Finally Here! The Ford Trail App for Bronco

DRWright

Soooo... I'm going to be blunt.

I was expecting this "Fordpass Performance" "Bronco Trail App" to be built in to the vehicle software and not be as heavily dependent on the phone.

My phone gets hot enough running android auto and Spotify and it doesn't help I also live in the desert.

My first impressions.
- App downloaded and connected to my account like a charm.
- Took a few minutes to figure out how to link the app to the Bronco via having to press too many buttons. On vehicle screen - Apps, Trail Apps then Android Auto then Trail apps logo on left. Confusing AF.
- Couldn't figure out how to full screen
-UI between Trail Apps and the other side of the screen is not intuitive when trying to select something specific like not having maps up while having Trail maps up.
- Wasn't able to pick direction the map faces while driving like map facing north or directional.
-App crash
-App disconnected
-2 phone reboots
- I figure you could have more features up on the screen without being on a Trail. It would be cool if the telemetry data as well and tires and all the other on screen features could be used on their own as well. Like Jeeps offroad pages.
I'm trying to remain optimistic but I don't see where 3 years of development has gone other than 1200 or so trails. Having to use your phone for anything other than the video recording is a big L in my book. I will go test out a Trail this weekend to see how it goes but this App so far feels like something some interns made on their spare time.

Squash

Honestly, as a developer (that's not connected w/ this app in any way) one of the best ways for us to track down causes of crashes is by getting reports and info from the app when it crashed. If you're willing to share these reports with the devs, on iOS, go to your Settings app > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements. From there, turn on the "Share With App Developers". That way, whenever a crash happens, a report is sent to Apple, and it's made available to the app developers for debugging.

The reports that come in are anonymous, but they'll show things like the version of the OS, device type, and most importantly, the line of code that led to the crash. Reports from forums like this are useful, my team regularly interacts with customers of our apps on various forums for our apps, but getting these crash reports and info about what you were doing when the app crashed are most often some of the best tools we have.

(I just like to help out fellow devs - launching an app is always stressful. Seems like no matter how much testing you do, something always surprises you once it gets into the wild.)

Sulley

Have to disagree with you there. One of the best ways to track down causes of crashes is to properly vet this thing in TestFlight with a decent sized population, until you get no crashes. If you have to caveat your app description with, "if it crashes", then it's not ready to be released to the general public.

Sulley

Have to disagree with you there. One of the best ways to track down causes of crashes is to properly vet this thing in TestFlight with a decent sized population, until you get no crashes. If you have to caveat your app description with, "if it crashes", then it's not ready to be released to the general public.

Squash

Honestly, I would love to be able to do that. But at the end of the day there are always things that surface that don't get caught even during the TestFlight phase. One app that I work on deploys a new build every two weeks, and has several hundred external beta testers.

I can't share exact numbers, but once that app gets into the wild, our crash rate is less than 0.25% of unique users seeing a crash. If we were to wait until that number was zero before releasing an update, that's preventing our other 230K+ users from getting those updates. And frankly, a portion of those crashes are something that happened within Apple's iOS code, or a 3rd party library that we then need to find a workaround for.

No matter how much you think you've got your bases covered, you're always going to get surprised by some use case you didn't consider during development, or that didn't surface during testing. If a report comes in exposing a particular crash or bug, as a dev, you fix it, release an update, and then (ideally) get some tests and reporting in place to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Sulley

This was a clear QA fail.

magicrobots

I'll bet QA had absolutely nothing to say about the app going to market.

Sulley

I wonder if there even was a QA

Laura

For years, Day 1 reservationists and early order holders have looked forward to a missing piece from the Bronco launch: the Bronco Trail App, formerly referred to as the FordPass Performance app.

Bronco Trail App – Ready for Use


Today is the big day. Ford is launching the Bronco Trail App at Moab Bronco Safari, and it’s available now in the Apple App Store and Google Play for free download and use. Prior to launch, the app was marketed for Mid Package Broncos and up. As of today, the Bronco Trail App’s FAQs state the app will determine if you have an eligible vehicle.

The Bronco-specific off-road app features approximately 1,200 professionally curated trail maps across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. It provides the ability to record drives with waypoints, photos, and video –– and lets you share your adventure on social media. Future updates will add more trails and features to the app.

READ THE ARTICLE

From the developer: If the app crashes on you when recording, power off your phone, restart it, open the app, and leave it running.
If you force close the app, it will crash again when recording, and you'll need to do the power-off on cycle.

magicrobots

I'll bet QA had absolutely nothing to say about the app going to market.

magicrobots

`until you get no crashes`

Dude do you even software

A fact of the landscape these days, and it's a problem, is that "the public" is the beta test platform. If organizations were OK with taking the time to test software internally then we'd be waiting months or years for the software we want. People these days would rather get buggy software now than less buggy software later (no crashes is just not going to happen, come on be real. Unless you're talking about a simple application). You and I may be in the minority who would prefer to wait, but as far as business decisions go that typically isn't the way it is. And personally if I have to turn on a switch in my OS to help the developer improve the software more easily then I'm going to flip it.

Mikey D

Downloaded without any issues. Pinpointed several trails in the area. Definitely will be using to have some fun on the trail. I'll start with the EASY trails until I can get to a Bronco Off Rodeo. 😀

JoergH

The story talks about high frequency/high amplitude vibrations, like from a motorcycle engine. I have the 2.7 in the Bronco, so I don't have to worry about that. Maybe with the 2.3? 😉

RagnarKon

Video up for those who want to see it in action: