How Ford Will Upgrade Owners' Display Screens

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."

Comments

"with it, Ford breaks"

[decora]

yup. sounds about right.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[peragrin]

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:"with it, Ford breaks"

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[Bengie]

Car + Crash = Bad

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[hairyfeet]

That is the part I don't get about TFA. The article blathers on about 'Ford did this' and 'Ford did that' but all the ads I saw talked about how it was MSFT's software, so which is it? Is Ford merely calling up their contact at MSFT and saying "We want this feature and do something about this problem" or did they essentially hire MSFT to just write them the OS and hand them the source code which they are having to add features and fixes in house?

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[IndustrialComplex]

Because non MS software works well without patches...

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[FatdogHaiku]

"Please wait while Microsoft validates your airbag deployment software license..."
Congratulations, you airbag deployment software license is valid.
Microsoft will now continue deploying your airbag...

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[iggymanz]

no, Ford does in-house software development with help from Microsoft. I've a relative who does that, he is Ford employee.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[shutdown -p now]

Their software runs on Windows CE. I doubt they'd customize the OS itself (why?), but the actual userspace software that handles the car is likely all Ford.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[shutdown -p now]

Is there any good in-car software these days?

I've been looking hard, but they all seem to be crap - maybe not the "crash all the time" kind of crap, but "features circa mid-90" and "UI designed for a blind octopus" kind of crap. Comparing them to any other modern smart device - even, say, Nokia Symbian smartphones - is really sad.

Actually, come to think of it, I don't really need my car to have software on its own, at least not the kind that drives touchscreen. Just let me dock my smartphone, and give it full access to the main screen (and to any secondary screens, if any) and input knobs dedicated to it, as well as the audio system; and read access to all measurement devices in the car. Let software companies write software to handle all that, and let me pick the one I like.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[Grishnakh]

Actually, come to think of it, I don't really need my car to have software on its own, at least not the kind that drives touchscreen. Just let me dock my smartphone, and give it full access to the main screen (and to any secondary screens, if any) and input knobs dedicated to it, as well as the audio system; and read access to all measurement devices in the car. Let software companies write software to handle all that, and let me pick the one I like.

The problem with cars is that software becomes dated and obsolete far faster than the rest of the car does. Replacing a car every two years is idiotic, at least as far as the chassis, engine, suspension, etc. is concerned. What we need is cars where the consumer electronics are easily upgraded every year or two, while the rest stays the same, but without making your interior look like shit.

For most newer cars these days, the stereos really seem to be OK in my opinion, as long as they have a USB port and have Bluetooth connectivity so you can use your cellphone hands-free; these seem to be pretty common features in new cars these days. The problem, however, (as I've seen it, as I've been looking at new cars lately) is with the nav systems. Basically, you seem to have two choices: 1) a horrendously overpriced factory-installed system that visually integrates with the interior well, but costs $2-3k, and seems to be early-2000s technology with a shitty UI consisting of some weird knobs on the center console (like the Audis I've looked at), or really stupid shit like having a DVD drive that takes up most of the glove compartment and is only used for software updates, and those updates cost $300 each (like the Volvos I've looked at). Or, 2) you can buy a Garmin/TomTom/Magellan portable nav system for $2-400 that fits in your hand, has far better performance and UI than the factory systems costing 5x as much, has free map updates, has a touchscreen (apparently touchscreen technology is beyond the factories from what I've seen), however the only way to use it in your car is either to have a passenger hold it in his hand, or you buy some cheap-ass holder that clips to your air vents (like an 80s-era cupholder!) and have wires hanging out of the thing.

