Some Audi infotainment systems were bricked for MONTHS by a SiriusXM update!

[thewayne]

The shape of things to come?

SiriusXM radio service pushed out an update that expected the infotainment system to be at version x.5. Or whatever. If it wasn't, it rolled back. And therein's the rub. Sirius was unable to revert to its former state, so it tried to download its newest image. Which wasn't compatible with the current state of the infotainment system. Reboot the infotainment system, rinse, repeat.

For some Audi owners, this went on for MONTHS.

I would be seriously pissed if this were to happen to me! Now, my Subaru is 10 years old, and I replaced the radio with a newer Kenwood to get some additional functionality out of Apple's Car Play, and I'm glad I did it. But if I had a newer car with a touchscreen, and it got borked like this? WOW. Very unhappy camper!

The problem was that there are people with car that, for whatever reason, were not running the latest version of their car's infotainment OS. Maybe they had a bad antenna, who knows. Then this APP update comes along and blows everything up. Once again, bad programming that was unable to fail safe and properly revert back to its previous state. I don't know anything about how these infotainment systems are programmed, but you'd think the first thing you'd do when pushing an update would be to read what version is out there - which you can presume is working properly - and write that version identifier off to a safe memory space that won't be overwritten. If your update fails, reload THAT saved version! Then figure out what happened.

*sigh*

https://www.thedrive.com/news/a-siriusxm-update-sent-some-audi-screens-into-a-forced-reboot-loop-for-months

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/23/003245/a-siriusxm-update-sent-some-audi-screens-into-a-forced-reboot-loop-for-months

Comments

[disneydream06]

YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That better not happen to my car. :o :o :o

I have just over a month to go on my "deal" for SiriusXM and then I will probably have to stop it.
I'm sure not going to pay full price for the service. :( :( :(
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

I get an offer for 1-3 months of Sirius every time I get my car serviced by the dealer.  I've never activated it.

[disneydream06]

They gave me an offer for $5 a month for one year.
That's up in December. :(

[thewayne]

I wouldn't have bothered with that.  I just listen to podcasts (mainly) and music from my phone while driving.  Now, $5 a year I'd buy into.

[disneydream06]

Now that I would sign up for in a heartbeat. lol......

[moonhare]

If you tell them you won’t re-up they will offer you lower prices. You can probably get the same deal, or close to it. I miss Sirius; we only gave it up because we don’t drive as much.

[disneydream06]

I did a google to see how to cancel and it said don't be surprised to start getting offers to renew. lol...

I love the old time radio shows station but most of my driving is back and forth to work, so that doesn't even give me enough time for a half hour program. :(
Some times I will listen to it my Roku tv sitting at home. lol...

[silveradept]

This is a solved problem in the smartphone world and other such things - apps read what version of system they're being installed to, and if it's not within their range, they refuse to update, and tell the user they have to update the underlying system first. Which is not a great solution for those who need to or want to stay on a specific version of a system, but check code like that wasn't bothered to have been put in? That's completely foolish.

[thewayne]

Exactly.  Bad design that's incapable of failing safe where solved examples exist.