Ford Opening up Applink to all developers

[NuttySquirrel]

Ford's Letting Anyone Write Apps for Cars with Its New Developer Program

Starting today, Ford will be rolling out the Ford Developer Program which will let developers anywhere specialize their apps for use with Ford's Sync functionality using Ford AppLink. And it's all license and royalty free.

All prospective developers have to do is visit Ford's site where they can find examples of code as well as terms and licenses. While anyone can put something up for approval, Ford plans on filtering the accepted apps heavily. They're looking for things that involve music, productivity, health, and networking, but will instantly smack down anything involving video or rich imagery, extensive text, and games. To that non-distracting end, all apps cleared to work with Ford Sync will be required to blank out the phone's screen during use, a clever way to keep eyes off screens and on roads.

Along with the roll-out of the Developer Program, Ford also announced a few new apps that will utilize the kind of functionality developers will soon be able to get their hands on. New releases include Amazon Cloud Player, Rhapsody, and Kaliki. Aside from entertainment, Ford is also focusing on location and productivity apps including Glimpse, which shares location data from and with drivers. It's easy to see how this could be put to great use if the right developers come out of the woodwork.

Ideally, if this thing really takes off, it will theoretically allow Ford Sync user to operate a wide variety of their favorite phone apps by shouting at their dashboard, instead of running the risk of running someone over while trying to peck out a funny tweet. That's a future we can all agree on.

I'm excited for this, hopefully we can get some useful features and functionality.

[Lawless317]

Sounds good to me

[Luke.Murphey]

It isn't clear to me that Ford is going to begin offering AppLink with MyFord Touch (MFT) though. I didn't see anything in the press release which indicated that MFT would be augmented to support AppLink which would inherently leave ST2 and ST3 owners without it still.

Detroit Free Press http://www.freep.com/article/2013010...sey=nav%7Chead did indicate that Ford was going to "allow outside software developers to create apps for its MyFord Touch control screen" but I am wondering if the author just made a mistake and is conflating AppLink with MyFord Touch. I would like to see clarification from Ford.

[RyGuy]

The most baffling thing for me is, how do you make a more advanced (and more expensive to boot) system that doesn't support a previous "cutting-edge" feature?

WTF Ford?

[Luke.Murphey]

Yeah, it is baffling. That said, I understand Ford's decision given the performance problems that were present in previous versions of MFT.

I'm betting that Ford will eventually reintroduce AppLink into MFT. Otherwise, it is difficult for Ford to continue to sell MFT as the "premium" feature while they continue to expand AppLink. The MFT software seems like it is still in flux; I bet some of the features just didn't make it into the latest rewrite yet.

[STGuy]

I worry given that the system isn't as powerful as the average phone that we will see more complaining about how buggy SYNC is once crappy, poorly-written programs start appearing on people's system (especially given that you have to pull a fuse to reboot the thing).

[RyGuy]

I worry given that the system isn't as powerful as the average phone that we will see more complaining about how buggy SYNC is once crappy, poorly-written programs start appearing on people's system (especially given that you have to pull a fuse to reboot the thing).

Hopefully the portion of the app under Sync's control will be minimal. Just enough to send remote commands to the phone, so the phone does the heavy lifting. Here's to hoping...

The 'apps' installed on the head unit really should just be stylized shells of the preexisting apps you already have installed on your phone. So the only thing your Sync system SHOULD need to think about is passing along a simple remote command to the app on the phone. this is where the heavy lifting comes in (i.e. streaming/playing music, referencing yelp or other databases...etc). The only way i see Sync struggling, is if the app is allowed to push back things like addresses, phone numbers...etc. The NAV may not be quite beefy or, more importantly, streamlined correctly for this type of input. But i have high hopes. They do have an app for sending your car destinations. It really shouldn't be THAT hard right....LOL!

[STGuy]

Hopefully the portion of the app under Sync's control will be minimal. Just enough to send remote commands to the phone, so the phone does the heavy lifting. Here's to hoping...

We'll see - I've signed up - as a software developer, I've been wanting access to the system for a while now.

[RyGuy]

We'll see - I've signed up - as a software developer, I've been wanting access to the system for a while now.

I hope creative inteligent developers such as yourself will actually be able to provide direction and feedback to this tangle of crap they call an OS. Good luck sir.

[STGuy]

Well, it is the crappiest embedded system I've had the misfortune to ever use, but the latest SYNC update smoothed out some of my complaints. That being said, when it's not glitching, it's the best system I've ever used (in a car anyway).