Why C MAX ruined my Ford experience (not MPG related)

[ScubaDadMiami]

I think that we should petition Ford to make AppLink work for MFT.  It's like they are penalizing those who paid more for an upgrade!  :rant:

 

Why shouldn't we be able to have both?

[Hollywoodtx]

I have been using my windows 8x since I had the car...Apart from it havinng a hard time with my text back ( think it is my accent) it does well. I just wish it would text my bad words when I REALLY want to. It seems to asterix my naughty words :)

[zhackwyatt]

I have been using my windows 8x since I had the car...Apart from it havinng a hard time with my text back ( think it is my accent) it does well. I just wish it would text my bad words when I REALLY want to. It seems to asterix my naughty words :)

Are you saying other voice commands work well for you except replying to text messages?

 

MFT only contains a list of preset text messages, you can't just respond with anything.

[maxed]

My Ford Touch does NOT have AppLink.  So for example, you can't thumbs up or thumbs down a song in Pandora through MFT.  If you have the non-MFT Sync, then you can.

 

In both systems once you have the phone connected over bluetooth, the sound will come through the car.

 

Fords site says the cmax has applink. Under the technology page.

[Wingrider01]

I think that we should petition Ford to make AppLink work for MFT.  It's like they are penalizing those who paid more for an upgrade!  :rant:

 

Why shouldn't we be able to have both?

 

Petition for something that is critical and not working, and AppLink is definitely not a critical subsystem. I want a navigation system that does not put me in the middle of a river or tell me to turn left in the middle of a bridge, the systems have been calibrated according to the TSB and has have a couple of GPS modules replaced - still has me turning left in the middle of a bridge

 

BTW a iphone will not interface with the message capability of sync since Apple in their infinite wisdom has decided not to utilize industry standards for SMS texting but to incorporate their own Imessage servers and Imessage application on the new version of the IOS. Prior to the release of the new version of the ios with Imessage the 3GS worked like a charm for this ability/

Edited May 6, 2013 by Wingrider01

[mtb9153]

So, I obviously have a big problem with the max. I have contacted Ford and have a case number and all that stuff so I am not so much looking for an answer rather than sharing my experience. For starters, MPG. I would cautiously state that everyone needs to relax about the low MPG. The break in period of the car and what appears to be a glorious misunderstanding of mean, median, and mode are responsible for this. Even though I am getting about 35 MPG at the 5,000 ish mile mark, I expect warmer weather and more break in to cross the gap. Oh sure, I have more problems; rear kick to open the hatch thingy is intermittent, GPS is lost, the gain on the speaker phone mic is way too high, and sync. Sync is the one problem that is so significant that this will be my last Ford purchase. Take a look at the video..... It isn't 1993 and we should have this radio thing to the iPhone 5 thing figured out BEFORE we launch a car. After talking with Ford they actually admit that the iPhone is more powerful than their Sync system and the Sync doesn't know how to act. While I applaud Ford for trying to take care of, we'll, everything, I think they fell short. All I want is what what's advertised. Not to wildly ridiculous when all I want is to; make a call, have a text read to me, and listen to the radio. My C Max experience has failed me at all three. Now I know some of will have diarrhea of the blog and star screaming how its Apple's fault and even pepper that with some Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates conspiracy theories. I get it. But, Ford claimed that it would work, not Apple. Ford admits the iPhone is more powerful than Sync so I will let them figure that out. I love my dealership and they have tried everything they can but my mechanic isn't a software programer nor do I want him to be. Ford promises a fix is coming but..... Thoughts?

 

http://youtu.be/CdrQPKcN0Ms

Sorry about your other issues but my iPhone 5 works great with my sync system, I love streaming my iTunes music through the bluetooth function.  There does seem to be some intermittent problems from time to time with my power button, but other than that I can live with it until the patch is available.

[Gloff]

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 believe the root of most Sync problems is its Windows Mobile operating system. Cadillac used a Windows Mobile based system in my previous 2004 CTS and it had lockups similar to the C-Max.

