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?
Leigh McMullen leads the Advisory Services & Strategy practices for the professional services arm of one of the Big-Five firms. He has written several books that would cure any insomnia you might have, and is an avid Mac junkie.
