clyde
10-17-2015, 11:39 AM
Ford release an update to second gen Sync systems (2011-2015) yesterday. The release is the first update in nearly two years and it came pretty much out of the blue.
The big news is that it adds support for Siri Eyes Free. Not CarPlay and the story is it never will (3rd gen Sync is supposed to support it at some point, but Ford and BlackBerry aren't saying when). The other thing is the update process works smoothly from a Mac, unlike previous updates that really needed to use a Windows box to download the update and install it to a USB stick.
It's funny for me because after mostly ignoring Siri forever, I just started playing Hey Siri in the past week and have found it pretty impressive, mostly. Siri Eyes Free is vey similar but not nearly as good. With Hey Siri, I can tell the phone to switch apps, but because SEF doesn't use the screen, it doesn't let you do that. Hey Siri needs you scream it to start unless the car is perfectly quiet, but SEF can be used from a steering wheel button...that has to be held three seconds. You can engage Siri by holding the home button, but that's not really better than three seconds on the wheel button.
Overall, it's nice, but kinda too little, too late to matter.
Remains to be seen if the update increases general Sync/MFT reliability and speed or breaks anything worse than it was.
The big news is that it adds support for Siri Eyes Free. Not CarPlay and the story is it never will (3rd gen Sync is supposed to support it at some point, but Ford and BlackBerry aren't saying when). The other thing is the update process works smoothly from a Mac, unlike previous updates that really needed to use a Windows box to download the update and install it to a USB stick.
It's funny for me because after mostly ignoring Siri forever, I just started playing Hey Siri in the past week and have found it pretty impressive, mostly. Siri Eyes Free is vey similar but not nearly as good. With Hey Siri, I can tell the phone to switch apps, but because SEF doesn't use the screen, it doesn't let you do that. Hey Siri needs you scream it to start unless the car is perfectly quiet, but SEF can be used from a steering wheel button...that has to be held three seconds. You can engage Siri by holding the home button, but that's not really better than three seconds on the wheel button.
Overall, it's nice, but kinda too little, too late to matter.
Remains to be seen if the update increases general Sync/MFT reliability and speed or breaks anything worse than it was.