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Computerworld reports
Ford engineer called MyFord Touch infotainment system "a polished turd"
Documents in a class-action lawsuit against Ford and its original MyFord Touch in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system reveal that the company's engineers and even its top executive were frustrated with the problematic technology.
The documents from the 2013 lawsuit show Ford engineers believed the IVI, which was powered by the SYNC operating system launched in 2010, might be "unsaleable" and even described a later upgrade as a "polished turd", according to a report in the Detroit News , which was confirmed by Computerworld.
The SYNC OS was originally powered by Microsoft software. Microsoft continued releasing software revisions it knew were defective, according to the lawsuit.
"In the spring of 2011, Ford hired Microsoft to oversee revisions, and hopefully the improvement, of the [software]. But ... Microsoft was unable to meaningfully improve the software, and Ford continued releasing revised software that it knew was still defective", the lawsuit states.
[The week of October 3], a U.S. District Court judge certified the case as a class action.
Consumer groups from nine states are involved in the lawsuit against Ford. The lawsuit describes an IVI screen that would freeze or go blank; generate error messages that wouldn't go away; voice recognition and navigation systems that failed to work; problems wirelessly pairing with smartphones; and a generally slow system.
[...] In 2014, Ford announced it was dropping Microsoft as the platform supplier for SYNC and moving to one based on Blackberry QNX for its SYNC 3 IVI.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by dyingtolive on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:32AM
I have it in my Fusion. Overall, it's technically functional, though I've noticed that bluetooth syncing and the usb port don't tend to work right if the temperature is outside of about 32-100 F, which is really strange.
In reality though, the voice recognition has about a 70% success rate and I've noticed that speaking nonsense has a better chance of recognition ("bluetooth audio, no BLUETOOTH audio, no.. ugh... Boof boof audio?"). No, I don't have a speech impediment, but I am told that I have a much deeper voice than your average person. I dunno if that has something to do with it. Google's voice tech always knows what I'm talking about though.
Otherwise, I'm somewhat disappointed by how useless the screen actually is for anything. There's a strange amount of real estate for how little text it will actually display at any given time, and there's no song information if you're listening to the bluetooth audio mode (but there is if you're listening to the Pandora app specifically through their interface for Pandora). It seemed like a bunch of good ideas that sort of died somewhere between design and implementation, and my car is a 2014, so it's not like it was the first version of the software either.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @01:30AM
Probably depends on what voices and patterns the speech recognition was developed on. For example, I know multiple people who have Rhotacism. Some of the virtual assistants and voice recognition software recognize what they say immediately. Others require a few lines of training to get it. However, there are a few that wouldn't work at all, regardless of the amount of training.