Well, they’re BMW drivers, so I don’t feel too bad for them.
Disturbing trend, though.
Has anyone actually seen these ads in the BMW, as described?
This article seems fishy to me. Especially this part:
The ad has been available in more than 70 markets since July 27, 2026, scheduled to run through August 10, 2026, on any suitably equipped BMW running Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9, or OS X built after July 2020.
“System 7, 8, 8.5, 9, or OS X” are exact versions of MacOS, dating back to 1991. Why would BMW’s software versioning match Apple’s exactly? I mean it could be a coincidence, but it’s weird. Especially “OS X.”
Not that I’d put it past any car manufacturer to do this, capitalism gonna capitalize. But I thought the EU was more obnoxious about controlling/preventing things like this. Or does BMW get a pass since they’re a European brand?
So I have now seen it . It did not pop up, I had to go into apps and find the spider man app and click on it.
Pretty stupid waste of time, but not on startup or anything.
One of the article’s sources has a link to this Reddit thread (view it on RedLib), which has someone recording the ad. The article also uses official BMW websites as sources.
P.S. that was a very boring ad
BMW iDrive has versions 1 to 9, and now the newest really is OS X.
Yeah I read that now too. I just thought that it was weird that they went from “System 7…” up to “OS X” just like Apple did. But it’s just very plausible coincidence.
I went to the first source of the article that is mentioned
So what this means BMW is partnering with Disney for spiderman.
As far as I understand it the spiderman animation is not presented in a disturbing way and rather something one can access when they want to.
So yes it is an ad but also not yet intrusive advertisement that disturbs the usage.
Yeah I should have clicked through to the source article. Good call.
My theory on the System / OS numbers being suspect was nothing. Just a coincidence. I should’ve known.
The article does seem to be rage bait though. Or at least its enraging to those who didn’t read the article thoroughly. It’s not as if the driver is being pestered with ads. An unobtrusive banner on one screen that is only visible when the vehicle starts up is hardly a “full screen ad” being forced on drivers.
I’m sorry, but to me, a banner ad across my car’s screen is far too much. There should be zero ads from my car manufacturer in my car.Full stop. This is probably going to be the start of more ads creeping into the car.
BMW tried the heated seat subscription service. I wouldn’t be surprised if they offer the ad free infotainment service in the next 5 years.
This is what happened in mine (i think is system 7). A notification popped up (the same type you get for the xmas and halloween type of videos). You can choose to ignore it, or click on it and watch the video.
Maybe now people will stop thinking they’re a premium brand.
Fuck capitalism and all of the sneaky and invasive ways they try to sell you shit. Advertising is now like a cancer that interferes with simply living a life.
Best advertisement for chinese cars. Not that they needed one…
Embarrassing for BMW.
trashy cars pretending to be a luxury brand
LMAO. LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. AAAAH FUCKCARS is gonna have a fun time with this one gang. Aaah shit man.
It’s funny how much of a joke the German car brands have become.
VW shoving touch controls down our throats, BMW selling their cars after they’ve been already sold, Audi and Mercedes sticking fake exhausts on their $70k cars, and all of them just desperately catering to the Chinese market while simultaneously not getting EVs…
Not to mention that in the wake of VW being caught red-handed with fraudulent software to evade emission regulations, BMW had to quickly get their (very similar) hack out there. Which, of course, was done so incredibly poorly that nowadays, several types of modern BMWs are liable to just explode into a fireball. Seemingly out of nowhere.
At least when they do explode they don’t then also trap the occupants like Teslas do but still, plenty of stories of bmws in Europe just bursting into flames.
To be fair, the Germans weren’t the only ones cheating emissions tests. As far as I’ve heard, Harley-Davidson used special tunes on their bikes to pass emissions testing. Never heard of BMWs just randomly bursting into flames, though, gotta look into that.
I don’t know about US car makers, but I can imagine them having done similar stuff
Don’t doubt it for a second, absolutely. There’s a reason why BMW scrambling to fix their own little trick. VW just got caught doing it
I hope they don’t act surprised when cheap Chinese cars without all that crap devour their market share.
That only delays the problem, doesn’t fix it, sadly. Chinese firms understand capitalism better than the west imo, so once they have a large market share, they will likely pull off the same shit. Still, for now, they are probably the better option.
For me, personally, I am trying to keep my 300 thousand km car alive :)
Unfortunately that doesn’t happen, because EU put tariffs on Chinese EVs. And then they are complaing why EV adaption doesn’t happen as quickly as they would like, lol.
They will just be kept out of the market in the US. Oligarchs gonna oligarchy.
Cheap chinese car, yes, without all the crap, you wish. They are all capitalist and learn from each other. Remember the door handle shit? It’s very much everywhere in chinese car to the point their government have to regulate the shit out of it. Chinese car maker want to export their car so bad because they can exploit without limit.
to the point their government have to regulate the shit out of it
Sounds like the system works. A problem was caused by capitalist firms doing stupid capitalist bullshit, and so the government stepped in to regulate them. What a country! Imagine if our governments would step in to regulate stupid firms doing stupid shit.
