Is Applink ever coming to MyFord Touch?

[Bryan Burch]

Inquiring minds want to know. I also would like a SDK for MFT.

[James Sentman]

That both goes double for me too. Additionally I’d like to know how many years off the switch to a QNX based in car system is, will it run on our hardware in the form of a software update, and if it will have SDK’s available as well.

[GrySql]

You're going to need a crystal ball for those answers.

 

[acdii]

Not even Ford can answer that question!

[Waldo]

Sure they can, they just choose not to at this time.

[Bryan Burch]

Why all the secrecy? Seriously though, if they can't get it right make it open source.....release it, and the community will thrive.

[JimArch]

Agreed, I've had my car for a year now and have been reading "please hold", rather than "this us what we are doing, and this is when we are doing it" from Ford.. Ford, why all the smoke and mirrors on rolling out software upgrades, and firm, company positions on supported or unsupported? To the casual observer,topics such as this feel a bit lackadaisical, no?

[acdii]

sshhh ancient chinese secret

[LASooner]

I'd go with probably not coming anytime soon, because if you do a search on this subject you will find posts dating back to 2011 on various forums. And a stifling lack of any real comment from Ford every time. And now the discussion is Ford moving to QNX, it's really hard to say how much development is going on with the MFT system now or in the future. Until you either buy a new car or someone comes up with an aftermarket solution for the 2013+ Fusions, we're basically SOL for the foreseeable future.

[acdii]

Rumor has it that there is another major update for MFT in the next few months, possibly by September.

[srogers]

I'm guessing we may hear something in June when Ford hosts their developers conference.

[Waldo]

I'm guessing that when the software is ready, you'll hear about it.

[acdii]

Yep! LOL My rumor came from my service adviser. He wouldn't say something like this without having heard it himself from Ford. The next one is supposed to fix the Ambient light issue as well as a few other glitches it still has. No word yet on if they will have Applink in it. They might, and are just holding off until it is ready to be distributed.

[jsolan]

Agreed, I've had my car for a year now and have been reading "please hold", rather than "this us what we are doing, and this is when we are doing it" from Ford.. Ford, why all the smoke and mirrors on rolling out software upgrades, and firm, company positions on supported or unsupported? To the casual observer,topics such as this feel a bit lackadaisical, no?

 

My guess is the reason they don't announce anything is the possibility of failure. I'm sure they're working on migrating old versions to QNX, but what if they come across some bug or something that makes it either impossible or extremely intrusive/costly to do the migration. They can bow out of the conversion without having promised anything to anyone. While I'm sure that will annoy a number of drivers who won't be able to get the upgrade, it will affect much fewer than if they had announced the migration to QNX and support for xyz in the upcoming release and never actually achieve it. Or worse, they announce, "All systems from 2010 will be upgraded by XXX date". Then the developers run into the showstopping bug, but are forced to release it anyway because of the marketing announcement. Now we're left with terrible software that doesn't work right and Ford is left with a huge black eye.

 

In a day of fast travelling news, not releasing information is all about risk mitigation.

[JimArch]

Has Ford ever responded to or acknowledged this thread? Is this something that Ford is working on to eventually delight us with, or is this one that Ford wishes would just go away? What say you, Ford?

[Waldo]

Has Ford ever responded to or acknowledged this thread? Is this something that Ford is working on to eventually delight us with, or is this one that Ford wishes would just go away? What say you, Ford?

 

Are you asking a rep from Ford to post company secret information in a public forum?

[JimArch]

Are you asking a rep from Ford to post company secret information in a public forum?

Yes, at this point it seems like a professional courtesy, as a measure to establish customer confidence.

[James Sentman]

Having worked for software companies announcing a feature list or a release date when you’re too early in the project just makes everyone unhappy. Dates slip and features change and then instead of making people happy by having announced you make people angry because it wasn’t what or when you promised it. Not to mention the fact that the press picks up on these things as a failure somehow instead of just the ongoing process of development. I didn’t actually expect them to chime in on this thread and tell me ;) It was just blowing off steam wishing what I wanted to know about ;)

 

That being said, I wouldn’t really be too surprised if the hardware design didn’t change much when switching to a different OS underneath. The only thing keeping us from loading a unix OS on this thing is that it’s all proprietary and so it would have to be slowly and painstakingly taken apart and reverse engineered. There is no reason for ford not to continue to leverage all their hardware design work from the past and just keep updating the processor and other simple things in future versions. It makes no real sense to redesign the hardware from scratch all over just to run a different OS on the thing. So I hold out hope for a potential upgrade. If they see the same logic there I do then the additional investment to make it backward compatible with the last couple of model years or so would be minimal. Or... you know... it might be minimal ;) Or it might be huge if they HAVE to change things. Because really, what do I know about it? ;)

[JimArch]

Has Ford ever responded to or acknowledged this thread? Is this something that Ford is working on to eventually delight us with, or is this one that Ford wishes would just go away? What say you, Ford?

I guess this issue is not on their radar screen.

[wmpwi]

This isn't on my wish list, rather this is my wish list.

[acdii]

Funny there are aftermarket radios that have App Link. I have been researching them for my Freestyle.