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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 miss QNX 6, damn you Blackberry!
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/pnw...
For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.
For some reason you would simply accept this.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on only five percent of the roads.
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off."
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
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.
that anyone would use Windows for embedded/realtime. Is it easy to discover this for other makes of cars?
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Ford has announced that their in-vehicle technology called Sync
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I rented a for focus, and drove it for about 2 months, the MSFT stuff installed in it was a total piece of junk. It would crash, hang,
and reboot in the middle of navigating to the destination, just like a windows PC.
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.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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".
I have SYNC in my 2013 F-250 and it blows. It keeps trying to re-index my SD card, so I can rarely use the voice commands to play music from it, and sometimes it'll switch by itself from playing SiriusXM to playing the SD card. It's also slow to respond sometimes (probably an artifact of it trying to re-index the SD card), and the UI to select music from the SD card is cumbersome.
I guess most of my gripes are about the SD card functionality; the rest of the functionality seems to work OK when it isn't being screwed over by the SD card, but again I find the interface cumbersome to use. For example, scrolling through the SiriusXM stations takes way too many taps.
My hope is that QNX, given its history as an RTOS, will be more responsive and robust. It might even give the developers a chance to improve the UI.
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.
Yes, a tired one.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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.
Carmakers optimize costs at sub-one-cent levels. "Can't be much" is the antithesis of the automotive beancounter mantra.
They're not THAT good. The valve body in my Ford Fusion's transmission (6F35 6-speed auto) wore out the pressure regulator valve, but Ford's initial solution was to update the software, so by the time they caught it the clutch pads (yes, automatics have clutches) had started to wear. At 10k miles the transmission required a rebuild including all new clutch pads, a new set of gears on the output side to the differential, and a new valve body. That said, it is a very clever transmission and the car otherwise completely satisfies me. But not *quite* as reliable as my rock-solid 2002 Taurus. But then, the Taurus wasn't using a new transmission design. The 6F35 was only three years old in 2012, and Ford usually takes a few years to get a new transmission worked out.
But will the real slim shady please play back!
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I was really apprehensive when I discovered that Sync was powered by Microsoft after I purchased my Focus two years ago, and rightfully so. What did MS know about maps and routing? On reading the article's subject my first thought, too, was I wonder if there will be an update: probably not.
Here are a few examples.
Found that the voice commands lacked synonyms so one had to conform to Sync.
It would lock up quite often for no apparent reason and the only way to re-boot it is to go to the side of the road, park, turn the ignition key to off, and then open the door for a few seconds. One could then restart and it would re-boot.
On the occasions when I needed routing my wife and son would be reduced to hysterics as I tried to get it to give directions to the intersection of, say, Laguna Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway. It appeared that it didn't like street names of more than one word in this context.
Use voice commands to make a call (this and some other errors of the type were repeatable) "Call Jenny Rechel home". Response was "No home number for John Litton, cell or work?"
I took it to the dealer twice and got updates that have stopped the lockups and can now use it to call Jenny but some other, more fundamental, problems persist.
Nate