Ford AppLink, Part Two

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A while ago, I looked at BMW’s iPhone integration. They have an SDK for third-party app integration too, but seem to have little interest in making it available to every developer. The information PDF from their 2012 press event has disappeared.

This week Ford invited me to see its spring lineup. I’ll leave judging the engines and wheels to others.

I wanted to look at Ford Sync and AppLink. I explicitly asked the speaker about the developer program and what was planned specifically for Germany. His answer: Germany would get Spotify, while the SDK would remain limited to a handful of selected partners.

I paired my iPhone with Sync in a new Fiesta. It offered A2DP and phone integration. Naturally, AppLink was nowhere to be seen without a compatible app. The voice commands were understood reasonably well, but the voice guidance was misleading or simply wrong. There’s apparently also a system with an 8-inch touchscreen, but nobody could show it to me.

I tried developer.ford.com to see what was available, but half the site was missing in iOS Safari.

It works a little better in a proper browser. And look: Ford had opened the AppLink developer program a month earlier. Any developer can sign up and submit an AppLink app to Ford for approval. Someone at Ford US seems to have received the memo about smartphones. Sync doesn’t make a great first impression—though perhaps that’s too much to expect from the sheet-metal folks. Ford’s press office might want to ditch its rotary phones too, but at least one department has some idea of what happens outside the car.

One more thing: even the small Fiesta gets Sync as standard from the mid-range trim. With BMW you need the top navigation system, an iPhone snap-in adapter, and an optional extra (no joke) called “Apps”. It consists of flipping a bit in the computer and adding a little cable.