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Ford's Buggy Infotainment System Referred To By Engineers As 'Polished Turd' and 'Unsaleable' (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: A class-action lawsuit against Ford and its MyFord Touch in-vehicle infotainment system -- originally based on a Microsoft platform -- has brought to light corporate documents that show engineers at the Dearborn carmaker referred to the problematic technology as a "polished turd" that they feared would be "unsaleable." The documents even reveal that Henry Ford's great grandson experienced significant problems with MyFord Touch. In one incident, Edsel Ford was forced to wait on a roadside for the system to reset and could not continue to drive because he was unable to use the IVI's navigation system. The lawsuit describes an IVI screen that would freeze or go blank; generate error messages that wouldn't go away; voice recognition and navigation systems that failed to work, problems wirelessly pairing with smartphones, and a generally slow system. Ford's CEO Mark Fields even described his own travails with the SYNC IVI, referring to it as having crashed on several occasions, and that he was so frustrated with the system he may have damaged his car's screen out of aggravation. The civil suit is expected to go to trial in 2017.
This is my shocked face. I've owned 2 Fords, and as far as I am concerned, that was 2 too many.
It will be interesting if there's public disclosure of the marketing requirements doc, not to mention the purchasing input. The former are likely to be a mass of mutually-exclusive bullet items, with no input beyond magic to resolve the contradictions, and the latter will have no allowance in the cost of goods for hardware (and WHY THE HELL MICROSOFT?) for the inevitable feature creep, so there's no way it could ever have worked.
It's really pretty bad. I wish it was easy to replace, and that there was an open source project to replace it. The moment I saw that Microsoft bezel under the infotainment system, I knew it was trouble. Hopefully this lawsuit forces Ford to replace every single one of them with something more usable.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
Auto makers just don't understand tech, and the product cycle of phones is way, way faster than cars. I own a car typically 10-15 years. I own a phone maybe 4, if it doesn't get a fatal screen break.
I want my car to have an audio input, and a USB charge port. That's it - let me handle the GPS, audio, whatever with my own phone & my own apps.
If autos want to really get fancy, mirror my phone on a bigger touch screen - but stay out of the way.