Ford SYNC AppLink ready for in-car apps

Ford is at the North American International Auto Show this week, and one of the things the carmaker is touting this week is SYNC AppLink. It's a way for drivers to use apps on their iOS or Android devices without needing to actually touch the devices, and by next year Ford expects that 14 million SYNC AppLink-equipped cars will be on the road.

Wired.co.uk's Jim Hill talked with Ford's John Eliss about SYNC AppLink for Ars Technica and tried some of the 63 available apps. Kaliki is an app that reads magazine articles to you; at this point, only a little over a dozen magazines are available, but more will come in the future. Amazon Cloud Player works with SYNC AppLink -- you use your voice to search for music, then play, skip and shuffle through your cloud-based playlists. Pandora is also available for those who love that app.

Ford has three rules for developers who want to use their free SYNC AppLink SDK to build car-ready apps: no text-heavy apps, no movies or video content and no games. Making sure that users are paying attention to their driving is the entire reason behind SYNC AppLink.