Cadillac has now wisely divorced themselves from the flawed Microsoft based system and moved to Linux.

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Cadillac-CUE/

 

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.

Nail on the head......

 

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. 

Edited May 7, 2013 by Gloff

[Jus-A-CMax]

Gloff - welcome to the forum :rockon:  and thanks for your insight...not bad for a "sales" guy :)

[lowbar]

Oh, and Sync "maven" has a name, it is Samantha. 

 

...and I've been calling her Suzy.  No wonder she's upset.    :doh:

[darrelld]

If you really want to know what powers MFT/Sync at its core, read this.

 

http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/A/1/0A1E07D6-7562-4566-AACF-E04DF4FF8879/A%20Technical%20Companion%20to%20Windows%20Embedded%20Automotive%207%20(final).pdf

Edited May 7, 2013 by darrelld

[sixtyeightmk2]

Windows Automotive is more of a "framework" and not a real OS. You could probably get access to it, but it's ARM based, and based on Windows CE. I think they are putting a $hit ton of effort into the developmental fix and it should hopefully be released at the end of this month.

[cepwin]

I will say aside from it not wanting to connect to my iPhone once I haven't had an issue in the few days I've had the car...it plays whatever audio is up on my iPhone and it correctly received and let me answer a phone call.   I don't get that many text messages so I haven't been able to verify how text messaging works on it.   Yes, Sync is a complex piece of software running on complex hardware so there will be bugs.  Honestly if I was building an on-board system I'd do it on something from the UNIX branch on the OS tree (UNIX, Linux or even mac OS...heck even iOS (not sure if there's any unix underpinnings though) rarely crashes.)  

[zhackwyatt]

I will say aside from it not wanting to connect to my iPhone once I haven't had an issue in the few days I've had the car...it plays whatever audio is up on my iPhone and it correctly received and let me answer a phone call.   I don't get that many text messages so I haven't been able to verify how text messaging works on it.   Yes, Sync is a complex piece of software running on complex hardware so there will be bugs.  Honestly if I was building an on-board system I'd do it on something from the UNIX branch on the OS tree (UNIX, Linux or even mac OS...heck even iOS (not sure if there's any unix underpinnings though) rarely crashes.)  

Things crash on Unix all the time.  The OS itself may not kernel panic very often (same thing that Windows does when it blue screens), but that doesn't meany any application that runs on *nix doesn't crash.  As I speak I'm debugging USB issues w/ Linux that would never happen in Windows.  The difference is that Windows is normally in a end-user setting where people are doing God knows what to it, where as *nix is usually in a server setting that has a couple things running on it, and is in a mostly non-interactive state.

 

Obviously I'm making grand generalizations, and I'm not saying one is better than the other.

[darrelld]

Things crash on Unix all the time.  The OS itself may not kernel panic very often (same thing that Windows does when it blue screens), but that doesn't meany any application that runs on *nix doesn't crash.  As I speak I'm debugging USB issues w/ Linux that would never happen in Windows.  The difference is that Windows is normally in a end-user setting where people are doing God knows what to it, where as *nix is usually in a server setting that has a couple things running on it, and is in a mostly non-interactive state.

 

Obviously I'm making grand generalizations, and I'm not saying one is better than the other.

 

I have rarely seen my Unix (BSD) based OSX crash. I have seen apps lock up and you need to option/command/esc to kill the rouge thread but it doesn't require a reboot. I will say Windows 7 x64 and Windows 2008 R2 seem more stable than any Microsoft OS I have ever used. The problems I have seen with W2K8 are related to HyperV VSS issues. That brings the whole server down.

[zhackwyatt]

I have rarely seen my Unix (BSD) based OSX crash. I have seen apps lock up and you need to option/command/esc to kill the rouge thread but it doesn't require a reboot. I will say Windows 7 x64 and Windows 2008 R2 seem more stable than any Microsoft OS I have ever used. The problems I have seen with W2K8 are related to HyperV VSS issues. That brings the whole server down.

