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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.
Previous: It's Official: Ford Dumps Windows for QNX
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25 2016, @12:51AM
The problem with MICROS~1's junk is that it is sludge piled on top of more sludge.
It would be interesting to know how many times they have (re)implemented something in their codebase simply because they didn't know it existed somewhere else in there.
Complexity kills
Ray Ozzie, 2010:
"Complexity kills. Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers, and IT. Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test, and use. Complexity introduces security challenges. Complexity causes administrator frustration [archive.org]"
A favorite topic of blogger and Linux advocate Robert Pogson is needless complexity. [google.com]
...then there is the antithesis:
Do one thing; do it well; make it easy to interoperate with that.
The Unix Philosophy [wikipedia.org]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday October 26 2016, @10:31AM
Do one thing; do it well; make it easy to interoperate with that.
The Unix Philosophy
Ah yes, leading us to Ken Thompson's Car:
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the other numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes a mistake, a giant “?” lights up in the center of the dashboard. “The experienced driver,” says Thompson, “will usually know what’s wrong.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @09:01PM
Your username, in this context, reminds me of a screen grab that I really appreciated.
I wish now that I had kept a link to that.
The large dialog box contained the text "Windoze has successfully updated your driver software".
The smaller dialog box which overlaid that one said "Device driver software was -not- successfully installed", with a big red X next to "No driver found".
My takeaway from this is that "Microsoft engineering" is an oxymoron.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]