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Any way to remove mytouch?


marjen

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So this is probably a dumb question that I already know the answer to but I figure I will ask anyway. Is there anyway to replace the stock mytouch system in the 2013 fusion titanium with a 3rd part radio? I have just so had it with mytouch. I am a tech guy and actually work in technology and UI design and it is the most unintuitive, frustrating mess, not to mention dangerous system I have ever used. Its slow, its buggy, it takes 7 more clicks than it should to pick a song off my ipod, Its useless waste of space on the home screen, I mean 3/4 of the main screen contains buttons that are not even used that often!! When i try and use voice commnands it almost always tells my my ipod is "indexing". If I pick a song, it does not also pick the album its on, there are just so many things about it that suck. :)

 

So anyway would love to rip it out, beat it with a baseball bat and move on with my life. Is it possible?

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I don't understand the comment about the home screen having so many controls. Mine has the current Sirius or FM stations or the current usb song in the lower left and the heated seat controls in the lower right. That's all you can select from the home screen. You have to go to the individual screens to select anything else.

 

The indexing problem sounds like the old software or your metadata isn't correct. There is an itunes sync program that will identify and fix that.

I have a 8 gb flash drive with all my songs and I can select a song, album, artist or playlist with one simple voice command. It works every time.

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The indexing problem sounds like the old software or your metadata isn't correct. There is an itunes sync program that will identify and fix that.

I have a 8 gb flash drive with all my songs and I can select a song, album, artist or playlist with one simple voice command. It works every time.

I've heard others make reference to this program for correcting metadata. I have 3400 songs, and am expecting my Titanium in a week or 2. I would like to be ready so when the car arrives I'm good to go. Could you point me in the direction of the iTunes sync program?

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My iTunes library is somewhere around 5000 songs. I've never used the Sync app. Maybe I should. I've never really had any indexing issues though.

 

As for finding a particular song, yeah, going through the menus is tedious (don't see how you would reduce the number of touches required though??), but voice control for such a task usually works very well.

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As one who complained about the home screen being a useless waste of space, you'd note the HVAC controls are integrated into the system. So unless you can locate a 3rd party system that integrates with Ford's interior climate controls, no.

Edited by cjh
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Well thats kind of what i figured. To answer a couple of questions.

 

1.yes the home screen is a massive waste of space. 1/4 of the screen tells me the name of my phone and gives me the option to block it. Never touched that button. 1/4 shows me a compass. Never really looked at it. 1/4 of the screen tells me the temp and lets me turn on butt warmers. So I turn those on in the winter and rest of year its useless. Most cars have real buttons for seat warmers. For people on florida or CA they probably never touch those buttons. 1/4 is semi useful. Allows you to change radio stations but that is it. cant change sources, have no control over songs when using USB. So yes the home screen is a terrible waste of space.

 

2. Maybe its my ipod, but for the first 2-3 minutes I can not use voice commands. Its either indexing or setting up audio controls for my device. After that they are not very functional. Lets say I want to listen to a song. But then want to listen to rest of album. Cant seem to do it. If i say play song, it plays the song but then just starts playing any other song off my ipod. I can pick an album but will then need to scroll to song. So.... I usually use the menus which is downright dangerous. To get to a song i have to: click on browse (if already on ipod), if not at least 2 clicks to get to this point. Then select music, artist, area of the alphabet (which should just be 26 buttons, one for each letter or type ahead would also be quicker), then scroll though several clicks, then click on artist name, then album name. Its like at least 6-7 layers deep which is just crazy. How about some sort of favoirtes? Or a preference to say i always select music and browse by artists? How about if you are listening to an artist you can just click on the artist name to then see all there albums without have to start another whole browse sequence?

 

3. I am using the latest version of mytouch.

 

4. the current hvac controls are not much better. They have buttons for defrost and read defrost. How about 1 button that lets you cycle through all modes? You should not need to go to climate for this.

 

5. Besides all this it is just slow, clunky and sometimes just does not work. On 3-4 different occasions the entire system stopped putting out ANY sound. Not music, button clicks, voice commands, nothing. A couple of those times I had to shut off the car before sound came back. Another time (of course it was long highway trip) not even shutting off car helped, it came back the next day. Again with latest software.

 

6. The only thing that works pretty well is voice controls for phone calls.

 

I really dont know if i could by another ford again. I love the look of the new mustang. Looks like an aggressive 2 door fusion. Might even consider getting one, but really not sure I could deal with this system for a few more years.

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It would be nice if you could add customized commands to the home screen. But if you consider the home screen is really a 4 choice menu (Phone, Entertainment, Navigation, Climate) that also gives you extra controls and extra information then it makes a lot of sense. What's the option - a screen with 4 buttons that does nothing else?

