Just recently, I bought a new car, and it was sorely needed. I purchased a very lightly used 2010 Ford Focus, and compared to what I was coming from, this car is like driving a super computer. In my modest experience so far, it has the user experience of a super computer, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.
First off, the Sync functionality, which is provided by Microsoft, allows you to pair your phone. I would wager most smartphones are compatible with the system that allows you to make phone calls and such, with voice commands. This is all well and good, if you can figure out how to pair your phone in the first place.
I like to think I’m a pretty tech-savvy person. That said, a button, on the steering wheel, in plain sight, is what you need to press after turning on Bluetooth on your device. I totally missed the button, perhaps it would be more apparent to someone else, but I missed it.
From there, the two devices will find each other, and you will be presented with a passcode, a series of numbers, on the display located in the dashboard. Punch those numbers into the field that displays on your iPhone, and you are now paired and ready to make calls and stream music from your phone.
In my experience, there aren’t many voice commands when connected via Bluetooth. You can tell Sync to call someone, and use it for basic music controls such as play and pause. If you want to really control music, such as playing a specific song or artist, you need to connect your device via the built-in USB port. For this to work, your song file must have the meta data in place so that the system can index the content.
Once all of this is in place, a simple push of the button on the steering wheel, will open the system up for voice commands. Overwhelmingly, Sync understands my commands, despite my semi-thick southern accent. That said, these commands are not like Siri. You cannot speak casually to Sync. There are a handful of scripted commands, which Sync can remind you of, that control the different features. This can be frustrating until one memorizes them.
For instance, I would tell Sync to ”play song ___ ” and it would go off and do its own thing. Then I remembered, the correct vernacular is ”track” not ”song”. Whatever, I’m over it.
Making phone calls, is usually a breeze. Tell Sync to ”call ____” and it will. If there is more than one entry for that person in your address book, then it will ask you which you’d like to dial. For instance when calling my brother it will ask me if I want to call his home or cell. Much the same way Siri will ask you when you give her a similar command to call someone.
I did notice a difference in the feel surrounding Sync when compared to Siri. At the time Sync was introduced, it was leaps and bounds ahead of anything we had seen before in a car. It still holds up pretty well. But now that we have something like Siri, and other competing voice command products to compare it to, it’s starting to feel a little dated, simply due to the rigid, scripted commands it can accept. Siri, although it is not perfect, certainly feels more conversational and friendly than Sync, despite them both having that same stock, robotic-y female voice. One has a sense of humor and personality, the other does not.
At this point you are probably wondering what part of Sync I actually like. Yes, I’m really raking it across the coals, but that’s because I know it could be perfect, instead of just really good. It works better than a demo, but not up to my liking. Besides, it has Microsoft-esque features such as activation for the directions features, and the on-display options are difficult to use. That is, trying to toggle through options presented to you on the dashboard display and are controlled by toggling through via the buttons on the steering wheel. It’s confusing at best, for a nerd like me, so I’d hate to see what an average user, such as my non-techy mother, would do with it.
Now that we’re this far into it, I’d like to note that I have the lowest rung version of Sync. It comes in several flavors, mine pulling up the cheap end, with options going as far as to offer color touch screens. With my perfunctory understanding, those higher-calibre versions can read your incoming text messages and offer dictation for responses. Perhaps my version of Sync offers this as well- I sure as hell can’t figure it out.
I suppose that is the moral of this story- Sync, Powered by Microsoft, is a great feature, totally worth taking into consideration on your next car purchase. That said, you will likely need to sit down and read up on how to operate it. There is still plenty to learn. To me, this is a squandered opportunity to define a user interface, and make it canon for years to come. Instead, you’re left trying to operate a pretty sophisticated feature through toggle buttons on your steering wheel and dash. They could have done so much better.
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TAGS: iPhone
