Ford & Lincoln / Mercury cars are now shipping with a voice activated technology they call “SYNC”, which proudly proclaims “Powered by Microsoft” on all the adds they’re running. My first thought was: ‘Now what the heck would anyone willingly admit that?‘
My second thought was: ‘Why isn’t Apple just OWNING this space?‘ Click through, and we’ll chat about this after the jump.
The terror of dealing with a Blue Screen of Death while navigating the maze that is Dallas freeways at warp-speeds aside, the notion of speech recognition as implemented in Ford/Microsoft’s SYNC isn’t such a bad idea. So not bad in fact that my 3 year old Pioneer AVIC Z1 has it, albeit using IBM technology.
Since this isn’t a new invention thought up by engineers in Redmond and Dearborn, it does beg the question: Why isn’t Apple doing something in this space? It really is perfect for them.
It’s a space that’s crying out for a company like Apple. There hasn’t been a decent automotive user interface innovation since the steering wheel and pedals. Even simple things like cruise control, turn signals, and headlights are placed at random around the cockpit with what seems to be a deliberate effort to confuse and distract drivers.
That’s not even mentioning navigation systems, radios, heating, or secondary functions.
In 2002, one company sought to change that. BMW, in what could be a described as a “Jobsian” bit of cleverness, invented iDrive. It was a simple concept: one joystick to control all the secondary features of your car! Whats more, it was even named like an Apple product. That however, is where the similarities ended.
The iDrive is terrible. You navigate page after page of nested menus blindly hoping to stumble across the feature you’re looking for. It was so bad, speaking antidotally for myself, and about a legion of other former BMW owners, that when the came time we didn’t trade for another Bimmer.
To be clear, I am not attempting to raise the oft-questioned notion of Apple licensing OS X to third parties so you can run it on PC’s or what-have-you. We business strategists have a technical phrase for that, it’s called: ‘A bad business decision.‘ Apple’s strategy since the return of Jobs has been to control the entire customer experience, from the hardware, to the OS, to the retail store, and they’ve succeeded marvelously.
Yet, supporting embedded systems, each built to a custom specification by the auto-manufacturer, into which Apple could also provide specifications and requirements, or even engineer much of the hardware themselves is plays right into Apple’s compulsive need for control. This would be, again using the technical phrasing: ‘A good business decision.’
This is a market-space where Apple could really be a game-changer, and in so doing not just open up new revenue streams, but increase customer affinity, and drive more sales in their core iPod & computing business.
What do you think? Multi-touch in a car: A Dream come true? or Be careful what you wish for?
24 responses to “Where is my Multi-Touch BMW?”
Multiple grammatical errors throughout…
@kb: Thanks. I hope I got them fixed.
Apropos of that, and my quitting MS Office for 30 days (which is nearly up). I am dyslexic, so I usually write my posts in Word or Pages, my brain doesn’t pick up the occasional silly mistake or misplaced comma.
Usually the grammar checker in word will point these out to me with green underlines, which I stare at until I work out what is wrong.
That said: My experiment to live without Office for 30 days, has demonstrated one important fact to me, the grammar checker in Pages, is not by a long shot up to par with MS Word’s. I’ve found the same in Scrivener too, which makes me wonder if grammar and spelling are part of the core OS services? if so, they need improving.
Why of course! What luxury car owner would not want to get in the cockpit and say, “seat heater, level two; stevie ray vaughn, track six, volume nine – make it so!”
@Lonnie: Talking to the car is seven different kinds of cool, I can talk to both my Infiniti (factory system) and my F150 (powered by the AVIC Z1), but think about multi-touch. Gestures. that’s an Apple patented technology that could be really game changing.
WTF APPLE ? Get on the ball !
Do we have to think of everything, then wait 3 years for you to do it..?
Amaze us again !!! ;)
There’s a reason iDrive sucks, it’s Microsoft.
http://www.microsoft.com/press…
“”When we heard about BMWs telematics vision, we knew the exceptional quality in Microsoft technology would fit hand-in-hand,” said Bob McKenzie, general manager of Microsofts Automotive Business Unit. “The iDrive concept is a unique one, and we’re proud to power the graphical user interface in the Control Display.””
Remember the issues when it first came out? http://www.bmwproblems.com/
See, the difference with Apple and Microsoft is that Microsoft actually have major departments for research and development in other areas than operating systems and peripherals (that’s why we have the Microsoft telescope for instance). This sync functionality is just the method of deployment for their speech-recognition research, and one in my opinion that is every bit successful. Apple, while fantastic at making UI for the everyday person, don’t have that research center, and won’t be entering that market any time soon.
The touch screen navigation of any Lexus and some Toyota cars functions pretty good, so there are working examples. Also, like in any other car I have ever tried, voice recognisition does not work at all.
Asking why Apple does not own this in-car space is asking why Bang & Olufsen does not own this in-car space. B&O is very good at interface design, maybe even better than Apple. The answer in both cases is I guess the same: different industry. Cars are not made around the user interface, interfaces are thrid party tools crammed into the car afterwards and having to cost next to nothing.
SYNC is a voice-activated interface, and one that has no history to evaluate, so we don’t really know how well it works. But the concept of integrating the different systems to a single interface is a good one. Unless it doesn’t work, or if you have to go through as many voice menus as the iDrive’s screen menus.
Apple’s expertise is in UI and visual interaction. The last thing I want in my car is a screen – multi-touch or not – that I need to view to operate. That’s the beauty of dials and buttons. Whether it’s a radio preset, the temperature or fan, or even the wipers or manual shift, they’re all designed to be used with tactile feedback. Even most radios dropped the rocker volume control after a few short years because the knob just works better.
Unless SYNC really sucks, but still sells well, Apple will stay clear. Like the digital music player and phone-based internet, Apple waited to see if users wanted it, then created a good one. They could do the same here. But if SYNC works and sells well, they’ll probably steer clear.
I’m not thinking you’d touch the display. Anything that makes you take your eyes off the road is too dangerious.
But what about a multitouch trackpad? With gestures?
Or even several of them with context sensitive behavior. Think just sliding your thumb over a wheel mounted trackpad to control volume, scroll menus, tap to select etc.
Another pad perhaps located where the idrive is today,
Ultimately its about operating systems and human interface, things Apple does better than anyone.
Aside: my bet, apple will enter this space, but at the behest of, and in partnership with a single automotive vendor.
My guesses: BMW or Nissan / Infiniti
Hey, it’s “anecdotally”, not the hilarious “antidotally” that you’ve written. Worth fixing, y’know, so you don’t look “stoopid, dood”…
Best o’ iRish Luck wid’ yer oiDroive, me matey,
Paddy