FordPass - somebody should get fired

[imstriker]

FordPass 3.35.2 has solved my battery draining problem I think. No drainage since the update. Check your app version.

I would agree with this one. This is the first version that I am willing to let run unrestricted on my Pixel 5. PAAK has been a lot more reliable for me since allowing again. However, I will say there is one caveat. I have had two times where my battery spun out due to FordPass still. A quick reboot of the phone corrected it. There may be some type of runaway process in it that goes crazy at times.

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[PaaK_Android]

@DevSecOps @scoopman I appreciate the feedback from you both and in general from everyone on the forum. Couple of things: 1) Both of you, having worked in the field in the past or currently, should understand that developers don't decide what's worked on. We decide how it is done. 2) The app is very large and constant notifications is something that was deemed, by those who decide such things, a bad user experience. With so many other features in the app putting a constant location permission notification may be the straw that breaks the camel's back and cause a user to shut off notifications for the app entirely. This was the exact reason given to me when I suggested it. That being said you guys have given me a strong argument to go back to said powers and hopefully be able to make a change, fingers crossed. 3) As far as battery optimization it is becoming clear that this is playing a bigger role than I thought. We have measures in place to try to restart the service after it has been killed, by the user or the OS. We will make a better effort of notifying users that battery optimization causes performance to suffer. 4) Thank you all for your patience. @dsuyang and I are new to this forum and have been gathering action items from the posts as well as trying to help out users where we can.

 

[Jimrpa]

So @dsuyang and @PaaK_Android, former Google Android team product manager here. I just set up PAAK for laughs tonight, and I'm hoping my backup code works when PAAK fails. It seems quite clear for PAAK discovery to work properly with this vehicle, your service needs to not be killed by Android, and you need Location permission. If the user isn't a super-Android dork, they're not going to know to do these things manually.

Just a suggestion, but why would you not deprioritize every other thing you're working on for your Android app and make sure it checks and does everything possible to direct and instruct users to do these things if they have PAAK enabled? You should definitely be able to detect if PAAK isn't connecting properly, or if your service is being killed, or if you don't have Location granted...... You should also be able to find out (one would hope) if the user had to use recovery codes to get in and start their car, or if the user went back to using a FOB. These should be clear counter-metrics that your app isn't working properly and might not be set up properly by the user. FordPass isn't shy with notifications, it should be screaming at the user if they have PAAK and the app isn't set up properly for it to be reliable.

Currently you might be almost guaranteeing that users will be locked out of starting their cars at some point if they don't read these 20 page threads and make manual changes to the app's permissions and battery optimization. This basically makes everything else you are doing potentially worthless.... All it takes is one bad experience such as the many many ones you can find on this board, and you lose any engagement on your app from that customer. (I mean, how can you not read the "PAAK made me look like an idiot" thread, literally that's the subject line, and not think something needs to be fixed pronto for the average user?)

Just my 2 cents here, I mean it only constructively.

You do realize that all of your suggestions apply, in principle, to the iOS version of the app as well?
If you think about this from a system perspective, this isn’t an “the Android FordPass app sucks” or “the iOS FordPass app sucks” issue. This is a “the overall remote access and engagement system concept needs to be redone from the operational concept onward.” Issue. Sadly, Ford is now in the position of having to do this while the car is heading down the highway at 70 MPH ?

 

[scoopman]

You do realize that all of your suggestions apply, in principle, to the iOS version of the app as well?
If you think about this from a system perspective, this isn’t an “the Android FordPass app sucks” or “the iOS FordPass app sucks” issue. This is a “the overall remote access and engagement system concept needs to be redone from the operational concept onward.” Issue. Sadly, Ford is now in the position of having to do this while the car is heading down the highway at 70 MPH ?

I'm sure the iOS app has some challenges as well, and it's clear Ford is trying to keep the interaction design the same between them both. Not sure how much of the code is also shared.

However, there are some system interaction pieces (such as how permissions are handled, and how apps keep from getting killed) that are different in iOS from Android, and so there have to be some slight differences to have any chance of the app working.

