SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
joekiser writes "In 2010, Ford Motor Company was rated as top-five automotive manufacturer in terms of quality, per J.D. Power and Associates. This was a major turnaround for the automotive giant, which had faced bankruptcy just two years prior. This high reliability rating would be short lived however; Ford began installing touch screen hubs powered by Microsoft SYNC, which were both confusing and buggy.
By 2012, Ford quality rankings had dropped to 23rd, even after numerous software upgrades and a rebranding of SYNC to "MyFordTouch." One customer reported:
"The voice controls typically do not work until the vehicle has been on for five to 10 minutes, meaning short trips require dialing phone calls by hand, only to have the call cut off when the system finally starts up."
This slide continued into 2013, when Ford ranked 27th of 28 brands (as an aside, Ford's premium brand, Lincoln, ranked one slot higher that year at 26th).
Apparently, Ford Motor Company has had enough. On Friday, the Detroit News reported that Ford will make the switch to QNX on future vehicles. This is the same platform currently used by Acura, Audi, BMW, and Land Rover."
[ED Note: "Ford Motor Company's decision to move to QNX aside, I'll be heavily considering a Blackberry for my next phone, especially with rumors of a 64-bit octa-core model for later this year. BB10 also has gotten rave reviews for its design and ease-of-use."]
(Score: 0, Troll) by kaalon on Sunday February 23 2014, @10:54PM
So now we have the same untested and buggy code that goes into Microsoft "operating systems" but now in our cars. Honestly, how does this broken code get published. The next thing is having to pull over to the side of the road because a required windows update is loading.
(Score: 1) by ButchDeLoria on Sunday February 23 2014, @11:39PM
That's what happened to Michael Hastings, only it BSODed while pulling over.
(Score: 3, Funny) by dilbert on Monday February 24 2014, @01:58PM
(Score: 1) by tibman on Sunday February 23 2014, @11:57PM
In the middle of driving 60mph/100kph, "Please wait while restarting the car to complete the updates"
Not sure why parent is modded troll. Restarting the OS to update user-space applications is just silly and honestly very primitive.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday February 24 2014, @02:10AM
How does it get published? How do you think? Employees at some company (MS in this case) write it, the company releases it to their customers (Ford in this case), and it's built into manufactured products (cars). Then people buy it. Managers give it the OK because they want to meet their deadlines and contractual agreements, and end-users continue to buy products using this broken code.
Obviously, in this case at least, it's caused so many problems with sales that Ford has decided to switch vendors.