I'm sorry, I have a really hard time spending $40k on a car to be stuck with crappy old technology like this, or making it look ghetto with one of the aftermarket nav systems.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, you basically summed up everything that's wrong with it. My (2011!) VW has an in-dash nav system, and it turned out to be quite a downgrade from my portable Garmin unit in pretty much everything but screen size, and some nice (but tangential) integration with other car functions. The reason why I'm not using Garmin is that it then needs two wires, one to power it, and one to plug into AUX to use the car's sound system - and then I cannot use car's audio system for playback. Which would not be so bad by itself, since Garmin also plays MP3s and has an SD card slot - except that I want the wheel buttons for volume and back/forward to work! What a mess.

Well, on the bright side, my in-dash nav has a touchscreen. I guess that's progress.

The problem with cars is that software becomes dated and obsolete far faster than the rest of the car does. Replacing a car every two years is idiotic, at least as far as the chassis, engine, suspension, etc. is concerned. What we need is cars where the consumer electronics are easily upgraded every year or two, while the rest stays the same, but without making your interior look like shit.

That was the gist of my idea. Clearly, sound system ages pretty well, and I don't think that you really need to change screens every two years, either - our display tech is "good enough" today to last for more than that; think of an iPad display fitted into the dash - I know I could live with that for a long time.

What needs to be easily upgradable is internal hardware - CPU, RAM, storage and such - and the software that runs on top of that. But we already have all that in our smartphones! And we already have all the connectors and standards needed for that - e.g. my Galaxy S2 smartphone has USB OTG and MHL, so it could easily have external sensors connected to it via USB, and drive any external display via MHL. All that's needed is for the cars to expose all that, and software to be written to work with it.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[tapspace]

I worked on the Sync project. Part of the reason MSFT was all over the marketing materials is that MS was the one running the campaigns. Ford (and suppliers) did a lot of work, and currently, MS is involved as little as possible. I didn't work on the frontend, but from what I understand, there is an interface. If changes must change anything past the interface, they need to negotiate and pay for changes from MS. Ford does this as little as possible, because they don't want to pay extra... and they don't want to work with MS. Ford and MS are two gigantic companies used to pretty much pushing everyone around and it didn't take long for the relationship to go sour.

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[plover]

"Deploy airbag: Cancel or Allow?"

Re:"with it, Ford breaks"

[iggymanz]

There is no such venue.

what a summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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"

did MLK write the summary?

Re:what a summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

Workplaces like that are very common today. They're basically two or three American mechanical engineers, coupled with two or three American software developers. They usually have one good manager a level above them, but then another 15 or so useless managers above that. Then there are the 85 off-shore software developers who collectively are less productive than the two or three American software developers. Aside from getting their own assigned work completed, the American software developers also have to do or fix the work assigned to the off-shore developers. But since this whole off-shoring idea was originated by one of the 15 useless middle managers, it's untouchable and can't just be discarded, although it's a complete waste. Then there's a 'user interface designer' that the software developers have to fight with daily. This poor fellow dropped out of art school and somehow became an expert in UIs. He wants to spend all day adding curved corners and gradients to every part of the UI. Then he decides to drop menu bars, status bars, and other useful UI functionality like that, because it's not 'usable'. The software developers battle with him constantly over his stupid ideas, but this designer is the son of the brother of one of the middle managers, so he stays around although he's a complete waste.

Re:what a summary!

[billcopc]

This.

Offshoring, in my experience over the past 3-4 years, has been more trouble than it is worth. The time you spend babysitting these novice developers eats up whatever you "saved" by paying them 1/4 of your local wage, and it drives that project manager absolutely batshit insane. And then it takes them at least twice as long to do anything.

I often get the impression most of these guys can't be bothered to think for themselves. If you tell them "Add a newsletter subscription form", they will add the form, sure, a form that does nothing when you click Submit. It doesn't matter that the same guy has been working on your site for over a year, he's still not going to realize you didn't just want an inert form on your website. If you then say "make it insert into the database", hey great, now it's inserting into the database - in some random table that isn't the subscriptions table! So the net result is you practically write p-code, which they then thinly translate into Java or PHP or whatever.

