Rant on Teasing

[EasyPass]

A month ago I received a email from "Ford Motor Company <[email protected]-ford.com> " advising to BOLO for a Sync 4A update that will bring many desirable features and behaviors to the vehicle. This week I received a 12 page physical letter (in two languages, no less) in the postal mail from Ford Motor Customer Service Division saying that an update is on the way that would improve cold weather performance for the passenger heating system.

In this age of "information at your fingertips", "instant gratification", and dynamically/integrated updating disparate autonomous computer systems, I find it increasingly frustrating, bewildering, and almost comical that Ford seems to make the process of distributing OTA updates feel like alchemy/voodoo/witchcraft. This is further amplified in an annoying way when the emails and letters tell me how good it will be when they do arrive someday. Reading posts on this forum regarding the multitude states of versioning that is out there makes my head spin. I can't really see any solid excuse or justification for it to be this way from my narrow point of view. Change my mind.

My MME is daily on a very strong WiFi connection in my garage, and the update schedule is enabled for everyday at 1am EST with Automatic Updates turned as well. I'm currently sitting at 3.5.x.x. from Nov 1st.
Gimme the goods!

[Maybe I'm just harboring a notion that this rant will somehow in a magical way break my personal logjam for a download ]

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[Phil-Springs]

A month ago I received a email from "Ford Motor Company <[email protected]-ford.com> " advising to BOLO for a Sync 4A update that will bring many desirable features and behaviors to the vehicle. This week I received a 12 page physical letter (in two languages, no less) in the postal mail from Ford Motor Customer Service Division saying that an update is on the way that would improve cold weather performance for the passenger heating system.

In this age of "information at your fingertips", "instant gratification", and dynamically/integrated updating disparate autonomous computer systems, I find it increasingly frustrating, bewildering, and almost comical that Ford seems to make the process of distributing OTA updates feel like alchemy/voodoo/witchcraft. This is further amplified in an annoying way when the emails and letters tell me how good it will be when they do arrive someday. Reading posts on this forum regarding the multitude states of versioning that is out there makes my head spin. I can't really see any solid excuse or justification for it to be this way from my narrow point of view. Change my mind.

My MME is daily on a very strong WiFi connection in my garage, and the update schedule is enabled for everyday at 1am EST with Automatic Updates turned as well. I'm currently sitting at 3.5.x.x. from Nov 1st.
Gimme the goods!

[Maybe I'm just harboring a notion that this rant will somehow in a magical way break my personal logjam for a download ]

You are not alone… unfortunately

 

[Gullwingdmc]

Yeah, it’s not great. They have shown in the past that they are capable of delivering an update fast when they want. Just seems like they don’t always want to..

 

[ScottMcCool]

Dumb question, how do I check what my latest update was? I have had the car for over a year, other than a couple of blue cruise updates, I don't think I have had a Sync update.

 

[MBCook]

You kind of can’t. If you go to the update screen it will show the notes from your last update. That might include a version number.

I got the same letter as OP. Did my car download the update? I think so, weeks ago, but there is no way to check.

 

[mkhuffman]

Dumb question, how do I check what my latest update was? I have had the car for over a year, other than a couple of blue cruise updates, I don't think I have had a Sync update.

It is not a dumb question. The answer is dumb.

There is no way to tell the version of your last update, or the version of your software modules unless you have FDRS with a paid subscription. And even then when you find out the software versions you have there is no way to correlate it to OTA updates.

Dumb.

 

[GreaseMonkey]

Frustrating. Same issue here. I had a number of OTA updates come through in quick succession, then nothing. The best time to get a cold weather related update was two months ago. Now would work too.

 

[Jax_GT]

A month ago I received a email from "Ford Motor Company <[email protected]-ford.com> " advising to BOLO for a Sync 4A update that will bring many desirable features and behaviors to the vehicle. This week I received a 12 page physical letter (in two languages, no less) in the postal mail from Ford Motor Customer Service Division saying that an update is on the way that would improve cold weather performance for the passenger heating system.

In this age of "information at your fingertips", "instant gratification", and dynamically/integrated updating disparate autonomous computer systems, I find it increasingly frustrating, bewildering, and almost comical that Ford seems to make the process of distributing OTA updates feel like alchemy/voodoo/witchcraft. This is further amplified in an annoying way when the emails and letters tell me how good it will be when they do arrive someday. Reading posts on this forum regarding the multitude states of versioning that is out there makes my head spin. I can't really see any solid excuse or justification for it to be this way from my narrow point of view. Change my mind.

My MME is daily on a very strong WiFi connection in my garage, and the update schedule is enabled for everyday at 1am EST with Automatic Updates turned as well. I'm currently sitting at 3.5.x.x. from Nov 1st.
Gimme the goods!

[Maybe I'm just harboring a notion that this rant will somehow in a magical way break my personal logjam for a download ]

If it makes you feel better I’m stuck on the update before 3.5.2 because apparently the deployments time out after three or so weeks. Ford damaged my car in shipping, pushed the update while it was sitting and it never downloaded. So now I’m screwed until I take it to the dealer or the gods at ford decide to bless me with another update

 

[The Black Horse]

The car and driving experience = AMAZING

The tech = Just slightly above average

The reason i am so frustrated is the over promising and under delivering. You can tell this is a top down company because the CEO can't stop blabbering about things the car will do "someday" - and all the emails and marketing materials are the same.

Its all talk. I'm so f'ing over it. I enjoy the car i have today for what it is today but Ford needs to shut up.

