Review: Ford Fusion with Microsoft SYNC

I just got back from a week-long road trip to Montana.  We rented a car, and got a nice change from the usual Chevy that Enterprise seems to rent non-stop: a Ford Fusion.  We had asked for a car with an auxiliary input to the stereo so that we could listen to our iPhones while driving, and so they gave us the Fusion.  However, we were in for a surprise as the fusion has Microsoft’s new foray into car stereo equipment: Microsoft Sync.

Sync is essentially a microcomputer running a custom version of Windows CE.  The idea is that you can play almost any portable music device through a built-in USB port, and Auxiliary line-in port or via Bluetooth Audio.  There is no display, rather the Sync system uses the built-in standard 1 line stereo LCD display.

The upside of using the Sync system versus a standard auxiliary port is that you can control the playback functions from the controls on the steering wheel, as well see the track names and artist information on the display.  The USB port is also powered, so you can charge your device while its plugged in.  Our iPhones were on the list of approved devices that work well with the system (surprising for Microsoft), so we were in business.

I was also excited because new to the iPhone OS 3.0 supports the AD2P stereo bluetooth protocol for streaming sound, as well as a partial implementation of the AVRCP protocol for controlling playback.  So, I paired the phone with the stereo using the fairly straightforward instructions.  Note: the system will only let you do this if the car isn’t moving, which is really frustrating if you are a passenger and trying to set up the system.  Soon enough, I had my iPhone playing music on the car stereo via bluetooth.  There were a few pretty sweet features that showed some forethought into the implementation.  First, whenever the key was removed from the ignition and the phone was playing music, the system would pause the music.  Then, when you turned the car on again, it would automatically resume the song where you left off when you exited the car.  Pretty slick!  And the whole time I didn’t have to take the iPhone out of my pocket.

There were also a couple of drawbacks to the bluetooth side of things.  First, no song information was transfered or displayed on the dashboard display.  Second, Apple only partially implemented the AVRCP protocol, so the Sync system can only send play/pause signals – no skipping forward or back between songs.  Given that this is a pretty big disadvantage, especially on a road trip when you are listening to music for hours on end, we decided to try the USB route.

Plugging the iPhone into the USB port (which is hidden inside the center console) brings up the Sync system.  It starts by trying to index all the songs on the device – not sure why really.  After about 5 minutes of a progress bar, the car announces (via a built in voice synthesizer) that indexing could not retrieve all the songs, and that I’d have to enter track metadata manually into the system.  Yeah right!  Nice idea, but no one in their right mind would try to do this without a keyboard, and especially not with a one line display and turn nobs to select all the letters.  Anyway, we hit cancel and were good to go.  We selected the playlist we wanted, and it the Sync system started playing the song and displaying the track information on the stereo’s display.  Great!

We were cruising along for about 5 hours this way, then stopped at a gas station.  We had to turn off the car, but when we turned it back on to get going again, the stereo froze.  No sound, but it was displaying the track information for the last song we played.  After a few minutes, the display unlocked and gave us an error ‘USB Empty’.  Hmmm.  The iPhone was definitely plugged in, but was no longer getting any power from the port.  We tried restarting the car, unplugging the cable – basically everything we could think of, but we kept getting the same error.

After a little sluething online – thank god for iPhone’s internet connection – we discovered that this was a fairly common problem with the Sync system, and exposed a major design flaw.  There was no way to do a hard reset of the system!  Apparently, the Windows version used in the system had a buggy USB driver which would shut down under certain circumstances.  The only solution was to reboot everything, however there was no way to reboot the Sync system from the controls.  We tried to do a soft reset through the menu system, but no such luck.  The computer even kept drawing power when the car was off.  After more sleuthing, we found a forum post that suggested removing the fuse from under the steering wheel that controlled the power to the dash (For those of you wondering, it was fuse #13 – use the provided tool on the inside of the cover, and remove the fuse for about 30 seconds.  Your trunk may pop open.)  Once we reinserted the fuse and started the car up again, everything worked fine!

That turned out to be the only major hiccup we ran into.  Overall, I think the system works great, and it is definitely nice to see some serious integration between cars and the devices we use all the time.  The system would be improved by a better display, and of course by a hard reset option that is more accessible than popping out a fuse.