Some shops can apparently tolerate this level of mediocrity. We've tried offshoring a few times, thinking maybe we had bad luck the first few times... nope, always the same bullshit, so that's why I now know how to configure and script Asterisk IVRs. We wanted to pay someone to just get it done since it was well outside our expertise, but in the end we had to do it over from scratch because all the offshore contractors we hired were complete imbeciles - so much for calling themselves Asterisk experts!

Re:what a summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

So the net result is you practically write p-code, which they then thinly translate into Java or PHP or whatever.

If you do it a certain way it's not so bad. The good but expensive programmer writes the stuff in precise English. It then gets compiled by some Indians into Java/.Net.

Then the good expensive programmer goes off to write something else while a cheaper bunch of people maintains the crap :).

If you really want to offshore work and not just "compilation", I think you should skip the "cheap" Indians, the Eastern Europeans are much better, they charge more but at least they're better than AIs- you still need to be a bit careful, but the hit rate is better.

Re:what a summary!

[swalve]

Ask culture versus guess culture. You expect them to guess as to what is necessary to make the subscription form work, and they expect you to ask for what you want.

Re:what a summary!

[Lumpy]

Most companies love medicore as it had higher profit margins. Even high end companies like Crestron are doing it. I have Crestron gear that is from 10-12 years ago that still runs perfectly. Yet new stuff I install for customers have a 35% failure rate. OR they dont work as reliable as they should. All of crestrons IP enabled WifI touchpanels are complete crap. Even their flagship TPS-6X is not reliable. out of 60 I have installed 30 drop connections or fall over at random times, and all of them have battery life issues due to bad design.

Medicore is higher profit margins for the executives and shareholders. Screw the customer.

Re:what a summary!

[smpoole7]

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:what a summary!

[Nemyst]

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:what a summary!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

This.

Offshoring, in my experience over the past 3-4 years, has been more trouble than it is worth.

The work ethics and habits of American workers evolved over the decades when long career in one company with a gold watch and a pension. They work in certain way. The management on its part should be nurturing the workers who have a deep understanding of the company and the customers, especially those workers who cultivate skills that can not be useful seeking employment elsewhere. But management ditched the gold watch, picked up the golden parachute.

The work ethics and the habits of the body-shopping firms evolved in a climate where the relationship is definitely not long term. Both sides knew it. Both sides expected the other side to take maximum advantage of it. American management went in thinking American work ethics in third-world prices. But it is not dealing with employees but intermediate contractors. Even if the body-shopping contractors have long term employees who are loyal, they would be loyal to the contractor, not to the outsourcing companies. Further everyone knows the cluelessness of the middle management. So they found every loop hole in the contract, every stretchable point, every exploitable gap and the body shopping contractors took the American management to the cleaners faster than you can say "aloo gobi, channa masala, butter nan and mango lassi please".

There are world class employees and workers in India. But they (I should say we, because I am a desi who would not work for a desi salary) go up the value chain pretty quickly and are not available for hire at third world prices. What you do get for third world prices are third world class work.

Re:what a summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Then there's a 'user interface designer' that the software developers have to fight with daily. This poor fellow dropped out of art school and somehow became an expert in UIs. He wants to spend all day adding curved corners and gradients to every part of the UI. Then he decides to drop menu bars, status bars, and other useful UI functionality like that, because it's not 'usable'. The software developers battle with him constantly over his stupid ideas, but this designer is the son of the brother of one of the middle managers, so he stays around although he's a complete waste.

I just thought I'd chime in here. Ford has contracted out at least one UI deign project for their new cars to several parallel design firms, including one I work with (sorry NDA prohibits more info). The design is a long term project made up of: one manager below the level of company founder; one graphic designer; and a bunch of usability researchers from disparate backgrounds including: UI design, anthropology, CS, music, and education. They spend most of their time putting together fast and dirty mockups of interfaces and then watching as many people as possible (in the target demographic) try to use them and interviewing those people about the experience.

