BMW on Wednesday announced four new BMW Approved apps for Apple's iPhone, bringing owners of both items a range of new music and connectivity options.
The newest BMW Approved Apps are Audible, Glympse, Rhapsody, and TuneIn. Audible, from Amazon, allows users to play downloadable audio books and other spoken-word content through their iOS devices. Users of the app have access to Audible's massive audiobook library.
Glympse is a location-sharing app that leverages the iPhone's GPS capabilities to let others know where a user is when en route to a place. The app can share locations to other Glympse users, using the phone's existing contact list, or to a user's social media feed.
Rhapsody is a premium, ad-free, on-demand music service. The service counts more than one million subscribers, all of whom can listen to more than 16 million tracks on their connected devices. With BMW integration, the app will allow users to control music with the vehicle's built-in controls. The app's music discovery tools have also been reworked in order to take advantage of in-car use capabilities.
TuneIn is an Internet radio app allowing users to listen to music, sports, talk, and news from more than 70,000 AM, FM, HD, and Internet radio stations around the globe. As with Rhapsody, the TuneIn app has been specialized to take advantage of the infotainment controls built into BMWs.
BMWs from model year 2011 forward can have the BMW apps option built in, allowing them to connect to a user's iPhone by USB cable or using a snap-in adapter. Once connected, the iPhone can be controlled using the vehicle's iDrive controller, steering wheel buttons, and on-board monitor.