I agree regarding the touch screens. They are ignoring the maxim to "keep it simple". A year ago while heading down to the 4 corners region in our 2017 F150 w/trailer in tow, the Ford Sync 3 system starts going wonky while driving down the interstate toward Utah. Turning on and off, going blank, then trying to boot up. My wife gets on my iPhone and calls a Ford dealer in Ogden to see if we can swing in to have it checked out. While talking with the service department on the phone the Sync 3 kicks back in and pulls the call onto the truck speakers. We get into the dealer, unhook the trailer, they run a diagnostic and advise me that the module is toast and they can order a new one. Will have to stay overnight. So, I pull out my phone and start looking for lodging. Go to make a call and no sound/speakers on my phone. I call AT&T, they tell me to call Apple. I call Apple and they start walking me through various steps to no avail. They tell be to drive south 15 miles to the Apple store and get me an appointment with a "genius". Get down there, they run some diagnostics and tell me the iPhone sound is toast. Need a new phone. At least the Ford Sync 3 was under warranty, not the phone though. Dealer thought it was pretty odd that the Sync 3 could have triggered a failure on the phone but admitted he had heard of a few crazy incidents with phones and the Sync 3 system.
I get the feeling at times that these engineer/designers are sitting around in their cubicles thinking wouldn't it be neat if we could do this... etc., etc. They convince management about what a great feature it is and voila, more bells and whistles in a truck than one needs. While at the dealership, after they install a new module, they bring the truck out to me accompanied by a tech guy with a laptop. He plugs it into the truck and is messing with some settings on the Sync system. I start griping to him about how the truck lights up like a Christmas tree when you open a door and that it's particularly irritating when in a dark campground at night. Told him I scoured the manual and could not find ways to shut some of the lights down. He tells me there's a "dark" mode that is made for law enforcement that he might be able to tweak. I tell him to go for it. He plays with it for a bit and we try it out. He was able to disable some of the auto turn on light functions on the truck, but not all. It was an improvement, but I still ended up cutting out some small pieces of black gorilla tape and covering the bright LED lights on the bottom of the tow mirrors and also on the tailgate and down near the rear license plate. I was told you can't just remove the LED bulbs from the tow mirrors. Whole assembly needs replacing if they burn out someday.
There are many things I really like about the truck but others make me long for the relative simplicity of my '99 F250. Most of the negatives are tied to the "convenience" features they think everyone wants. Also, the interior back up warning that comes on when throwing it in reverse. A disable function pops up on the dash every time you put in reverse. If you turn it off, it's only for that one action. There's another place within the master setting that allows one to turn it off, but it appears to reset every time the truck is shut off and restarts.
Anyway, I got off on a long rant. I suspect there are similar issues with other late model brands besides Ford. As with everything, there are pros and cons to all of this technology they put on trucks today. Sometimes I think a good deal of it is really only there so they can up sell you to the next trim level or get you to buy the bigger option package and increase their margins.