It is too early to judge the quality of the end product and even if it is excellent who knows if Ford will go forward with it. That said, I thought it important that people know your vision of how UIs are designed does not reflect the reality of my current experience with their "in process" design work.

Re:what a summary!

[Jaime2]

No, he's saying that it's expensive to say exactly what he wants, and that offsets all of the savings. At the end of the day, it's the thinking that's expensive not the typing. If you move the typing to India, but don't move the thinking, then you've hired a typist instead of a programmer.

Re:what a summary!

[Hasai]

....If you tell them "Add a newsletter subscription form", they will add the form, sure, a form that does nothing when you click Submit....

Wow; sounds just like your typical Union guy.

Opening

[Ice Station Zebra]

Sounds like an opening for a black hat to compromise a Ford vehicle with some mal-ware.

Re:Opening

[Mantis8]

F.O.R.D. = fix or repair daily will take on a whole new meaning now.

Re:Opening

[mikerubin]

Format Or Reinstall Daily

Re:Opening

[Antique Geekmeister]

Yes, it is. The lack of specialized hardware or connectors for the upgrade makes the update fully software dependent. And with modern GPS systems, it makes unauthorized tracking (or unconstitutional law enforcement tracking) a personal privacy risk as well. And it creates fascinating tune-up paths for local mechanics with the skills to manipulate the carburetor and automatic transmission settings. The ability to turn off automatic headlight settings in software is invaluable for illegal activities, and to alter fuel-air ratios for high performance driving is criticial to access in software for modern systems.

I do hope that Ford's engineers are a good team, and not been forced to follow management policy decisions made in hurried moments between policy meetings that affect the safety and reliability of basic engine systems. I've certainly seen that happen with critical manufacturing and networking architectures, with managers too busy or unable to have the meetings with their employees insted of their own managers to listen to negative concerns about subtle flaws in a planned architecture. "We'll fix that if it happens" is a very dangerous approach that I had to deal with yesterday.

Re:Opening

[hedwards]

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:Opening

[The Askylist]

I had an issue upgrading from version 2 (Bridgend Boyo) to the latest, Dagenham Dustbin. Next year's Emphysemic Escort is supposed to fix it, but I suspect I'll be disappointed till Z-Car Zodiac is finally released.

Re:Opening

[kmoorman]

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:Opening

[PPH]

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.

uhh.. article years too late..

[rrossman2]

Seriously... the article writer and story submitter haven't been involved with or paying attention to autos for the past.. oh.. 10+ years?

Most "recalls" anymore are for flashing the software or programming in the ECU, TCM, BCM, or whatever other module. There's a recent 2007-2010 model year Honda recall for transmissions shifting issues that the fix is flashing new programming into the computer. How is that not software?

Heck, GM radios (yes, made by delco or whoever) come with certain features locked out.. to unlock say the input port to work with XM requires plugging it into the shop computer and basically "flipping some bits" in the radio firmware (for lack of better terms) to enable the feature.

There are older recalls that are just software updates.. and these updates are as much software and done by the car manufacturer as the Ford update (IE: Ford doesn't make the radios, other companies do.. some companies that make OEM radios include: Fujitsu Ten (Eclipse), Panasonic, Delco, Alpine, Pioneer, Becker, Kenwood, JVC... most of that short list I typed out also still make or made after market radios at some point.

Re:uhh.. article years too late..

[Stormthirst]

Isn't the point though that Ford are confident enough in the update process that they can let users do it themselves? A recall implies that there is such a serious issue that a class action law suit would be more expensive than doing the recall?

Re:uhh.. article years too late..

[Lumpy]

"Heck, GM radios (yes, made by delco or whoever) come with certain features locked out.. to unlock say the input port to work with XM requires plugging it into the shop computer and basically "flipping some bits" in the radio firmware (for lack of better terms) to enable the feature."

