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Will Your Next Car Run Windows?
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft is beginning to move into the automotive industry. Their 'Automotive Business Unit' is selling a custom version of Windows CE called Windows Automotive. Microsoft attended a conference in Detroit this week to promote their software."
I would think Detroit has enough worries about bad perceptions regarding their reliability without adding this to it. There's a reason why it's called "WinCE"
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
Do I have to pay the M$ tax on my car.
Can I opt for a -$100 upgrade and use other certain free OSes ?
Answers in order: probably, and probably not.
sigh.
dave.
It should be noted that I read recently (sorry no links but maybe others can chime in) that BMW is working with Apple to replace its Windows in Car solution with something from Apple.
;)
Will this only extend to the music portion of the car?
Or will apple oversee other parts like navigation etc..
It was not known according to the article, but the take away was BMW was not happy with their Microsoft solution.
So you next car might not have a steering wheel but perhaps a "Clickable scroll wheel"
The question is, though, do we need such things in our cars? Do we really need cars equipped with "home entertainment systems," if these cars will only be used for trips to the nearest shop or driving to work?
Of course we don't _need_ them. However, people want them and are will to pay extra money for them -- a guy I work with runs a business installing this kind of stuff. People will pay a small fortune to keep the kids quiet in the back seats...
Does anyone know of a open source project to control a Fuel-Injected engine? I have been thinking about how to set it up, and am not sure of the off-the-shelf hardware that would be needed. But since most engines just use a simple collection of sensors that return a given voltage it probably wouldn't be that hard. And feedback is done by sending X volts to device Y.
So anyone who knows of USB/PCI/Serial devices that can communicate this way on many (30 - 40) lines. Post them here, please!
I'd ideally want an embedded solution, but why not a PC-based solution. You'd just have to wait for the PC to boot before you could start the car.
The article doesn't say _anything_ about wince running the fuel injectors, or the ABS, or air bags, or brakes, or steering... It mentions only annoying stuff that has no business being in a car anyway.... Having an in-vehicle DVD player itself is probably more likely to cause crashes than what operating system is being run on said DVD player. Yes, I'm old. I drive a 21 year old diesel truck with no electronics and 440,000 miles on the odometer.
Imagine if you could simply just IM the car in front of you. Type (or speak, or something) in the license number in your auto IM client, and say "you just cut me off, you !@$^#$^@^%!" Now THAT would be fun....
Clearly the intent is to use WinCE for running the radio, DVD player, navigation system, etc. Of course some sort of operating system is necessary to control all of those things through a single multifunction input/display unit.
I recently moved from Vermont to Westchester Co. New York. The roads around here are like a labrynthine maze. I use my handheld mapping GPS almost every day to find my way around. I would most certainly make effective use of an in-dash navigation system, even just to go to the store. Afterall getting lost and ending up in a bad neighborhood can really ruin your day. And lets face it, sitting in a car is boring, and a DVD player keeps the little brats quiet and entertained.
BTW don't foget, WinCE shares absolutely zero code with other versions of Windows. Although I am a dedicated Linux proponent, I have spent some time evaluating and writing code on Windows CE and the API and overall architecture are pretty good. I haven't looked at the internals, but (correct me if I am wrong) I think MS makes the source available, don't they? Anyway from a developer's point of view it's a pretty good platform for developing such devices.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
It should also be noted that BMW is a high-end product, so they aren't necessarily concerned with licensing fees. So it isn't about money. One thing that BMW is concerned with - quality when it comes to their brand image.
I have owned BMWs for about 9 years now (and no, I can't afford new ones). But BMW is VERY strict when it comes to using their logos and even colors in anything. They are very brand conscious, because they don't want it diluted. They produce phenominal cars, and want to make sure that their brand is associated with quality. I was a little sad when I heard that they had chosen a Microsoft product for their vehicles for that very reason. I actually thought that Apple is a lot like BMW in some respects. They aren't the biggest car maker, they are somewhat of a niche product catering to a very specific customer, and they produce high-quality products. I think Apple would be a great choice, but I think a BMW-home-grown product would also be cool. (Hello? SuSE?)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
No, an operting system is not needed to control all of these units through a single multifunction input/display unit.
Each of these systems pre-existed without a traditional operating system, whether those systems were mechanical, simple electrical circuits, PLCs or whatever. Why they would do this is the combination of two reasons.
Price drops in hardware that can support an OS significant enough to compete with the cost of the alternative mechanical / electrical solution, and the ability to produce intermeidate versions and upgradable versions of the product which removes costs associated with pre-production glitches in the design.
Needless to say, since the issues won't be heavily scrutinized before the item is produced, there's going to be a much greater chance that the design of these systems will become much more like programming projects instead of traditional manufacturing. With all of the known pressures on programming projects, I'd imagine that the good things in UI design that comes from the manufacturing field will be lost in a maze of widgets, and that project deadline pressures will result in rationalizing the release of less than perfect code, with maybe a "new downloadable" update planned for "when we can get to it in the future"
There's a lot more pressure to get it right when you're mistake is going to be hardcoded into a manufacturing run of a hundred thousand items or so.
Last year the Thai Finance Minister was trapped inside his BMW allegedly due to a software glitch. http://www.thaivisa.com/index.php?514&backPID=514& tt_news=325
But another report said it was due to an electronic failure..
http://asia.cnet.com/news/systems/0,39037054,39130 270,00.htm
Sorry, but this statement is straight up false. The WinCE kernel is based off of the Windows NT 4.0 kernel. Also, WinCE shares the architecture of Windows 2000.
Microsoft ripped out a large part of the OS functionality and replaced other parts. Most of the API is the exact same as Win2K, but a lot of function calls with eleven arguments under Win2K require to you pass nine of them as NULL or zero under WinCE.
Just imagine the security situation this chainsaw OS surgery has created. Think bluesnarfing is fun now? Try it when you can hijack the entire entertainment and navigation system of that expensive SUV that just cut you off!