The purpose of the IPod/USB adapter is mainly to provide a connection to data storage and as far as I know the on board I-drive player currently only supports playback of audio. But as this is software, BMW could easily update it and have the player also support MPEG, DIVX etc..

Others may have other experience while having already tested/experienced it, but I don't believe there is a real Ipod special thing about this option, the name is only used as Ipod has the marketing value and makes people recognize that they can connect their favorite player.

If we generalize Ipod to "music player" there are generally 2 ways to connect a music player (I mean there are millions of non Ipod music players out there with the same capabilities):

- Audio connection.
This happens through a 3,5 mm jack and in this case the player is completely on it's own, just outputting the audio signal to the AUX input of the car. I think there was a special after market Ipod kit which allows you to control the Ipod through the steering wheel, but I'm not sure if that is also available on the 6FL (Ipod/USB) option.

- Data connection
This happens through a USB cable and the player basically becomes a disk with music on it (like a USB stick, but can also be the Ipod or other music player). The playback is not done from the actual music player anymore, but integrated into the I-drive. So you also have your steering wheel control this way and visibility on the main BMW screen of what is happening, but again, this is not Ipod specific and the reach of this option is ALL music players and data storage devices with music on it, much better than "just" Ipod.

I see a lot of people confusing the 2 ways of connecting.
in a way I already have an Ipod connection in my E53, as this car has an Aux input, just as the E70 has. But in the E53 days they didn't call this Ipod. Apart from the littly funky useless Ipod key functions which were added later, there is not a big difference.

So Audio connection has not really advanced, but Data connection is new and very usefull I believe.