Wrong. to enable XM radio you plug in the Receiver module, on power up you press and hold AUX intil the display flashes. it then detects any new devices and enables them.

They don't plug it into the shop computer unless you call the guy smearing grease and dirt all over the inside of the car a "computer"

Re:uhh.. article years too late..

[Chris Mattern]

It is compared to having to take the car to the dealership and having *them* plug in the USB stick--which up until now was the only way they would do official patching.

HMI in automotive is not new

[hubertf]

I don't know for Ford, but German automotive manufacturers have dealt with human/machine interfacing for a very long time,
and in the process have not focussed on software/screen only, but also added many more interfacing methods like buttons, dials, cameras facing into the car and outside.
Names that come to mind are car manufacturers (Audi, BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz) and their suppliers (Continental, Hella, Vector Informatik).

The whole topic has been covered not by computer science or engineers, but very much by information science.
So maybe you want to have a look there if you are into this topic.
Keywords: driver assistance, hmi, navigation systems

  - Hubert

Re:HMI in automotive is not new

[TubeSteak]

I don't think bringing up BMW in this conversation will do you any favors.
They were almost universally flamed for iDrive when it came out and the subsequent upgrades have only made it 'less bad'.

Microsoft Sync

[AmberBlackCat]

I can't help but think there's a connection between (Ford uses Microsoft software for the car audio & display) and (Ford becomes the first company to issue a patch so users can upgrade their car's software).

Congrats to the lucky ones

[argStyopa]

I'm pleased that they're paying attention to this; unfortunately I bought a 2011 edge without the fancy screen, so I'm in the-hell-of-1974-bad-stereo-control, to the power of many-more-features-shoehorned-in.

I *am* curious why that touchscreen - which is approximately the size of 2 smartphones - was a $1611 upgrade from the basic controls.

Right now I (apparently) have the software and most of the systems in my car, but imagine trying to run an mp3 player, navigation system, bluetooth phone, etc with THIS (http://image.motortrend.com/f/2008_ford_edge/2308898196140957893+ppromo_mt_large/center_console.jpg) set of controls?

I seriously can't wait until all cars have at least a USB port so I can save/store/communicate things like radio stations, seat preferences, etc all just by uploading my own user config. It'd be even nicer to get diagnostic data from the car that way that's a little more comprehensive than "oh, the red light is on".

Re:Congrats to the lucky ones

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be even nicer to get diagnostic data from the car that way that's a little more comprehensive than "oh, the red light is on".

Get a ODB-II reader.

Re:Congrats to the lucky ones

[swalve]

I just bought a new car, and it does have more diag data than just a red light. Now, it's "if red light A is lit steadily, and amber light B flashes six times, the airbag is bad. If it flashes 5 times, you are out of gas." Etc. It is confusing.

Re:Congrats to the lucky ones

[Lumpy]

"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.

Re:Congrats to the lucky ones

[ninetyninebottles]

I seriously can't wait until all cars have at least a USB port...

Long ago, decades even, I thought, "well now that portable music players like the walkman are common, at least all new cars will have Aux input ports for sound so we can play any source of music. I mean, it's only a few cents to add a line in to the stereo, they'd be morons not to add it. The problem is, it never happened. Not enough people think about these things when buying a car so manufacturers never did it. Right up though the peak of the iPod era most cars still shipped without an Aux port building a huge market for third party tape deck converters and radio transmitters to get music into your car stereo.

My point is, don't hold your breath. The auto industry is glacial and near fatally stupid much of the time. Just because a standard USB port makes sense doesn't mean it will ever happen. Quite likely by the time users can upload preferences into a car USB will be a legacy port and we'll be uploading via wireless transmissions and complaining about how we need an adaptor to get data off the quantum entanglement based network and into our autos.

Re:Congrats to the lucky ones

[Grishnakh]

The problem with the aftermarket stuff now is that it seems like, unlike back in the 90s, no one's using standard DIN-sized components any more, so it's nearly impossible to replace your radio or nav system without it looking like shit.

