Loganfilm - How did the appointment with the Ford Tech go?

[Loganfilm]

Every once in awhile it just hangs up and won't budge. Only way to fix is a reset with a battery pull. Lame.

 

[donm527]

Is this with the phone connected to mft?
Do you connect the phone by USB as well as Bluetooth pair?
Does it do it when the phone is not connected via Bluetooth or cable?
Using any other USB or mico SD for music too?

I'm tempted to try just to see how buggy it can get and whether there is a better way to reset then unplug battery or fuse. But Concermed I don't want to open pandora box and trigger an ongoing issue. The moat i have done is pair my 3gs and my verizon mifi and a usb stick for wallpapers.

I am ok with losing my Sirius presets and doing my little fix to resolve it but would hate to start pulling fuses.

Every once in awhile it just hangs up and won't budge. Only way to fix is a reset with a battery pull. Lame.

 

[StunnedMonkey]

Every once in awhile it just hangs up and won't budge. Only way to fix is a reset with a battery pull. Lame.

I've taken to doing a Master Reset (from the MFT menu) every few days, just as a matter of maintenance. It retains my Sirius and FM favorites, so all I really need to do after the reset is re-pair my phone (and download the phonebook) and re-index my thumb drive. The whole process takes about 10 minutes. It's annoying that such steps are necessary, but I find that MFT is much happier.

Then again my problems are of a much less severe nature than yours.

 

[calb]

I'm been seriously thinking of buying a 2012 Explorer, and have been paying particular attention to topics such as this.

For what it is worth I work for a software company and we had a situation similar to Ford a few years back. A significant new product feature was added to our software, and yes we tested it first. Unfortunately we (in hindsight) hadn't tested enough, or more particularly, tested it in the manner some clients used the product. (We were surprised at the variability in use cases)

As a result, some clients had a perfect experience, and others were a disaster, and it took us a long time to figure out why. That being said our clients worked with us and liked the new feature enough to keep using it (we offered a downgrade, and weren't charging for this feature initially). Our saving grace was the fact that we KEPT OUR CLIENTS INFORMED as best we could, as to the issues we were seeing, what we thought the issues could be, had the senior developer team working night and day directly with customers to determine causation, and immediately informed users as to issues.

Our software is (imho) far more sophisticated than Ford's, simply because there is so much more user and environmental variability. Ford needs to be clear as to what issues they see, what fixes are on the horizon, and provide documentation with each and every Sync patch. Does anyone know what will be in 3.0 yet?

What I've read here has been ... uhm .... disconcerting. I'm hoping for the best, but after reading here I'm going to take a look at the Acadia as a backup plan.

Kudos to Cory btw .... ohh ... do Canadians get to avail themselves of your services Cory? (I *really* don't trust Ford Canada to do the right thing; they already overcharge Canadians, and the best we get is arbitration).

 

[jrmexplorer]

Every once in awhile it just hangs up and won't budge. Only way to fix is a reset with a battery pull. Lame.

My understanding is that you can get a USB fob from Ford that when inserted causes the system to reboot. It's keyed to your VIN so you can't give it to anyone else - but you have to ask for it from Ford.... I'd PM cory and see about getting one if you have to reboot it much.

I'm guessing you haven't repaired your phone, and if you have, you haven't downloaded your contacts. However, As for your phone contacts, you may want to reconsider the necessity of keeping all 6k contacts in your iPhone if you wanna use a telematics system like sync and have the phone book feature.

More specifically, transferring your phone book via bluetooth. The bluetooth used in your iPhone 4 (and MFT) is 2.1 mega BITS /second max. I did some quick calculating (hoping I didn't screw it up), but assuming each of your contacts is basic (2 numbers at most without email addresses or pictures) it's probably around 1kbyte per contact, with 6,000 contacts thats around 6 Mega BYTES of contact data. Just to transfer (no processing) all those contacts to MFT is 23 seconds (assuming max theoretical speed - which probably isn't going to happen). My guess is that it would be at least 35-40 seconds given that Sync appears to use an SQL server (which is horribly slow) and stores more info about contacts than your phone (voice command stuff). Add any pictures to your contacts and it could take all day to update. Assuming a 120x120 picture in horrible 256 bit color and thats 450kb which adds an extra 1.6 seconds at least PER PHOTO. 10 photos and you've got 16 more seconds. Add any better resolution or bigger size and you're gonna be needing the battery wrench. Those numbers are just for the bluetooth transfer portion assuming perfect network conditions which doesn't happen (ever).

Your MFT has to do this each time it starts up to see if there is a change in any data. This includes no processing time, which it then has to process each contact and do a compare against every field in the contact. Consider as well that its trying to load the navigation and your music and no wonder the thing is choking.