Right, and what I'm saying is there is a difference between a kernel problem and an app on the box crashing.  A lot of folks seem to have difficulty in separating the two.  Just moving to Unix doesn't mean all the crashing will go away (or be reduced), which was implied in the comment I was responding to.  I can make a crap application crash on Linux.

[darrelld]

Right, and what I'm saying is there is a difference between a kernel problem and an app on the box crashing.  A lot of folks seem to have difficulty in separating the two.  Just moving to Unix doesn't mean all the crashing will go away (or be reduced), which was implied in the comment I was responding to.  I can make a crap application crash on Linux.

 

Right, but what I see happening on MFT/Sync is the whole kernel crash and reboot (black screen) not just the app. From what I have read on the functional specs I posted earlier one of the approved ways to access the api is with flash lite, which as you know is a scripting language. I haven't download the SDK or played with any MFT/Sync emulators but it would be interesting to see how they are doing their api calls.

 

A stable OS should not crash no matter how bad a call you make, garbage collectors should clean up any apps causing undue resource utilization.

Edited May 8, 2013 by darrelld

[zhackwyatt]

Right, but what I see happening on MFT/Sync is the whole kernel crash and reboot (black screen) not just the app. From what I have read on the functional specs I posted earlier one of the approved ways to access the api is with flash lite, which as you know is a scripting language. I haven't download the SDK or played with any MFT/Sync emulators but it would be interesting to see how they are doing their api calls.

 

A stable OS should not crash no matter how bad a call you make, garbage collectors should clean up any apps causing undue resource utilization.

Do you think there could be a watchdog timer that forces a reboot of the system if the App does not respond correctly?

 

I would give my right arm to sit w/ the MFT software engineers for a day :)

[darrelld]

Do you think there could be a watchdog timer that forces a reboot of the system if the App does not respond correctly?

 

I would give my right arm to sit w/ the MFT software engineers for a day :)

 

Since I can reproduce the problem with a large mp3 collection it looks like an array bounds problem to me. They try to loop through more items than the memory or some portion of the kernel can handle and the whole thing comes crashing down. Just speculation on my part but I did correctly guess the DC/DC converter being at the heart of dead battery issues.  :)

Edited May 8, 2013 by darrelld

[cepwin]

Just to clarify....I was referring to a kernel panic, not a app crash...Indeed apps will crash on any O/S

[Gloff]

Windows Automotive is more of a "framework" and not a real OS. You could probably get access to it, but it's ARM based, and based on Windows CE. I think they are putting a $hit ton of effort into the developmental fix and it should hopefully be released at the end of this month.

True. My point was that it's not Windows Auto/Microsoft Auto creating the problems, but a combination of a less-than-capable CPU with Flash taking up so much processing power before you even touch the screen. It also seems to me that the storage unit (I'm assuming some sort of flash memory) that contains all track names/artists/ phone numbers/ et al is also less-than-capable.

 

As to the developmental fix, that's the first I've heard of it, but I will keep you guys abreast of what I come across.

[Gloff]

Anyone with a GS3 using it with the C-MAX?  I am about to buy a phone and thought I'd ask...

GSIII has a weird quirk with bluetooth systems (not just Sync) in that it disconnects if you have the screen locked in some fashion(slide to unlock/face unlock/pin/whatever) when you voice command a call. Unless you install an AOSP rom, or one not based on the Samsung ROMs

[Gloff]

Gloff - welcome to the forum :rockon:  and thanks for your insight...not bad for a "sales" guy :)

 

 

Thanks for the welcome. Like I said, I'm a bit of an Enigma haha! Is it weird that I like the Fusion Hybrid over the 1.6EB for it's better weight distribution than the fuel mileage? 

 

People ask me what I drive, I respond honestly that I have a 22yr old BMW 318i with over 200k on it, but am a Ford Truck guy too! I will say this, I'm impressed by the C-Max's handling, its a fairly strong performer in the power and handling department, hybrid or otherwise!