Re:Congrats to the lucky ones

[ColdWetDog]

The problem with the aftermarket stuff now is that it seems like, unlike back in the 90s, no one's using standard DIN-sized components any more, so it's nearly impossible to replace your radio or nav system without it looking like shit.

What are you ever about? Duct tape comes in all sorts of colors these days.

Re:Great!

[facetiousprogrammer]

Easy - prevent the car to start without latest update!

Psych majors, too

[paiute]

There is a whole field in industrial psychology which studies the interaction between human and machine in terms of information flow and decision making. These guys and gals work for the CIA, NSA, FAA, NASA, DOD, etc.

UI issues

[Alomex]

The upgrade is to fix UI issues. How bad is the UI? I rented a Ford Focus a month ago and could not figure out how to switch the radio station to a non-programmed location!!

The screen gave you no indication and none of the likely combinations worked, and I'm a techie who loves gadgets, CLI, etc.

I can only wonder what would the average customer experience be like.

Re:Great!

[hedwards]

Consider that the update is being shipped via USB stick. I think there's your answer the car is almost certainly locked against unsigned updates, so the likelihood of it working out well in that case is pretty slim. Especially considering that the only connectivity is likely to be through the USB port rather than WiFi.

If it was WiFi, I'd be wondering how long until somebody figures out how to literally unlock the care via WiFi.

A little background info...

[mrquagmire]

The summary is a little misleading. This is not a "major upgrade," it is a complete rewrite of the MyFord Touch system. You see, for their first attempt, Ford decided to outsource the project to a company called BSQUARE who put the UI together using Adobe Flash Lite. For some reason, the results were slightly less than stellar.

Anyway, Microsoft itself is supposedly helping with the rewrite and Ford is doing the rest in-house (without Flash) so those of us who have been dealing with this awful system for the last year are at least a little hopeful.

Re:A little background info...

[Sollord]

It's even more amusing/worse as this update is a rewrite of a rewrite since MyFord was a total rewrite of the original ford sync system which ford originally developed in house with MS. Talk about going full circle

Volvo was doing software before Ford owned them

[axonis]

Well Volvo were way ahead with software updates from the late 90's. The S80 was well known for having more computing power than an F15 with over 40 computers. I guess in this context thats why Ford bought them, then sold them off once they learned a few tricks. Unfortunately Ford did not learn how to upgrade a car via the Internet, like with a Volvo when you get it serviced. i.e. when they plug the car in at a dealer, it connects to the factory via the internet. I think a USB stick is just a marketing gimmick.

The real news here ...

[DougReed]

... 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.

Shipping software for your computer-car

[anarcat]

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 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:Shipping software for your computer-car

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Iranian tin foil hat: All the pretty little USB sticks in the mail. Let's plug it into the computer at work to see what happens. It's from Ford, what could possibly go wrong? /Iranian tin foil hat

Just sayin...

Installation: Step One

[PPH]

Close all the windows.

Re:I cant wait!

[PPH]

In my day, we actually found our cars up on bricks when our tires went missing.

Now get off my lawn!

Tesla is the way to go

[WindBourne]

They run Android. With them, we do not have to worry about blue screams of death. I mean between Found On Road Dead and MS, it is the LAST PLACE YOU WANT TO BE.

Not all off shore developers are bad

[Shivetya]

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:Not all off shore developers are bad

[uncqual]

+1

If the main criteria for hiring is "cheap" and/or the goal is "offload work no one wants to do" and/or you treat the offshore developers as "out of sight, out of mind" and/or as "second class citizens", you may not do so well offshore. However, if you hire to high standards, pay well, and give the offshore teams interesting work, it can be a great source of talent. Obviously remote development shifted 12 hours brings its own challenges and opportunities and that needs to be factored in.

