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posted by
janrinok
on Saturday December 13 2014, @05:14PM
from the BlackBerry-Inc-mops-its-brow dept.
from the BlackBerry-Inc-mops-its-brow dept.
El Reg reports
As foreshadowed in February, Ford has announced a new in-car entertainment and communications system that will run on BlackBerry's QNX real-time operating system, not Windows as is the case for the company's current efforts.
Ford Sync 3 will offer touch-screen and voice recognition controls. The latter will allow drivers to command both their vehicle and apps on their phone. Siri control is another feature.
The auto-maker's offered a touch-screen system for some time now, but it's widely regarded as one of its weak points. A complete refresh on a new operating system therefore looks like a good move.
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It's Official: Ford Dumps Windows for QNX
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You will step on the night soil of many countries.
(Score: 3, Informative) by schad on Saturday December 13 2014, @06:15PM
My wife has a Ford with the Windows-based Sync. It's a little slow and a little clumsy, but the real reason she seldom uses it is that it's a touchscreen: she has to take her eyes off the road to use it. Besides, ever tried using your phone in direct sunlight? It sucks. Normally you'd just turn slightly to shade the screen, but in a car you can't do that. The system is basically unusable, by its very nature, during the day and whenever the vehicle is moving.
I much prefer my BMW's... I think they call it iDrive? Whatever it's called, there's no touchscreen at all. Everything is controlled by buttons or the big clicky scroll wheel thing. In earlier versions you had to use the scroll wheel for everything, but later versions have added progressively more buttons (rather defeating the purpose of the wheel, but it's still good for scrolling quickly through long lists of things). I pretty much just want BMW to clean it up and polish it better. Voice control is terrible[1] and it randomly forgets what screen I'm on. Sometimes the radio goes wonky, and... well, suffice it to say that there are bugs. QNX-based, by the way, so a mere OS change doesn't guarantee an improve in user experience.
I hate this fetish everyone has for touchscreens. They're actually a pretty shitty user interface. There are specific situations where they're really good. And sometimes you just don't have the space to have both a readable display and a usable keyboard, so in that case it makes perfect sense to combine them. But outside of those cases, they really ought to be avoided like the plague.
[1] "Phone book." Phone book. "Call (person's name)." Do you want to be connected to (person's name)? "Yes." There are multiple entries for this name. Say the number of the entry. "Entry 1." Did you say: Entry 1? "Yes." Dialing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Saturday December 13 2014, @09:12PM
Yeah, when I was looking for a new car earlier this year, I got a Ford Fusion, but I deliberately went with one WITHOUT the touchscreen for the reasons you cite. Granted, there are a million buttons and they're all are flat, but you at least can feel the positions well enough to press them without really looking.
Also, physical environmental controls. Maybe I'm an old bastard, but fuck the guy who decided they should be buried in the same touchscreen interface that controls your music/phone interface. Leave me my knobs, damnit.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 13 2014, @11:50PM
I rented a Chevy (by mistake, I assure you) earlier this year. Worst godforsaken interface ever, and half of it's disabled but visible (greyed out) if you don't have a subscription to their satellite service or whatever it is that makes that side of things work. So, if you don't pay a subscription, you *look* cheap to whoever rides in your car, and you're constantly reminded of your failure to consume.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Saturday December 13 2014, @11:56PM
BMW is also Apple*only*. That is an absolute non-starter in many people's books, and a bad move on BMW's part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 14 2014, @05:54AM
Err what? I drove a mitsibushi for the last week (queue the travelling salesman jokes). No issues with the built in monitor. YMMV