2009 MacBook Pro Review

Got home yesterday and decided to buy a new computer – just quit my job on Friday and signed a new contract for Seabourne so I felt like I could use a new toy.  For the last three years I’ve been using a Core 2 Duo MacBook and a Lenovo Thinkpad T60 with Kubuntu.  I liked both computers, but have been feeling hindered by the lack of screen real estate, especially when coding.  About three months ago I almost bought a 15 inch MBP, but decided to wait until I had more money.  And boy am I glad I did!  The whole line of MacBook Pros were updated last week at WWDC 09, and they all just got a lot better, and a lot cheaper.  Here’s my quick review.

Unboxing
As usual, Apple has done a terrific job on packaging.  Even though the computer is a solid 2 inches wider than my MacBook, there is probably 1/3 less packaging total.  Rather than a soft sleeve, the MBP comes wrapped in a clear plastic, similar to what the iPhones now come in.  As usual, a small manual and restore CDs come in a box below the computer, along with the power supply.  However, Apple no longer includes a free Apple Remote with laptops.

Look and Feel
The computer is gorgeous.  No other way to put it.  If I could pick one adjective for the whole thing, it would be ’smooth’.  The aluminum has a beautiful satin finish that feels silky to the touch, but definitely has enough texture to make it grippable.  The screen has a glossy finish – I don’t mind, but I can see how this would bug some people as you really have to be careful not to touch it otherwise the fingerprints are glaringly visible.  The increased screen color gamut is obviously apparent when comparing this version of the MBP with any previous Apple laptop – the colors are much sharper.  I’ve noticed that the screen hinge seems much smoother than the MacBook.  It is easy to move the screen with one finger and have it stay in that position.

The keyboard is great, though the same chiclet style as all the Apple laptops are now (some people hate it).  The keys are much more firm than the MacBook, a big improvement.  I really enjoy the backlit keyboard, and there are some very handy function buttons to dim or brighten the lighting behind the keys.

Size & Screen
One of the major reasons I bought a new computer was to get more screen space.  I’ve enjoyed the size of the 13 inch MacBook, but just felt that I’d be more productive with a 15 inch notebook.  Given the width and weight are about the same for both models now, it turns out to be a gain without much of a loss.

The screen is vibrant and has what seems like twice the brightness of my old MacBook.  Honestly, I feel about twice as productive with the new setup (as you can see in the picture above, that’s probably because I can have two terminal windows open at once!)

This thing is thin!  Though significantly wider than a MacBook (obviously), it is probably 10-20% thinner.  The LCD has benefited from the LED backlights by dropping a few millimeters of width.

Trackpad and Gestures
One of my favorite things about the new laptop is the support for multi-finger gestures.  Three fingers side to side goes back and forward in the browser or the finder, four fingers up and down triggers exposé or shows the desktop.  This took a little getting used to, but now that it’s an ingrained habit, I find that it is really hard to go back to computers without these features.  I had to download the new Release Candidate of Firefox 3.5 to get the three finger gesture support.  The track pad itself is much larger than almost any other laptop, which is really great for scrolling both horizontally and vertically through large code blocks.  I have had no problem with the new integrated button.  Overall I’m pretty impressed with the selective sensitivity of the track pad; I can keep my thumb on the button part of the pad and use my finger for pointing, and everything works smoothly as it would with a dedicated button.

Battery Life
The biggest selling point for me on this laptop was the new lithium-polymer battery.  The downside is that it’s integrated tightly into the unibody enclosure so you can’t remove it yourself or swap out another battery for longer uses.  The upside is that the battery now gets about 5-6 hours of use per charge, more than twice what my old MacBook used to get.  I’ve tested it out for about a week now, and with standard use (wireless on, screen brightness at 50%, bunches of programs open) I can get 5.5 hours pretty consistently.  The battery is also now supposed to last up to 1000 charges, or three years of standard use, and is replaceable at an apple store for $129, the same price as a new battery for older laptops.

Summary
Overall, this is the best MacBook Pro ever, and I think the best Apple Laptop ever.  The 15 inch MBP is a great middle ground between portability and usability.  The new features make this a compelling computer to use, has increased my productivity, but most importantly, is a pure joy to use.

