Firstly, I work for a Ford Dealer as a salesperson, (don't stop reading now!) and have been for the last two plus years. That being said, I'm a bit of an enigma, as far as the car sales industry goes, as I am actually passionate about cars, all kinds, from mind blowing performance on the track to mind blowing fuel economy. I've driven Shelbys to Electric Focus. I'm very interested in the technology (or lack thereof, depending on your view) and what it is doing for the industry. You'll find most car salespeople are cast-offs from other industries; the career salesperson that stays at one dealership for a long time is a rarity (I'm the fitth longest tenured person on the sales staff of about 25, including management, see the above tenure). I plan on staying for a long time, and hope to provide some insight into these cars that you may not get from your actual salesperson. I felt compelled to join the site because of the above statement. Everything contained herein is of my own opinion through my own research and experiences, and does not reflect the views of Ford. It's not directly related to Sync itself. Sync as a module is run off of Microsoft Auto 4.x. MA is a fairly sorted system, and as such, Sync without MyFord Touch is a reliable system. Compatiblity issues will always be there as the system has to be able to communicate with dozens of phone manufacturers. Given that fact, Sync does a great job for something that handles quite a bit of tasks that a bluetooth headset normally wouldn't handle. MyFord Touch is another story. The system, from my understanding, is an in-house development with a few departments participating. As multi-department projects go, there are compromises and disagreements. Why am I giving a long winded frame-job? To have everyone here understand the fix is not as simple as having the head engineer whip up some software, patience is going to be necessary here. Now on to the reason MFT has the issues it does. The problem is two fold, in my opinion. One: It runs off FLASH. Yes, the same thing that makes Youtube so laggy. Flash is not all bad, it has it's uses, but I feel that it is not the right tool for the job in MFT. Think of it this way, your home screen, for example, is a video. I know what you're thinking, no it's not, it's stationary! The screen refreshes about 24 times a second, it's the same frame, but it refreshes. This takes up CPU power I was told in the neighborhood of 30%, before you even perform an action (touchscreen/voice/hardware). Two: As I understand it, the CPU is 600mhz. So to whoever said they were told by a tech that the iPhone is more powerful, the tech was in fact correct! I understand why they went this route, who else is using 600mhz ARM CPUs? They're older tech, (in relative tech terms), and as such are cheaper to produce on a mass scale such as a vehicle. I feel the cost cutting here is the wrong place to put it, the increased cost of using a modern CPU isn't all that bad when you're putting it in nearly every car you make in the interest of customer expectation and satisfaction. I'm not an expert in the field of electronics, but I do know a couple of things about tech, and I think they went wrong here and with the use of Flash. What should have been used instead of Flash? I don't know, and in talking with a Ford Engineer, it was my understanding that his department was overruled on the decision, and had to make due with the the decision to use Flash. The latest update is mostly well sorted, and I think that for most customers, it is adequate for their daily usage. I'm sure there is more to MFT's problems, but these two are the big ones that cause issues. I wouldn't be so quick to blame Microsoft. Apple uses quite a bit of proprietary programming themselves which can interfere with industry standards (read: not using micro usb power connectors). In all, Ford is a blue-collar pioneer of in-car connectivity, that's more than Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Chevrolet, insert-car-maker-here can say. Ford revolutionized connectivity in cars with the original sync, the first over the mountain has to deal with the wild animals. They will learn from their mistakes, it will take time. Another interesting bit: Ford used Nuance for the Voice Recognition system. Google them, they're arguably the best in the biz of VR, and in my experience, Ford and Nuance completely NAILED the VR used in sync, I rarely have to repeat myself. More that I can say for Audi's system. Oh, and Sync "maven" has a name, it is Samantha.