Additionally, my experience with Sync is that it doesn't manage memory very well - seems as if there are memory leaks all over the place. Probably what has happened LoganFilm, is that your contact list has probably exceeded the maximum size Sync had budgeted for contact lists and since it doesn't manage it very well - probably spilled over into some other area of memory which may contain data or code or what have you. Certainly not your fault, and hopefully fixed with the new S/W.

My suggestion is to see if you can download your contact list over USB. Anyone know if you can? That would be much faster, although it still wouldn't solve the issue if you are indeed capping the contact list memory size. Additionally, you may want to trim your contact list to the contacts you call most often, and store the other contacts in a text file or some other location - still accessible, but not downloaded by sync.

 

[jrmexplorer]

I'm been seriously thinking of buying a 2012 Explorer, and have been paying particular attention to topics such as this.

For what it is worth I work for a software company and we had a situation similar to Ford a few years back. A significant new product feature was added to our software, and yes we tested it first. Unfortunately we (in hindsight) hadn't tested enough, or more particularly, tested it in the manner some clients used the product. (We were surprised at the variability in use cases)

As a result, some clients had a perfect experience, and others were a disaster, and it took us a long time to figure out why. That being said our clients worked with us and liked the new feature enough to keep using it (we offered a downgrade, and weren't charging for this feature initially). Our saving grace was the fact that we KEPT OUR CLIENTS INFORMED as best we could, as to the issues we were seeing, what we thought the issues could be, had the senior developer team working night and day directly with customers to determine causation, and immediately informed users as to issues.

Our software is (imho) far more sophisticated than Ford's, simply because there is so much more user and environmental variability. Ford needs to be clear as to what issues they see, what fixes are on the horizon, and provide documentation with each and every Sync patch. Does anyone know what will be in 3.0 yet?

What I've read here has been ... uhm .... disconcerting. I'm hoping for the best, but after reading here I'm going to take a look at the Acadia as a backup plan.

Kudos to Cory btw .... ohh ... do Canadians get to avail themselves of your services Cory? (I *really* don't trust Ford Canada to do the right thing; they already overcharge Canadians, and the best we get is arbitration).

Wait until the new s/w is to be released and see what happens, which is supposedly sometime this month and then see. I looked at the Acadia, but the Ex was head and shoulders above the Acadia in terms of features and interior quality (the Acadia looked a little cheaply built inside - nice car, but for whatever reason it looks cheap).

 

[calb]

Wait until the new s/w is to be released and see what happens, which is supposedly sometime this month and then see. I looked at the Acadia, but the Ex was head and shoulders above the Acadia in terms of features and interior quality (the Acadia looked a little cheaply built inside - nice car, but for whatever reason it looks cheap).

Yes, I'm planning to watch the next release carefully. I'm hopeful that Ford will actually list the fixes they've put into play.

I'm not in a rush, particularly when I view the issues to be somewhat serious (and as mentioned, I don't have much in the way of lemon law protection, should things go wrong)

 

[dco43054]

Sorry. I was dealing with the funeral of a friend.

Sorry to hear about your friend. Way too much of that going on lately, it seems.

Every once in awhile it just hangs up and won't budge. Only way to fix is a reset with a battery pull. Lame.

And glad that your situation is better - but you still shouldn't have to be doing master resets.

Once I found the selection to disable auto sync'ing of my address book, my phone connectivity is much better. And I only have 728 contacts in my address book. My phone is usable much quicker after startup.

I still have the problem where if I leave my iPhone connected via the USB cable when stopping/starting, it does not recognize my music library. One should not have to disconnect/reconnect each time.

I'm hoping that the new version of MFT will provide some improvements in performance, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[RandyH2]

"Once I found the selection to disable auto sync'ing of my address book, my phone connectivity is much better. And I only have 728 contacts in my address book. My phone is usable much quicker after startup."

That is a good idea- keep the system from being fully automatic. I guess the catch may be that the newest entries in the address book are likely the ones you'll need to use.

 

[StunnedMonkey]

That is a good idea- keep the system from being fully automatic. I guess the catch may be that the newest entries in the address book are likely the ones you'll need to use.

I guess it depends on how often your phonebook changes. If you're a salesguy constantly adding new contacts, then it would really get annoying. For me, I have ~450 contacts and seldom add new ones. It's a trivial task for me to go in once a week and manually click the update phoneboot button.

But if you have an ever-changing contact list then that would certainly be an issue. Six thousand contacts on a phone? I could never hope to be that popular!

 

[dco43054]

That is a good idea- keep the system from being fully automatic. I guess the catch may be that the newest entries in the address book are likely the ones you'll need to use.

Actually, I think it's a bad idea. But it seems to work in alleviating a lot of problems caused by poor software and/or hardware in MFT.