 

You can play a song or play the album with a single voice command. If you want a song on the album, play the album by voice, then use the steering wheel buttons to get to the track you want. It's not that difficult.

 

I've never seen a car that had a single button for front and rear defrost.

 

You're going out of your way to find things to complain about. I don't think any other system will give you what you want.

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1. The home screen is only there to take you to the other screens and show at a glance what the 4 sub "window" systems are doing, since this is in fact Windows based. You have a compass in the upper right quadrant because that's the default where Nav is. If you had Nav, you would access through that quad.

2. You shouldn't have to "click" anything. You should be able to search or play via voice for an artist, album etc. See the suggestion about "search" for "sync my ITunes". Ipods have to be updated and formatted for this to work. Apple vs Windows they have to be taught to play well together, especially when we put info on our Ipods in random ways.

3 and 5.... Are you SURE that you are using 3.6.1? From the home screen, hit Menu->Help->System Information. Look at the last 5 digits of the CCPU/CIP#.. they should be 13171 or higher. If they are not, you don't have the latest level. Sounds like some of the actual bugs you are experiencing are older version bugs. However, this is a computer (windows based, no less) and computers lock up sometimes. You can perform a "Master Reset" from the menus or simply pull the fuse (#32, 10 amps in the interior fuse panel) and hard boot. With some of the lockups, be sure that you don't have ANYTHING in your phone's phonebook that isn't a numeral or letter. "Emoticons" or any other symbol cause issues with processing, labeling and access.

And I STRONGLY suggest you bounce issues off syncmyride.com. There are a lot of users there with ideas to solve issues, and they are monitored by Ford in an effort to keep updating and improving the system.

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Sometimes I wish car manufacturers would just have a big LCD screen there that only provides backup camera and rudimentary radio/climate data, with full radio/climate physical controls under the screen. Then have a video-link feature to smartphones. That way I could just use Google Maps (or the TomTom app when there's no signal) in the car and have a familiar interface. Plus my passenger would be able to use my smartphone for destination entry in motion!

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You're going out of your way to find things to complain about. I don't think any other system will give you what you want.

 

Believe me I am not. The system is extremely unsafe. Its so unorganized when i need to access things I found I spend too much time looking at the screen. My old maxima had a better system and my wife has a new altima and they improved it even more and it is MUCH faster than mytouch. Nissan definitely has a huge leg up on ford in this area. Look I cant be the only one who thinks it sucks, ford is constantly getting dinged for mytouch and sync and it has been under fire from buyers since it was released.

 

Look I love the two mini screens behind the steering wheel those are excellently executed. But the main system is terrible.

 

 

 

1. The home screen is only there to take you to the other screens and show at a glance what the 4 sub "window" systems are doing, since this is in fact Windows based. You have a compass in the upper right quadrant because that's the default where Nav is. If you had Nav, you would access through that quad.

 

So if this is the case it is useless. A car system should not have an entire main screen where the purpose is not to actually accomplish anything. Ease of use, reduction of clicks should be paramount in the design. Its just very inefficient.

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you do realize that you don't need the MFT screen for HVAC controls, right? I don't see the gripe with things being unorganized...four split sections for different access to different systems seems pretty organized to me and is a lot better than having to jump through menus to get what you need. At most, I can access what I need to use with 2 or maybe 3 touches and anything else I'll just use the steering wheel or voice commands for, this is what I like most about the Fusion, its redundancy to give you options in changing different settings (voice, steering wheel, MFT) whereas most other manufacturers give you a limited scope of what you can do with each system. I'm pretty sure that the reason that for HVAC only heated seats are shown on home screen is to make things easier and let you use the "hard controls" on the panel itself. Entertainment, you can easily switch sources on the wheel or with voice. Phone, the idea is that you should avoid using your phone while driving and nearly every other system out there will lock you out from using these screens and force you into voice commands only. Navigation, if you don't have it, it what good would going into the menu do anyways? Again, they want to steer your attention away from the screen and to focus on voice and steering wheel controls while driving.

 

The home screen is just to give you a glimpse of what's going on, not really to have you play with it while driving.

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So how does the maxima main menu work? There has to be a way to select the different modes. The home screen is simply the main menu with other features added instead of just 4 buttons. With MFT you have the 4 main menu options available from everywhere - you don't have to go through menus. If you prefer just touch entertainment and leave it on the radio screen.

 

Over 75% of MFT owners actually recommend it to others. Most of the rest that don't is due to problems that have been fixed in the latest software and a small number of hardware problems.

