Wednesday, June 20, 2012

My only complaint with my new Ford ... and it's a Microsoft Product at the core of the problem.

In may of last year I bought a 2011 Shelby Cobra GT500.   It's been a great car with one glaring flaw: Microsoft Sync.

The irony abounds.   I have built my career on non-Microsoft products (Linux, if you must know, but that's hardly a surprise to regular readers of my blog).   All of the desktop and phone products I run have either Linux as their core OS or Android.

So why, after all of this, does my favorite car have to ship with a lame Microsoft product?!?   Ford, please do yourselves and your buyers a good deed -- and end your relationship with Microsoft.   Their logo on your product is tarnishing it.   I've even thought of ways to remove the stupid Microsoft sync logo off of the dashboard (one of my reddit /r/Mustang friends suggested buying a Shelby plaque that -- no joke here -- goes right over it).

The first thing I do when I get a new laptop is -- you guessed it -- remove the Microsoft sticker on the laptop, and find the nearest urinal to affix it to -- looks great on the vertical chrome post underneath the flush lever, by the way.

Seriously -- why Ford?   What the hell were you thinking?   People don't associate Microsoft with quality.   They are very much lately more than ever associating the Ford brand with quality -- this is not a step in the right direction.

Just last week, friends over from Australia -- took them for a ride in the Cobra.   Too bad I couldn't play any of the music I had on a thumb drive in the car -- because Sync was hung tighter than Dick's hat band (Dicks hat band, for those not in the know, is very tight -- something like 2000 PSI at last measurement).

So, some swearing, reading on-line forums, etc -- I finally figure out how to reboot the damn thing in my car so I can listen to some tunes on a trip.   It's the first and only thing that's ever gone wrong with my Cobra.

Ford -- I hope you're listening -- ditch this crap (or at least cover the damn logo) -- it's not rocket science here.   Playing music and picking up phone calls over bluetooth should be one of those features that "just work".

Note:  Microsoft stuff in my not-so-humble opinion here (and I know I'm not alone)  rarely "just works".

Oh, and Ford -- the rest of the car is frickin' awesome!

-=FeriCyde=-