“Ford has abandoned its troubled Microsoft Sync automotive infotainment system for a QNX-based platform that can support Apple’s CarPlay with Hands Free Siri,” Daniel Eran Dilger reports for AppleInsider. “Ford—the second largest car maker by unit market share according to Edmunds.com—first expressed an interest in supporting Apple’s CarPlay (then known as iOS in the Car) in the summer of 2013, just as Apple introduced the initiative.”
“Ford has since struggled to keep its Windows Embedded Automotive carputer platform relevant in the face of poor reviews. Engadget reported this week that, in response to customer complaints, Ford moved away from Microsoft’s carputer platform in order to deliver a system that was ‘more responsive and less clumsy to use,'” Dilger reports. “The embedded realtime OS [QNX] has established a particularly entrenched niche in automotive on-board computer systems since the early 2000s, with clients including General Motors, BMW, Audi-Volkswagen and now Ford.”
Dilger reports, “By creating a system where the user’s iPhone is the brains, face and development platform of the car-centric apps they use, Apple has effectively rendered automotive systems using QNX, Linux and Windows Embedded Automotive as low value commodity devices for displaying its own iOS interface.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Told ya so, long ago:
Ford+Microsoft. Mediocrity is Job One. – MacDailyNews, “When crap collides: Ford and Microsoft team up for in-vehicle operating system,” December 29, 2006
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dominick P.” for the heads up.]
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