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I remember my parents needing to buy very expensive map DVD disks in order to update the car’s navigation system to update their car’s navigation computer.

The disks were very expensive and if you didn’t update them it wouldn’t know about new roads (slower trip, missed turns, etc).

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That's why we have Android Auto: move the updates to a thing that already has frequent Internet connection, and if the update goes wrong it's clearly the fault of this other company, plus the car itself still works fine.

Jeep already had an OTA the broke the ability for the car to be driven.

Did those updates ever break the navigation software?

I've had map update packages brick head units before, yes. Largely because they also shipped some software updates in that map update package.

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