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Ford Dumping Windows For QNX In New Vehicles
innocent_white_lamb writes "Ford has announced that their in-vehicle technology called Sync will be based on Blackberry's QNX operating system and will no longer use Microsoft Windows. My own 2013 Ford Escape has the Windows-based Sync system. I wonder if they will issue an update to change it to QNX."
Anonymous sources inside Ford cited reliability problems with Windows and lower licensing costs for the switch to the classic realtime OS.
They made the right decision. QNX is one of the more enjoyable embedded OSes (IMO YMMV of course).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I rented a Ford Fusion a few months back. The MSFT in-vehicle tech worked perfectly well.
I know it's anecdotal, and I'm all for competition, but I wonder if this was a good decision. When the car company cites licensing costs that can't be much per vehicle as a reason to change a technology, you begin to feel they're cutting corners.
We need a better F/OSS Platform for this type of development. I would like to see something like GNU/Hurd finally come to fruition and become the one true operating system for embedded devices, upward to desktop/server. With the Mach Kernel, it stands to actually give us a unified kernel that can serve all these purposes without being a giant, sluggish monolithic blob. Once that platform is complete, everyone else can throw their own interfaces and such on top of it.
Android is defective by design, and Ubuntu's solution is right up there with it. QNX is where it's at, but we need a Mach based F/OSS alternative.
Sig: I stole this sig.
QNX is clearly a better choice for a system that should just work, all of the time. However, I doubt it's really all that unreliable, and the bigger problem with Sync is that the UI is horrible, among the worst I've ever seen. I've had a couple of rental cars with it, and the last time Hertz offered me a Ford, I told them I wanted a different car, it's that bad. And the UI isn't Microsoft's fault, I don't think.
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I wonder if it is really true. I'd assume that full fledged OS with all the stuff included would be better infotaintment system than QNX.
As I do not know which version of "Windows" they use, suppose they used Android. Now they would get, for free without any development costs or time, bluetooth, wifi, 3G, UI, development tools, etc. The system would work as a bluetooth handsfree[1]. The system would, with a SIM, work as a wifi-hotspot. You would get Google Maps, i.e. navigation. Games from Play store. Etc, for free (or the price of Android if they want maps&play).
With QNX, what do they get?
[1] I assume Android can work as a bluetooth "device", not only as a "host".
Sync was so bad that I wouldn't buy a Ford. I rented a handful of 2013 model Fords with the Sync system. I had an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. The stupid Sync system was a huge battle. Syncing just wasn't a clean process. It did work but smooth as silk is not how I would describe it. But then it got worse. It asked if I would like to set up the emergency something. I presume this was an automated 911 call if I crashed. Well actually no I don't want the computer calling the police; I'll make phone calls of that nature thank you very much. And in today's world it is unlikely that if I were to crash that there aren't 200 people with cellphones that will call anyway. But lastly the system was so crappy I doubt that it would call 911 but would call 912 or 999 thinking that we were in the UK.
But you are probably thinking no big deal opt out and you are fine. But nope after opting out, every time the stupid car started a woman's voice would blah blah about the emergency system not being activated. I looked in the manual and found no solution, so I went on the net and found no solution. So there is no way on earth that I would buy a Ford. Plus my sister had minor damage (but enough to partially disable the car) in a recent model fusion hybrid that took nearly 5 months to get the parts in. So she was out a near new car for 5 months; the whole point of buying a new car vs nursing a 10 year old car along is that the new car saves you the stress of breakdowns and any maintenance issues that cost anything or at least are hard.
But now Ford is leaving the abusive relationship they no doubt enjoyed with Microsoft and now they are getting into bed with the $2 whore that they found in a Ottawa brothel. I couldn't think of a technology company (after leaving microsoft) that I would rather partner with less than Blackberry. I fought with their stupid Playbook tablet and I have watched people fight with their stupid new QNX phones. I know people who are long term BB customers (often via work) who deeply resent the latest models. So why would you pick a company that is on the rocks and that people respect less than the aforementioned $2 whore?
But oddly enough the main reason that I think that QNX is a complete bowl of stupid is that I have known exactly one programmer who loved QNX and he was a useless tool. Actually worse than a useless tool; he was one of those developers that management thinks is a rocket surgeon but all he does is make things way worse. So if he tells you to cut the blue wire, not only should you not cut the blue wire but you should assume that cutting any wires is probably the exact wrong thing to do. So keep in mind that this tool probably thinks that QNX in a Ford is a cool idea.
Who was the genius that decided to go with Windows to begin with? Don't get me wrong, Windows is fine on desktops (traditionally) and servers (more recently), but using it for essentially embedded development would be my very last choice.