In recent years, as India's own software industry expands, it appears that more great developers in India are choosing to stay home rather than pursue the painful US immigration process. The unmistakable gradual, yet likely irreversible IMHO, decline of the US (both in relative and absolute terms) probably contributes to this as well. This of course means there are more good offshore developers and less in the US and the offshore developers are costing more.

(For example, on the "cost more" issue, I know of one large company with substantial development operations worldwide whose recent US raise pool was 3% while the raise pool for India was substantially over 10%.)

(And, to the AC who is going to ask if I'm in middle management or related to one of the CxOs - Nope, I'm a developer/sometimes first level manager.)

Re:Saddest. Up-mod. Ever.

[ColdWetDog]

Magic 8-ball says:

You will not be invited to any Christmas parties this year.

This is something new?

[jtara]

PERHAPS the fact that the customer is updating the firmware themselves is something new. But as others have pointed-out, car manufacturers have been updating firmware in engine and other onboard computers for years.

Human-Machine Interface Engineer? Not new either. Let me tell you how I turned some line workers into Human-Machine Interface Engineers 30 years ago...

I was working for a small company in Michigan that made measurement and control systems used on automotive assembly lines. We were working on a system for a Bendix axle plant. It read a Brinell (hardness) gauge, and controlled the movement of the part through the station, application of the gauge, good/bad paint spray, etc.

The company was perpetually behind, they had one and a half software people (I was the one - the other was a hardware guy that dabbled), and they didn't want to bother me about this job until I'd finished the prior one. So, I finish up this job and they tell me they've got this new job for me to do, and they're sending me to Ohio the next day on the primary contractor's private plane.

They had the hardware put together. They told the client they were sending two guys to wire-in the system. No software had been written or designed. I didn't even know what it was supposed to do. They briefed me...

We arrive at the plant and the guy we meet starts screaming at us. We were two days late. We didn't KNOW that we were two days late, but we were apparently two days late.

While my co-worker started wiring-in the the box, I set up my Altair (yes, really) on the plant floor next to the line. So, for two weeks, I sat there with this deafening noise designing and writing code. The line was down, of course, and the two workers responsible for it had to stand around twiddling their thumbs.

You haven't felt pressure till you've shown-up at an axle plant two days late to write software on the plant floor from scratch, with the line down, and two monkeys hovering around twiddling their thumbs.

The line workers might have had some light maintenance tasks, but otherwise they didn't have anything to do, so they helped out. Sometimes we need them to operate the equipment, etc.

We had a panel with a small LCD display (a few characters) and a bunch of big, industrial buttons in neat rows and columns. And no design. At all. (OK, I mean, we knew what we needed to do with the gauges and solenoids. We knew the operating sequence of the line. But there was no per-determined UI design.)

So in a leap of faith I ask the guys: "how do you want this to work?" Why not? These were they guys that have to work the machine every day. Who better to do the UI design?

They were delighted. I made the buttons work the way the line workers thought the buttons should work. I made the display show messages that were meaningful to them. It really helped to smooth-over the situation of us arriving late with nothing but a gutless box that did nothing to wire-in...

Re:business math for science majors

[0123456]

offshoring costs you 1/4 the money, and you get 1/2 the performance.

that means, you are getting twice the efficiency.

LOL.

Then they tell you that yes, absolutely, they will deliver on time. Then the day before they're supposed to deliver they say actually, it's not done and they'll need more money to complete it. Six months later they send you a complete pile of crap that doesn't work. Then you pay your own developers to rewrite it into a less buggy piece of crap that you can actually ship with only a huge collection of bugs that randomly fsck up your users' day.

Meanwhile you're a year behind the competition who didn't decide to save money by outsourcing. But, don't worry, the manager who made that decision took his big bonus and moved on to a new job where they're convincing their new boss to follow the same plan that was so successful for you.

How do we...

[yoshi_mon]

I just read the thread and while there were a lot of good comments I am still struck with a question.

What do we use instead of a car analogy for such a story?