 

[Blue highway]

A month ago I received a email from "Ford Motor Company <[email protected]-ford.com> " advising to BOLO for a Sync 4A update that will bring many desirable features and behaviors to the vehicle. This week I received a 12 page physical letter (in two languages, no less) in the postal mail from Ford Motor Customer Service Division saying that an update is on the way that would improve cold weather performance for the passenger heating system.

In this age of "information at your fingertips", "instant gratification", and dynamically/integrated updating disparate autonomous computer systems, I find it increasingly frustrating, bewildering, and almost comical that Ford seems to make the process of distributing OTA updates feel like alchemy/voodoo/witchcraft. This is further amplified in an annoying way when the emails and letters tell me how good it will be when they do arrive someday. Reading posts on this forum regarding the multitude states of versioning that is out there makes my head spin. I can't really see any solid excuse or justification for it to be this way from my narrow point of view. Change my mind.

My MME is daily on a very strong WiFi connection in my garage, and the update schedule is enabled for everyday at 1am EST with Automatic Updates turned as well. I'm currently sitting at 3.5.x.x. from Nov 1st.
Gimme the goods!

[Maybe I'm just harboring a notion that this rant will somehow in a magical way break my personal logjam for a download ]

I agree, I don't think the decision makers at Ford realize how big a negative this is.

 

[Rob S]

I received the mailer and emails too. Took delivery 10/8, have yet to receive an OTA update.

 

[EasyPass]

If anyone can convince a ford dealer to do the update for free, please video that and post it here!

My dealer did an update in August at no charge when I presented a list of annoyances that I wanted addressed. I believed they categorized it as Warrenty Work.

I'm just too lazy now to hand it over for an afternoon to do this every time there's a pending feature upgrade or update.

 

[Vgkfan]

Dumb question, how do I check what my latest update was? I have had the car for over a year, other than a couple of blue cruise updates, I don't think I have had a Sync update.

[/QUOTE]
Look on the ford pass app, click account(top right), then message center. Unless you deleted your previous messages, should be able to scroll down and see latest software update. I got the same mailing as the OP. I looked back and saw I had received it Nov 10.

 

[Chuck]

A month ago I received a email from "Ford Motor Company <[email protected]-ford.com> " advising to BOLO for a Sync 4A update that will bring many desirable features and behaviors to the vehicle. This week I received a 12 page physical letter (in two languages, no less) in the postal mail from Ford Motor Customer Service Division saying that an update is on the way that would improve cold weather performance for the passenger heating system.

In this age of "information at your fingertips", "instant gratification", and dynamically/integrated updating disparate autonomous computer systems, I find it increasingly frustrating, bewildering, and almost comical that Ford seems to make the process of distributing OTA updates feel like alchemy/voodoo/witchcraft. This is further amplified in an annoying way when the emails and letters tell me how good it will be when they do arrive someday. Reading posts on this forum regarding the multitude states of versioning that is out there makes my head spin. I can't really see any solid excuse or justification for it to be this way from my narrow point of view. Change my mind.

My MME is daily on a very strong WiFi connection in my garage, and the update schedule is enabled for everyday at 1am EST with Automatic Updates turned as well. I'm currently sitting at 3.5.x.x. from Nov 1st.
Gimme the goods!

[Maybe I'm just harboring a notion that this rant will somehow in a magical way break my personal logjam for a download ]

Meh. I don't live or die by upgrades. The state of upgrades is not that important to me. However, having said that I did get Sync 4A (was it 4.1.2?) and do like its UI improvements. Did it change my life? No. I can understand their slow rollout of upgrades. It makes sense from a software development standpoint. If there's a bug in the deployment it's better to find out during the first 1,000 cars than after 50,000 cars have received the deployment. These are cars, peoples lives are at stake, care must be taken. It's not like a cell phone where a bad update or deployment is just an inconvenience.

 

[Burnsy8787]

A month ago I received a email from "Ford Motor Company <[email protected]-ford.com> " advising to BOLO for a Sync 4A update that will bring many desirable features and behaviors to the vehicle. This week I received a 12 page physical letter (in two languages, no less) in the postal mail from Ford Motor Customer Service Division saying that an update is on the way that would improve cold weather performance for the passenger heating system.

In this age of "information at your fingertips", "instant gratification", and dynamically/integrated updating disparate autonomous computer systems, I find it increasingly frustrating, bewildering, and almost comical that Ford seems to make the process of distributing OTA updates feel like alchemy/voodoo/witchcraft. This is further amplified in an annoying way when the emails and letters tell me how good it will be when they do arrive someday. Reading posts on this forum regarding the multitude states of versioning that is out there makes my head spin. I can't really see any solid excuse or justification for it to be this way from my narrow point of view. Change my mind.

My MME is daily on a very strong WiFi connection in my garage, and the update schedule is enabled for everyday at 1am EST with Automatic Updates turned as well. I'm currently sitting at 3.5.x.x. from Nov 1st.
Gimme the goods!

[Maybe I'm just harboring a notion that this rant will somehow in a magical way break my personal logjam for a download ]

Well this is what happens when you have nobody under the age of 60 in charge of the software development/deployment. They are manually releasing updates 1 at a time to owners. It's one of the strangest things I've ever seen a company do with their software.

Imagine if your iPhone update was manually pushed by an employee at Apple, individually. imagine everyone that has a phone has a completely different software. You could have a software that was 2 years old and someone could have one that was released yesterday and the only reason you don't have yours is because Apple hadn't gotten to you on the list of people to push it to.

Truly mindboggling how they handle these OTA updates.

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