I'm not sure you need to throw the whole app out. But at least it should have some of the major bugs fixed to bring it up to the quality level we as users are spoiled to expect.

 

[DevSecOps]

You do realize that all of your suggestions apply, in principle, to the iOS version of the app as well?
If you think about this from a system perspective, this isn’t an “the Android FordPass app sucks” or “the iOS FordPass app sucks” issue. This is a “the overall remote access and engagement system concept needs to be redone from the operational concept onward.” Issue. Sadly, Ford is now in the position of having to do this while the car is heading down the highway at 70 MPH ?

While some teams, like my last team, will use code that can be cross compiled to Android or iOS it seems to be clear that Ford has different teams for each OS. We know who some of the devs for Android are, as they have been gracious enough to divulge that. So we can only bark up one tree, if you will.

 

[Jimrpa]

While some teams, like my last team, will use code that can be cross compiled to Android or iOS it seems to be clear that Ford has different teams for each OS. We know who some of the devs for Android are, as they have been gracious enough to divulge that. So we can only bark up one tree, if you will.

I was actually not speaking about the app itself, I was speaking more about the overall system concept and architecture which should be platform agnostic. Theoretically, if someone resurrects the Windows Phone platform and it has the appropriate hardware support, it should be possible to write a corresponding app for that platform. My point is much higher up the “food chain” if you will.

 

[DevSecOps]

I was actually not speaking about the app itself, I was speaking more about the overall system concept and architecture which should be platform agnostic. Theoretically, if someone resurrects the Windows Phone platform and it has the appropriate hardware support, it should be possible to write a corresponding app for that platform. My point is much higher up the “food chain” if you will.

I'm not arguing with you... I just think there's that "walked in their shoes analogy" here. I can only speak for my background and as a prior product owner and CTO for a software company I can say it's just not that easy. Additionally, FordPass is not just for the MME. They have a whole slew of vehicles since 2018 that use it. If we compare it to Tesla they have 4 cars using the same tech and propulsion method. Some of us can relate to the challenge and I guess that leads us to be naturally defensive of our peers, while at the same time lending constructive and actionable criticism. Critical vagueness can sometimes demoralize.

 

[blkadr08]

I'm struggling with FordPass. Same as everybody else - PaaK setup on iOS is a goat rodeo. It thinks I'm in Detroit when trying to set departure times. The thing crashes like the Hindenburg, and it times out so often that I think this is the secret name for it - Timeout! And, I have stable gig internet.

Does anybody know a feedback channel that we can use? This POS is Charlie Sheen levels of unstable.

Given the high number of responses to this post in less than 24 hours, it doesn’t appear that the post is unnecessary.

Hard to tell which group is more frustrated: those with continuing MME software problems or those annoyed with those complaining about them.

Bottom line, Ford has bungled this whole software program such that after almost a year many, if not most MME owners do not have use of many of the features that were promised to them when they bought the car. Not aware of any other car that this can be said about.

 

[scoopman]

Hopefully our comments -- in a thread entitled "WHOMEVER MAKES THIS SHOULD BE FIRED!!!" -- are still taken somewhat constructively. Tech products always have a backstory and it's fascinating to me as a product manager to hear user impressions of my product, because I can then connect the "why did you make it this way?!?" comments back to the history of why we actually wound up with what popped out. It's never simple.

This all being said, I drove my car with PAAK alone for the first time this morning to take the 7-year old to school for literally 10 minutes round trip. Car let me in and started up with just my Android phone, a OnePlus 9 Pro (YAYAY!) .... but then halfway in, it gave me an error "key not detected" while driving. My son started asking questions as to why they shipped this! LOL

I think I may need some Over-The-Not-Air updates from @DevSecOps before this may work.

 

[HuntingPudel]

I’m starting to think that my problems with FP are not really the app but something wrong with one or more of the modules in my car that deal with I/O. Every time I try to push my profile to the car I get an error and my FP app only has the first row of there buttons. I put in an email to [email protected] to see if they can shed some light on these issues. ?‍?

