the iPod. iPods are low tech stuff in the 2020’s. Which is why I paid £100 to breath life back into mine with a new HDD ( SD card). Btw, the iPod place in Ashford told me that leaving the iPod in a cold car is what tends to kill the HDD.
My two previous cars were BMW X1’s and the same iPod worked fine in both of them and still does in my partner’s 2016 2 Series. I’ve pointed the dealer to the web page that says the iPod Classic is compatible with the new car so he’s investigating and has promised to get back to me.
Mine is on MT-002.138.001 so it looks like a newer version.
I tried doing as you suggested by setting the iPod Classic to play before plugging it in and it sort of works.
However all I can do at that point is use the scroll control in the car to move between the album tracks and play them, it still won’t let me browse or search the iPod. So if I want to listen to another album I’d have to disconnect the iPod, find whatever I want to play and re-connect it. Hardly ideal.
Did you have to install anything on the iPhone to get it working in the car, and was that through USB or Bluetooth? Would you mind saying what car you have? That could be useful information to feed back to the dealer.
Sorry, EDB, the details from your original request didn’t sink in. I only ever use the ipod on shuffle in the car - I don’t browse. I’ll have a go though. (In fact I fill the ipod with this in mind too - I get it to fill the available space with tracks as I have too many.)
Ah right, I never use shuffle as I prefer to listen to albums. In fact on one occasion I thought there was a fault with my ND5XS2 as it was playing tracks from an album in random order, only to realise I had inadvertently tapped on the shuffle icon
Doesn’t look like I can browse by artist or track. It could be driven by what is initially selected on the ipod - you had Bowie and I had the whole shuffle - but I only thought about that after I’d come in from the car!
I’ll see if I can figure out how to download the latest version of the iDrive software onto a USB stick.
The car’s an M140i although that looks irrelevant now.
If you were going on a longer journey you could build an iTunes playlist of several albums and you’d probably be able to play them in the pre-selected order.
The last time I tried to copy my music library to a USB stick, I just dragged it using a Mac. To update it, I dragged the same folder again. OSX asked me if I wanted to keep the existing files on the drive, or replace them with the (identical) versions, so I just told it to keep the originals. So in effect, a differential backup.
This goes into the USB port in my car. It doesn’t read the metadata, but you can browse the folders by artist/album and see the track listing. Any more than that would be a distraction that I wouldn’t want while driving, so I choose not to find a more sophisticated solution with metadata support.
What you might find @ChrisSU, is that there are a load of extra marker files that have a fullstops at the beginning of a filename, and this can look a mess when you are browsing. If it helps, below is a script you can use which will look to see if you have inserted a USB drive called either CARMUSIC KITCHEN or NAIM, and then syncs the folder “/Users/Shared/Music” to that USB stick. Your folder will be different of course, so just amend line 3 accordingly. The advantage of the script is the tidy it does at the end to remove the majority of those extra files.
Copy the following into a file called say “SyncUSBMusic.sh”, and then open it with the App Terminal. Any Problems, let me know.
#! /bin/sh
cd
MusicFolder="/Users/Shared/Music MP3"
for USBMusicPartitionName in CARMUSIC KITCHEN NAIM
do
if test -d /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName
then
mdutil -i off /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName
echo Syncing Music from ${MusicFolder} to /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName . . .
rsync -rltv -u --modify-window=1 --delete "${MusicFolder}/" "/Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/"
echo Tidy Up
cd /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName
find /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName -type d -empty -exec rm -r {} \;
rm -rf /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.fseventsd
rm -rf /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.DS_Store
rm -rf /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.Trashes
rm -rf /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/._.Trashes
rm -rf tmp1
mkdir /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.fseventsd
touch /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.fseventsd/no_log
touch /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.metadata_never_index
touch /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/.Trashes
find /Volumes/$USBMusicPartitionName/ -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \;
cd /Volumes
else
echo $USBMusicPartitionName not mounted
fi
done
certainly my Ford Focus used to show them when browsing, which was a pain