Over at Techland, I’ve blogged about a cool demo I saw at the CTIA show here in San Francisco today: Ford’s new SDK which lets Android and BlackBerry developers write apps that control the Ford Sync in-dash entertainment/information system.
Tag Archives | Ford
Ford Improves Sync, Adds 10,000 Commands
When Microsoft and Ford first debuted the Sync platform three years ago, it was quite rudimentary. About 100 commands were supported which only allowed the user to navigate the menu structure of the system. In other words, it was cool but almost hopelessly basic.
Not anymore. The US carmaker on Thursday released an update that increases the available commands to over 10,000. Ford’s intention here is to make the whole system easier to use. This would allow somebody who may not be familiar with voice recognition to learn to use the system much easier.
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Have You Been Entertained and Informed by a Ford Lately? Should You Be?
Earlier today, I lounged in the passenger seat while a Ford employee sat behind the wheel and showed me MyFord Touch–the upcoming radically upgraded version of the digital entertainment/information platform that the company began offering a couple of years ago as Ford Sync. The new version has a speedometer that’s flanked by two LCDs, and a jumbo color touchscreen, and it lets you do a gazillion things–from listening to music to getting directions to adjusting mood lighting in the car to turning your auto into a mobile hotspot. I loved it. And the chances of the Ford rep getting distracted and causing an accident were…well, nil, because we were sitting in a fake car interior inside a conference room in the Las Vegas Convention Center here at CES.
I’m impressed by MyFord Touch, which will start to appear in cars later this year–price TBA–and which Ford plans to roll out to eighty percent of its line within five years. It–and/or stuff like it–will be a factor the next time I plunk down money for an automobile. But this New York Times story reports on concerns that the new generation of Internet-connected car computing systems simply demands too much attention from drivers. One of the naysayers is U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, who’s presumably in a position to do something about them if he so chooses.
Your opinion, please.