Corpos figured out that onerous regulations can keep out competitors who haven’t achieved the economies of scale to pay for compliance.
What a country!
Yeah if we pretend all the other issue with CCP didn’t exists, it’s a functional government.
lol try talking with an actual chinese person in 2026 irl, ask them how they feel about their own country. Its not 1952 with mao at the helm. Very illuminating actually talking to someone with direct experience instead of the daily mail and their weird takes based mostly on hearsay and misconstruction
Why would i wanna ask them who the south china sea and taiwan belongs to lmao
I don’t pretend that China is a hell hole, but you just pretend that CCP doesn’t have issue, that’s the difference here. And obviously it also depend who you ask. If i talk to charlie kirk obviously he would say trump is the greatest. Ohh wait he’s dead.
are you speedrunning some sort of ‘biggest amount of baseless assumptions about another person in one sentence’-title?
- I know china’s got many problems worth criticizing, im pretty sure this is actually my first comment even mentioning china at all on this site, so i dont know what makes you think otherwise… All im pushing back on, is you claiming that ‘its not a functional government’.
- i didn’t accuse you of saying its a hellhole. The 1952 comment was rhetorically purely for dramatic effect and not a comment about you. Not everything is.
- tf has charlie kirk got to do with this? xD
The CCP is a functional government, but one you do not like
You can say that to a lot of government in this world.
Didnt know dbzer0 is turning into lemmy.ml
You have to admit that the West is collapsing ahead of Asia. China will be also falling, of course.
Neither of which is challenging my comment but partly agrees with it.
Both the west and the east are on the road to collapse.
And (as you said) the true question is when, not if.
edit: wrong person!
No problem :)
Cheers!
Broken censorious genocidal clocks… or something like that.
And the US doesn’t censor at all, and doesn’t run propaganda via media, interfere with scientific and educational institutions. Or start wars and genocides across the middle east. Or kidnap and assassinate presidents of countries. Or oppress and imprison the most number of people of any country in the world. Only China has human rights violations, not our country.
In the interest of fairness, yes both USA and CN are both dystopian shitholes.
Not sure how any of that is relevant to my comment but okay.
This is pure sinophobia.
In what way criticising car manufacturer sinophobe? Is it because it’s a chinese company that you must unconditionally defend it? They’re billionaire ffs, no need you to defend them.
But they said if we pay, we are not the product…
Was the BMW free? It must have been.
Well, what they actually say is if you don’t pay you’re the product. They never said anything about what happens if you pay
Wow, maybe bring it back to the dealership and tell them the car is broken, and insist on them fixing it or ask for a full refund.
i’m sure when you buy a new car you somewhere sign to this t&c’s… which is why i’m not buying a new car (well, one of the reasons anyway ;))
When my car dies, I’m just going to build a go cart. Fuck this shit.
If not for the snow and hills, I could get by on an electric bike for 95% of my needs.
But, I’m getting old, so not for much longer.
Imagine paying the kind of prices that car manufactures demand, and then they shove ads in your face on your own property. I would drive it back to the dealership & demand a refund.
You can probably have an ad-free system for a monthly subscription.
Wankers.
That’s Bayerische Motoren Wankers AG to you.
It’s crazy that few days ago I learned what BMW stands for and now I see it everywhere.
it’s called the Baader Meinhof effect or frequency illusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfla1
I thought it was Bavarian Motor Works or something? Logo was a propeller? No? This is what I’ve always known it to be.
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, is the proper name, but sometimes people anglicized it to Bavarian Motor Works.
Correct. It’s Bayrische Motoren Werke which translates to Bavarian Motor Factories or maybe Bavarian Motor Workshops.
The German
Werkhas several meanings:- The process of work/the work itself needed to finish a specific task.
- A specific action. E.g. used to imply someone did $thing
- A specific thing that was produced by someone (e.g. a piece of art) or even someone’s lifeworks as a whole.
- A factory or industrial complex BUT ALSO depending on context the workers on said factory/complex.
- Kraftwerk if you want old German techno
Blessed info
Ad free*
Yup. Netflix will advertise its shows to you on the ad-free* tier, but say they’re not ads.
Thank you for this article.
Remember when they tried to make you rent the heated seats you already have?
Oh no! How will me and my soldiering iron cope?
Better get good at CAN bus. Unless u like the Christmas tree look of a lit up dash.
Maybe they will offer a commercial-free subscription service.
Maybethey will offer a commercial-free subscription service.Ftfy
If have to watch ads it’s not a luxury car, it’s a Kia in a suit.
I don’t watch ads in my Hyundai. That makes it worse than Kia/Hyundai.
The only cars I see ads in are borrowed from Europcar and are basic pieces of shit. So I guess BMW is around there now.
This is brilliant. Single sentence deathblow to BMW marketing.
