How Ford Will Upgrade Owners' Display Screens 215
gManZboy writes "'Sometime early next year, Ford will mail USB sticks to about 250,000 owners of vehicles with its advanced touchscreen control panel. The stick will contain a major upgrade to the software for that screen. With it, Ford breaks the model in which the technology in a car essentially stayed unchanged from assembly line to junk yard' — and Ford becomes a software company. This shift created a hot new tech job at Ford: human-machine interface engineers — people who come from a range of backgrounds, from software development to mechanical engineers, and who can live in the worlds of art and science at once."
Re:"with it, Ford breaks" (Score:3, Insightful)
FORD uses Microsoft software for it's screens. of course it needs updates. they are probably software patches to keep the damn things from crashing so often
Re:Opening (Score:5, Insightful)
That was amusing back when Ford has serious quality issues, those days are by and large gone.
As others have mentioned this is probably largely MS' fault for not doing proper QA prior to shipping the product. I'd consider blaming Ford, but let's be honest it's not like MS has any methods in place for requiring QA of products built with their products and they do often times deliberately provide work arounds so that the integrators don't have to.
Re:what a summary! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:"with it, Ford breaks" (Score:5, Insightful)
Because "ford sync" is actually Microsoft AutoPc from 1999. I had that abortion in my car from clarion. It's buggy, it locks up, voice control barely works, etc...
My nephew bought a new Mustang with it, and when he demoed it I about spit. it's the SAME VOICE and is responding the same way... kind of works. he also mentioned that it stops working at times until he shuts off the car and waits 10 seconds and then restarts it.
Yup. I would hate to tell him how I could lock my version up hard by turning on the ignition, let it boot, then off and on again quickly. I could lock up the autopc so hard it takes a hardware reset and a complete wipe back to factory default to get it working again.
Clarion got pissed when I did that in their demo vehicle at CES in 2000. Yup, same bug that they would not admit exists from a year ago.
The real news here ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... is not that Ford is updating software in cars; it is that USB sticks and US mail to million of owners is now cheaper than paying the mechanic to plug-in the car and flash the radio.
Re:what a summary! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that they love mediocre so much as the "15 PHB Managers" mentioned above delude themselves. They've also been taught that the *perception* of quality is more important than the reality. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak," convince the customers that you're the best and there you go.
They honestly don't know any better, because they've never actually built anything. All they know how to do is maximize profits. It's not just the software, either, it's the hardware. In spades. Some salescreature from Asia will waltz in and say, "I can build your gidgle-widgets for fifty cents!"
The PHBs get moist eyed. They exclaim, "we're paying ten times that now!" They pound each other on the back and cry. "FIFTY CENTS? Yay! Halloo," and they sign the deal.
The new stuff arrives and about half of it breaks. About 10% of it doesn't even work out of the box. The PHBs DON'T CARE. The way they look at it, they're saving so much money that, even if they have to replace the customer's unit two or three times, they still come out ahead.
The Internet is changing that, though, because most of us consumer types look at reviews before we buy anything. PHBs *hate* online reviews, because they say, "their stuff may 'sizzle nicely, but the steak itself is awful ..."
(Gosh, I'm awfully poetic this morning. I need more coffee.)
Re:Congrats to the lucky ones (Score:5, Insightful)
"I *am* curious why that touchscreen - which is approximately the size of 2 smartphones - was a $1611 upgrade from the basic controls."
Because they can. It's also why $12.95 in thin plastic sticky taped to your vehicle costs $1190 in "performance styling"
All stock Nav systems are crap compared to aftermarkets like Kenwood. yet they cost 3X the price and deliver 2X the features... like real bluetooth from BluAnt or BlueParrot.
I can drive at highway speeds with the windows down and the other end cant tell I'm in the car with my Kenwood Bluetooth hands free setup.
Shipping software for your computer-car (Score:5, Insightful)
What's different here is that Ford is now shipping software to their customers, as opposed to having their customers go back to their favorite garage and have the mechanic plug the car into a magic computer, that often even he has only a faint clue of how it works. This is a significant paradigm shift. It means that Ford will be able to manage more frequent software releases, and maybe start thinking about changing whole features within the lifetime of the car, outside of regular "oh you need to have an inspection after 100 000km" kind of things. So that's cool.
Now the bad part is that your "computer-car" stays proprietary software, and there will probably still be no way in hell that you will be able to modify that software yourself, unless you do some reverse engineering. But it necessarily opens up interesting avenues like running Rockbox [rockbox.org] on your radio receiver, or flashing some controllers with free software for some of us that are into that kind of crazy thing. I say "necessarily" because the car owners do not have the proprietary interfaces to interoperate with the car, which are a significant barrier of entry for us wannabe car hackers.
In order for Ford to deliver that software to joe users, it means it has to lower this barrier of entry, and that can only be a good thing for everyone.
Re:Opening (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumer Reports has Ford quality way down again, mostly because of this software.
And if you buy a Ford and blame Microsoft for its problems I guarantee that you will be in the vast minority. Anyone with half a brain will be blaming Ford.
Re:what a summary! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but no.... Just no. He asked for a form that does a specific task. If the form does not do this task, then this isn't about guessing, it's that they're incompetent.
Re:Opening (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone with half a brain will be blaming Ford.
As they should. Ford is responsible for their brand's reputation in the final analysis. If they buy crap from some third party, they'll be the ones to suffer.Its the same thing with airplanes. When a Boeing or Airbus crashes, nobody remembers that it was a GE engine that blew up.
Guess where Ford's CEO came from? Its sad, because Boeing really needs someone who understands their reputation's problems in the face of outsource vendors.
Re:"with it, Ford breaks" (Score:5, Insightful)
Because non MS software works well without patches...
Not all off shore developers are bad (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess I am one of the lucky ones, I have worked with some great developers whom we farmed work too. We had two on the team over there who were better than most of the developers we had locally. It might depend on the type of work involved, my shop is on mid and larger systems and our requirements are a whole lot stricter so we don't see what others might.
Still to dismiss a whole part of the industry under thinly veiled bigotry does not serve the Slashdot community well. I guess its easy to ride along on the misery train and blame the other guy, but first we must dismiss his ability because if we did not then where we would be.
So guys, cool it with the assertion that off shore developers are not up to speed, the simple fact is there are many good developers in other parts of the world and many are far better than those who whine about them
Re:what a summary! (Score:4, Insightful)