But if you have an ever-changing contact list then that would certainly be an issue.

The software should work as stated, and if I were someone like Loganfilm seems to be that does a lot of driving and picking up/dropping off, and want an integrated navigation and communication hub, I too would be pissed.

MFT has been a collossal case of overpromising and underdelivering. They have pushed the boundaries of technology and ended up with a steaming pile of poo instead of the game changing piece of technology they desires/offered.

 

[Vic]

"Once I found the selection to disable auto sync'ing of my address book, my phone connectivity is much better. And I only have 728 contacts in my address book. My phone is usable much quicker after startup."

That is a good idea- keep the system from being fully automatic. I guess the catch may be that the newest entries in the address book are likely the ones you'll need to use.

Yes, that's the way its supposed to work.

Once you upload your contacts, you can turn off the auto update.

Otherwise every time you start your car, the system will compare databases between MFT and your phone. That takes time if you have a lot of contacts.

When you add new contacts you can then upload them.

Keeping it on auto update would be like syching your iTunes everytime you walk up to your computer.

 

[JStellato]

Hey LoganFilm,

It's been over a month, and I haven't seen any posts by you on your MFT Issues. Has it all been resolved or did you just quit on it?

 

[Loganfilm]

I just gave up. It works a lot better with the new APM and v2.11, but it still crashes from time to time. Still hangs up and frustrates the hell out of me. Overall, it's actually sort of useable most of the time, so I'm just sticking with that.

It never stores previous addresses.

It crashes and performs the "system maintenance" gag usually when I need it most.

When dialing in to sync services, sometimes you can't hear the voice, which renders it useless.

It does NOT blow hot air on me anymore.

My new biggest complaint is that I often walk out of stores to find the tailgate wide open. It happened to me at a hotel a week ago and hotel security called my room. Luckily, nothing was stolen. Yesterday, it popped open while driving in traffic.

Good times.

 

[drober30]

I just gave up. It works a lot better with the new APM and v2.11, but it still crashes from time to time. Still hangs up and frustrates the hell out of me. Overall, it's actually sort of useable most of the time, so I'm just sticking with that.

It never stores previous addresses.

It crashes and performs the "system maintenance" gag usually when I need it most.

When dialing in to sync services, sometimes you can't hear the voice, which renders it useless.

It does NOT blow hot air on me anymore.

My new biggest complaint is that I often walk out of stores to find the tailgate wide open. It happened to me at a hotel a week ago and hotel security called my room. Luckily, nothing was stolen. Yesterday, it popped open while driving in traffic.

Good times.

Your car is possessed! I have never heard of a tailgate opening while in motion.

 

[jrmexplorer]

I just gave up. It works a lot better with the new APM and v2.11, but it still crashes from time to time. Still hangs up and frustrates the hell out of me. Overall, it's actually sort of useable most of the time, so I'm just sticking with that.

It never stores previous addresses.

It crashes and performs the "system maintenance" gag usually when I need it most.

When dialing in to sync services, sometimes you can't hear the voice, which renders it useless.

It does NOT blow hot air on me anymore.

My new biggest complaint is that I often walk out of stores to find the tailgate wide open. It happened to me at a hotel a week ago and hotel security called my room. Luckily, nothing was stolen. Yesterday, it popped open while driving in traffic.

Good times.

I wonder if you are accidentally pressing the remote button? hmm..... Try taking apart the remote and putting a piece of tape over the electrical contact.

I did that with my panic alarm because it was going off constantly.

 

[TIO M]

I don't think he meant while he was driving, more like key fob in pocket. Accidently hit the key fob that rendered it to become open.

 

[RandyH2]

It amazes me that problems like these "get through" after the decades of car building experience for Ford. Yes- key fobs are only 10-20 years old but still enough time that there should be some sort of checklist:
"1) functions from a reasonable distance
Ok
2) button function is clearly labelled on each button (not some sticker which peels off the back)
Doh
3) button lables don't fade/wear away
Ok
4) accidentally activating critical operations is difficult or impossible- no walking out to find an open tailgate or a panic alarm.
DOH!
5) Materials should be suitable for the abuse expected in a purse or pocket. No flaking fake chrome, please.
Ummm...
.
.
."

 

[VinceL]

Yesterday, it popped open while driving in traffic.

Good times.

Holy cow! Are you saying it opened while you were driving down the road? If so, that is beyond dangerous.

 

[Loganfilm]

Yes. That is exactly what happened. It popped open while driving. In motion. In traffic.

Luckily, it was two blocks before I got on the freeway.

Luckier still that none of my gear fell out.

I'm rather thankful they included that stretch net piece and even more thankful that I chose to install it. Totally saved my camera gear and computer bag from eating traffic on Bundy Drive in Los Angeles.