Ford, Microsoft Create
Car System That Lets
You Ask for a Song
November 8, 2007; Page B1
Under the hood, modern cars are packed with computers. But in the
passenger cabin, they remain analog islands in a digital world. For
some, this may be a blessed relief. But others want to bring their
digital music and digital messaging into the place where they spend
hours every week. Unfortunately, that's still too clumsy a process.

Yes, more cars are making it easy to connect wirelessly with Bluetooth-
equipped cellphones so drivers can make hands-free phone calls -- but
not hands-free text messaging. And that results in the dangerous
practice of texting while behind the wheel.

And, yes, you can pipe the sound from your portable music player into
the car's speakers. But you usually have to control the song selection
and skipping by handling the player itself, and that's another
dangerous distraction.

SYNC, a new system jointly developed by Ford and Microsoft, allows
drivers to use the most modern digital conveniences while driving.
Some car makers solve this music problem with integration kits that
transfer control of the music player to the dashboard or steering-
wheel controls and display song information on a dashboard screen. But
this option is most common in luxury cars and is typically designed
only for Apple's iPods.

Now, Ford Motor, working with Microsoft, has come up with a system
that's a big step forward in integrating cellphones and portable music
players into cars. It's highly versatile and works with numerous
devices on a wide range of Ford models.

I've been testing the $395 option, called SYNC, with multiple
cellphones and music players. It's quite good and indicates that the
digitally backward auto industry finally may be getting it.

SYNC combines the often separate cellphone and music-player functions
into one unified interface that can be controlled by a voice-
recognition system that works well. You can command it by voice to
play a single song out of thousands on your iPod or other music
player. With some phones, it will even read your incoming cellphone
text messages to you, and properly pronounce text-message shortcuts
such as LOL (Laughing Out Loud.)

Ford isn't limiting this system to luxury cars. It's available on a
dozen models -- including the company's least-expensive car, the Ford
Focus. I tested SYNC on a Focus.

SYNC simultaneously handles multiple cellphones and music players from
a variety of companies. It imports and remembers the address books and
song information for up to 12 phones and four players, so that as you
connect and reconnect a remembered device, wired or wirelessly, it is
ready to go. It doesn't have a hard disk and doesn't store your music.

Unlike other approaches, the Ford system doesn't require a special
cable or proprietary connector. It uses a standard USB port and the
cable that came with your player. SYNC will even play music directly
from a USB thumb drive. There's also an audio-in jack for players that
don't support USB, or which require both.

VIDEO ARCHIVE

See all of Walt Mossberg's Personal Technology videos, including his
reviews of the new iPod Touch and the latest version of Yahoo
Mail.SYNC can even stream music wirelessly, over Bluetooth, from the
cellphones that support this feature. However, due to limitations in
Bluetooth, it doesn't transfer song selection controls, or the song
information display, to the dashboard in this scenario. The same
limitation applies if your player can be connected only with the audio-
in jack.

I tested SYNC with two music players and four cellphones and the
system handled them all effortlessly. I used a year-old iPod and a new
Samsung P2 as my test music players, and SYNC quickly transferred
their song information and allowed me to select playlists, artists,
albums, genres and individual songs by voice command.

I tried the cellphone functions with an Apple iPhone, a Motorola RAZR,
a RIM BlackBerry and a new HTC Shadow phone and, again, all worked
properly. While phone calls and address-book imports were handled
easily on all the phones, some of SYNC's advanced functions, like the
reading of text messages and the streaming of music, aren't widely
supported on all phones. For example, only the RAZR worked with the
text-message feature.

The iPhone test was especially interesting because it is both a
Bluetooth-equipped phone and a full-fledged iPod. The SYNC treated it
as both, simultaneously.

I found the voice-command system surprisingly reliable. In four days
of testing, I encountered only a few instances in which my commands
were misunderstood.

SYNC has some limitations. While it can read text messages on
compatible phones, Ford didn't build in the ability to dictate and
send text messages. You can send only canned messages, like "Be there
in 20 minutes."

But there are a lot of advanced features -- too many to list here. And
Ford plans to add others, which owners will be able to install at
home. Detailed information on the system is available at
syncmyride.com.

Alas, I did discover one glitch. Twice during my testing, SYNC
mistakenly declared that a music player had been unplugged when it
hadn't been. The system recovered with a little fiddling, but Ford
needs to fix this.

Still, SYNC is a very well done method for integrating digital devices
into a car, and in a model that most people can afford.