 

[Jimrpa]

I'm not arguing with you... I just think there's that "walked in their shoes analogy" here. I can only speak for my background and as a prior product owner and CTO for a software company I can say it's just not that easy. Additionally, FordPass is not just for the MME. They have a whole slew of vehicles since 2018 that use it. If we compare it to Tesla they have 4 cars using the same tech and propulsion method. Some of us can relate to the challenge and I guess that leads us to be naturally defensive of our peers, while at the same time lending constructive and actionable criticism. Critical vagueness can sometimes demoralize.

Oh, I’m not saying it’s trivial ? I’ve done this for some pretty complex systems myself. It’s particularly tough, as you point out, when you have an established platform and have to support a number of older versions. I’m not going to pretend to have the answer (I have some thoughts but obviously I don’t have all the details so I may be way off base). I’d disagree with the assessment that my comments were “vague or demoralizing”. Quite the opposite - I am trying to highlight that, in addition to low-level bugs that certainly need to be addressed, there are high-level architecture decisions and systems issues that should be revisited. I’m not comparing to any other auto makers - I have no significant experience with other auto makers. I won’t bother with a boring recitation of my CV, citing my vast experience as a fast food worker, ride-share driver, and social media fashion influencer, which eminently qualify me to offer my thoughts in this area ? (please note self-deprecating humor there!!! ???)
I do appreciate all of the insights from people who have real world experience coding complex applications like FordPass. I’ve played around with Swift and gotten as far as getting “Hello Word!” displayed in my phone with an “Ok” button ? so I have a lot of respect for application coders!

 

[Jimrpa]

Hopefully our comments -- in a thread entitled "WHOMEVER MAKES THIS SHOULD BE FIRED!!!" -- are still taken somewhat constructively. Tech products always have a backstory and it's fascinating to me as a product manager to hear user impressions of my product, because I can then connect the "why did you make it this way?!?" comments back to the history of why we actually wound up with what popped out. It's never simple.

This all being said, I drove my car with PAAK alone for the first time this morning to take the 7-year old to school for literally 10 minutes round trip. Car let me in and started up with just my Android phone, a OnePlus 9 Pro (YAYAY!) .... but then halfway in, it gave me an error "key not detected" while driving. My son started asking questions as to why they shipped this! LOL

I think I may need some Over-The-Not-Air updates from @DevSecOps before this may work.

Lol welcome to my almost daily experience with my iPhone 13 Pro Max. That feature is definitely platform agnostic.

 

[scoopman]

I’m starting to think that my problems with FP are not really the app but something wrong with one or more of the modules in my car that deal with I/O. Every time I try to push my profile to the car I get an error and my FP app only has the first row of there buttons. I put in an email to [email protected] to see if they can shed some light on these issues. ?‍?

Perhaps .... although our cars are about the exact same vintage from the factory, and I wonder why your car isn't accepting the profile and mine does.

You might want to try either another phone, delete/reinstall the app, or even create another account and see if that may work in case it's something strange with the account backend. Not sure how you associate another account as the owner of the car though, I think you just need to be sitting in the car with your FOB as I vaguely remember.

 

[HuntingPudel]

Perhaps .... although our cars are about the exact same vintage from the factory, and I wonder why your car isn't accepting the profile and mine does.

You might want to try either another phone, delete/reinstall the app, or even create another account and see if that may work in case it's something strange with the account backend. Not sure how you associate another account as the owner of the car though, I think you just need to be sitting in the car with your FOB as I vaguely remember.

I’ve already deleted and reinstalled the app several times, deleted all PaaK in the car, deleted all profiles in the car, soft Sync reset. I have not tried an new account. I will try to set up a new account and see if that works. I’m also going to try disconnecting the 12V battery for 20 minutes this weekend. ?‍?

 

[voxel]

I’m starting to think that my problems with FP are not really the app but something wrong with one or more of the modules in my car that deal with I/O. Every time I try to push my profile to the car I get an error and my FP app only has the first row of there buttons. I put in an email to [email protected] to see if they can shed some light on these issues. ?‍?

I have a two week old Premium and profile data is never pushed to the car. I've given up trying to sync the FP phone app profile data with the in-car profile data. I want to enjoy driving the car and not be a QA tester for Ford.

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