Kubuntu 9.04 Review: 2 Steps Back

So I’ve now had a couple of weeks of use with Kubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty).  I did a standard update from 8.10, which thankfully went very smoothly.  However, I must say that generally I think this version is a step down (well, two very big steps in fact) in functionality and usability.  Here are the main areas I’ve run into trouble:

Bluetooth
If bluetooth was troublesome before, it is now practically unusable.  I’ve got a Microsoft bluetooth mouse and keyboard, both of which worked fine under 8.10 Intrepid, and which now work none only some of the time.  The mouse has a success rate of about 70% connecting to my computer and staying connected.  My keyboard has a 0% success rate.  The built-in KDE bluetooth manager is now completely useless, and does nothing as far as I can tell.  The default Gnome bluetooth-wizard works some of the time, but I can’t get my keyboard to keep a constant connection even when I’m using it.

Word on the street is that this is all due to the upgraded Bluez stack.  But, I can’t understand how functionality that existed and worked really well in the previous version has totally tanked in the current version.  I’ve basically given up using my bluetooth peripherals until a fix comes out (hopefully soon!).

Wireless
Again, the Kubuntu developers have delivered a downgrade in functionality and preformance with wifi in 9.04.  What used to be a manageable, if not quite elegant, solution in KNetworkManager has been replaced by a completely useless KDE 4 native plasma widget.  It looks pretty but is mostly broken.  First off, the new network manager has no way to connect to an unbroadcast SSID.  Second, it rarely remembers to reconnect to existing networks, usually prompting you to enter the password about 3 times before giving up in a confused befuddlement.  Third, the graphical elements are all fucked up.  The list of available networks in the panel is usually cut off so you can only see the first 1.5 entries.  You have to drag it off the menu and onto the desktop for the full list to display.  The proximity display view is even worse – all the networks are just overlayed on top of each other so as to make it illegible.

Both of these may seem like small issues, but they concern the two biggest uses of a computer: typing and using the internet.  What’s all the more disappointing is that the release has been out for over a month, and there have been no patches to address bluetooth, which is barely functional, or the network manager, which is in little better shape.

Upsides
There are a few upsides to this release.  First, KDE looks generally more polished with each release.  There has been a fix to font rendering so that now the font size doesn’t get all screwed up if you use a second monitor.  The fonts in previous versions of KDE 4.x were much too large and bold faced.  Kde 4.2 seems to have fixed this.  And FINALLY the display bugs in Firefox seem to be fixed.

Summary
In summary, there are some new features to make this release worthwhile, but overall there is clear lack of polish in key areas.  I’m still stumped as to how the Kubuntu developers thought it a good idea to issue release with a non functioning bluetooth stack and a really, really crappy network manager.  And I’m even more baffled that its been over a month since this release and there are still no bug fixes to address the display issues in the network manager (not to mention the crippling lack of features) or the non-functioning bluetooth stack.

KDE 4.2 = My New Desktop

With the release of KDE 4.2, I decided to switch my primary work desktop from Windows XP to Kubuntu.  And I couldn’t be happier.  Overall, the desktop looks gorgeous (easily comparible to Mac OS X), the apps are great (very few crashes compared to previous 4.x versions), and of course, super powerful.  It has been a great switch. 

I tried using KDE 4.0 and 4.1, but along with everyone else, found that they were just too instable and feature poor for everyday use.  KDE 4.2 has added many features that existed in the old 3.5 branch, but also added a host of new and really innovative features that make this desktop a real competitor.  Here are a few of my favorites:

• KWin: Finally, the devs were able to bring compiz style eye candy to KDE natively.  KWin worked out of the box, autodetected my ATI chipset and turned on 3D effects automatically.  They standards are all there, and have been fleshed out to be comparible to Compiz.  On my 4.1 install, I never really got Compiz to work correctly with KDE – it ended up crashing a lot, and the configuration was in two places (the Compiz control panel and the KDE control panel for themes).  
• Notifications: Even in previous versions of KDE, notifications were always a pain.  They showed up willy nilly on the screen, with no organization which meant I turned them off for most programs.  KDE 4.2 has collected notifications down in the system tray, staking new notifications as they appear.  Any file action also goes into the same notification pile, keeping all the information in one place.  Very handy.
• Themes & Repository Integration: This is a feature that keeps on amazing me.  In the KDE system settings panel, you have the ability to add themes, desktop backgrounds, etc.  Most of these are integrated with the same “Get More…” button you can use to download additional plasmoids.  But these things are in the handiest of places – like the GRUB configuration panel, where you can choose to download new GRUB backgrounds from KDE-look.org using the built in preview/download tool.

At work, we use Outlook and some other Windows only apps that I need.  To use these apps, I needed to run my existing Windows XP install off the hard drive in Linux.  As you can see in the screenshot above this works really well – I’ll post the details in an upcoming post.