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It is not efficient.. In your opinion. To many its exactly what the main screen needs to have on it, a quick glance of what is happening and easy access to the other sub menus. As akirby said, if you use a particular submenu, you can leave it on that one and almost every function can be controlled via voice or the driver's buttons. The driver doesn't even need to use the infotainment screen at all, except for the visual clues of what the system is doing. The infotainment screen is for the use of passengers as your hands should be on the wheel... where all the secondary buttons are. I again suggest you check your software release for the two actual bugs you have experienced and fix your Ipod as suggested by other users to help improve your overall experience. Otherwise it sounds like you just simply wanted a Nissan. I can't blame you. Changing from one interface to another is hard. I would never own an Apple product because I cannot stand their interface (or politics but that is a different matter) due to operating Windows PC's since the early 90's. Therefore I will probably never be happy with another type of system, much like most of your complaints are that it doesn't work exactly like your Nissan.

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........... Look I cant be the only one who thinks it sucks, ford is constantly getting dinged for mytouch and sync and it has been under fire from buyers since it was released. ..............

 

Well Ford can't exactly fix "user". They've provided multiple ways to control some 90% (guess) of the stuff in the car. One exception are the butt warmers but they're on the home screen. Example - on a trip I have the nav on the right driver's screen while my wife is using the entertainment on the main screen, she mentions "can you warm it up some" = I say "set temp XY" (a couple up from current)........wow how horrible. That's using 3 concurrent interfaces into the system, pretty efficient. Is it perfect? Nope, but then no system is.

 

Personally I dislike all forms of seat warmer buttons that require a push. Came from 10 years of a roller wheel design = best method by far...............but.........most companies use the button (physical or screen) = I have to adapt, nothing worth getting my knickers in a knot over.

 

 

It is not efficient.. In your opinion. To many its exactly what the main screen needs to have on it, a quick glance of what is happening and easy access to the other sub menus. As akirby said, if you use a particular submenu, you can leave it on that one and almost every function can be controlled via voice or the driver's buttons. The driver doesn't even need to use the infotainment screen at all, except for the visual clues of what the system is doing. The infotainment screen is for the use of passengers as your hands should be on the wheel... where all the secondary buttons are. I again suggest you check your software release for the two actual bugs you have experienced and fix your Ipod as suggested by other users to help improve your overall experience. Otherwise it sounds like you just simply wanted a Nissan. I can't blame you. Changing from one interface to another is hard. I would never own an Apple product because I cannot stand their interface (or politics but that is a different matter) due to operating Windows PC's since the early 90's. Therefore I will probably never be happy with another type of system, much like most of your complaints are that it doesn't work exactly like your Nissan.

Yep, seems fine to me. My biggest "disturbance" is that I have to agree with akirby :speedie::)

 

And you could do an Apple - it's just linux with a playskool interface over the top :hysterical: Apple's just "computers for dummies" - you could slow down enough, just pretend you had a lobotomy :) (typing this on a Mac)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I find MFT to be fine. Once in awhile I will experience the indexing issue even after I "fixed" everything, but it's not very often. I guess I wish my vehicle had "real" buttons to go along with MFT and actual seat warmer buttons, but I think that is being addressed by Ford in upcoming systems.

 

Other then that it works fine.

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I find MFT to be fine. Once in awhile I will experience the indexing issue even after I "fixed" everything, but it's not very often. I guess I wish my vehicle had "real" buttons to go along with MFT and actual seat warmer buttons, but I think that is being addressed by Ford in upcoming systems.

 

Other then that it works fine.

I don't really mess with mine all the time. Climate set at 72 and forget it (click, click defrost on if its humid, click off). Navigation when I want it through voice commands. Radio through right steering controls. It reads me my text through right controls. I don't play with it much.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So this is probably a dumb question that I already know the answer to but I figure I will ask anyway. Is there anyway to replace the stock mytouch system in the 2013 fusion titanium with a 3rd part radio? I have just so had it with mytouch. I am a tech guy and actually work in technology and UI design and it is the most unintuitive, frustrating mess, not to mention dangerous system I have ever used. Its slow, its buggy, it takes 7 more clicks than it should to pick a song off my ipod, Its useless waste of space on the home screen, I mean 3/4 of the main screen contains buttons that are not even used that often!! When i try and use voice commnands it almost always tells my my ipod is "indexing". If I pick a song, it does not also pick the album its on, there are just so many things about it that suck. :)

 

So anyway would love to rip it out, beat it with a baseball bat and move on with my life. Is it possible?

 

 

Here this might be what you are looking for?

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