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Cue Wishlist/Fix/Refinement thread

37K views 164 replies 40 participants last post by  GTPprix 
#1 ·
I'm kind of surprised there isn't a sticky for this but here's my initial go at it. (I hope the board moderators can have a sticky post with the current Cue version, what changed, when it was released, etc.) Cue is OK but it has rough edges for sure. I encourage others to submit their suggestions.

* iPhone via USB - Cover art for same song but different band doesn't update / stays same
* Doesn't return to navigation - when I have navigation up, take a call with the hands free button (and don't touch anything else) Cue screen never returns to navigation, even after call ends. Agh!
* Voice prompts not short enough - On other new Chevy's I could start talking before the beep (if quick enough) and issue a command before (and it would accept it). Even with Short Prompts, I have to hear the lady ask me to issue a command EVERY SINGLE TIME. /cry
* If there is just one match for *anything* just go ahead and do it. I don't need to confirm it. If it's "wrong" it's still quicker to hit the cancel button and start a new command vs. waiting for the car to speak the command and speak a reply to it. Yeah I know the 5 way can help with this some, but seriously, why confirm if there just one match??? I know this may not be for everyone, but please give me option so I can enable this behavior.
* Voice input for Navigation to Address - sort of same as above, but if I confirm it on the smaller display, why do I need to hit "Go" on the Cue display? I know these are somewhat separate systems, but the additional "Go" confirmation seems redundant.
* Prompt length zero / errors only - only have the car talk if I make a mistake, if I take too long to reply, etc. Even with "Short Prompts" the car talks WAY too much. I've had the car for two weeks. I know most of the menu's and don't need the unsolicited prompts/"help" all the time.
 
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#68 ·
The indexing time is a pain for me too. I have a 120g iPod nearly always connected. When I get into the car, I often connect my 32g iPhone so that it doesn't drain battery on the way to work (and recharges on the way home).

With both of these devices, it's often still indexing 20 min in to my 25 min commute. Given this is for voice command that I virtually never use for music selection, I see a big system slow down to support a feature I don't care much about.

Even an option to disable voice command for music selection (and thereby disable indexing) would be a huge boon to me. And I would happily spot you a few megs of storage on both devices to cache an index. If my iPod never leaves the car, there's no need to re-index. And one could assert that by monitoring the USB port status until after the car is locked.
 
#69 ·
More on Pandora issues: I've had this happen about 5 times, and I actually think it's a bluetooth issue with Cue and not Pandora at all.

Listening to music with Pandora on a track change the music reverts back to playing audio from my phone instead of through Cue/Pandora app.
The information on the Cue Pandora app looks correct and I can even change stations, however the audio will still continue to play on the phone, and not on Cue.
If I power cycle my phone Cue/Pandora just sits and says "acquiring Pandora radio". At this point my phone is still showing up as connected (in Cue, not in Pandora), even if I completely power off my phone.
I can go to the phone menu on Cue and the contacts are still listed, and the battery/signal are still showing up (even though the phone is off).

Now normal behavior of Cue is if I power cycle my phone Cue will give a message stating "Nexus 4 disconnected" and once the phone powers back up I then see "Nexus 4 connected" however when I have this Pandora lack of audio issue I don't see either of those messages. Which then makes me think the problem isn't necessarily related to Pandora (even though it seems to cause the issue to happen) but more related to the Bluetooth connection between the phone and Cue and that it stops responding.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Side note to beat it to death: Tell the other group at GM to stop indexing EVERYTIME we start the car!..
That is all... =P
 
#70 ·
Bungee, I've seen exactly what you've described and it happens when my Droid 3 freezes and locks up and I have to pull the battery. The phone could be powering back up and I can still get to my contacts list. I don't think this is necessarily an issue with CUE as we don't constantly ping the phone to make sure it is still there. Doing so would put unnecessary drain on the the battery. I have seen that eventually the phone shows up as disconnected, and I think that is a result of a periodic check we do with the phone to make sure it is still there, but we just don't do it constantly.

Now, normally when I power down my phone, I will get the Disconnected message like you said, followed by the Connected message when it comes back up. So I think that when things are operating normally, there is a handshake that occurs when the phone powers down and gracefully disconnects, rather than just no longer responding.

So if it's at all similar to how my phone acts when it freezes, it very well could be the phone where somewhere in the Bluetooth stack it is getting hung up and stops responding. I'm not a technical expert with the Bluetooth side of things, but that's my guess based on what you've described and what I've seen with my phone as well.
 
#71 ·
Thanks for the response, however my situation is different than yours in that my phone hasn't frozen or locked up.
In fact I can still see the artist info, the track time counter is counting, the slide bar is updating, and I can even change stations, it's just that the A2DP side of things or whatever streaming method that it's using for the audio part of it seems to not be functioning anymore.

I think we may have a similar issue, just a bit different too.. =)
It's frustrating as it won't work again until Cue is restarted, there is nothing on the phone end that will fix this issue.

What's even worse is (as of yesterday exactly what happened) I still have a good 20 minute drive home and Pandora is broken until the next time I restart the car (and I guess wait for the 2 minutes for it to fully restart on start up), so I change media to my SD card that has been in the car (not removed) for weeks and I go to it and it says something like "no device found", so I then reach in and remove the SD card and reinsert it, and Cue then see's it and starts indexing. Of course that takes a while so I just give up and listen to the radio.. Grrrr.....
 
#72 ·
I agree for SD Cards and USB flash devices where the interface is a native FAT drive, that it should be able to build a database of tags locally on that card, provided there is enough free space. I can see why this would be difficult on iPods and iPhones, but plain flash storage devices using FAT should be allowed.
 
#73 ·
Yplus said:
I agree for SD Cards and USB flash devices where the interface is a native FAT drive, that it should be able to build a database of tags locally on that card, provided there is enough free space. I can see why this would be difficult on iPods and iPhones, but plain flash storage devices using FAT should be allowed.
iPods all have an option to allow you to use the iPod's disk (or these days, solid-state memory) as a mountable volume. Of course, one would have to turn that setting on when the iPod was connected to your computer, but that's one option. I'm not an iOS expert so there may be others as well.

Also, the real need is to cache the index. If CUE can buffer 30 minutes of audio, it probably has enough memory to store a cache.
 
G
#74 ·
Cody, the indexing of music each time the car is started is a huge problem for the users of the CUE system. It's necessary to come up with a solution that doesn't require indexing each time. I've had my car for 3 weeks, use either an Ipod or SD card for music almost exclusively and the current system isn't workable. Please discuss this with your peers and come up with some alternatives. Feel free to ask for feedback from the participants of this group. We all want the same thing, which is for CUE to be successful.
 
#75 · (Edited)
It's necessary to come up with a solution that doesn't require indexing each time. I've had my car for 3 weeks, use either an Ipod or SD card for music almost exclusively and the current system isn't workable.
I am really frustrated at this point about this entire CUE debacle and torn about coming on here to continually express that frustration after the folks at GM/Cadillac have at least attempted to communicate on this forum and on the phone.

I have been fortunate to have a rep named Andrew keeping in touch with me on the phone. He's been very patient, and certainly, has shown an interest in responding to the emails that I have sent him. I have to give kudos to the CUE infotainment team for the dedication they have shown to their customers.

But here is what it boils down to....

The future of CUE, at least in the current 2013 and under vehicles, seems uncertain. At least that is the impression I got from the phone call.

The biggest problem with CUE is its indexing. I'm sorry, but having CUE re-index your phone, iPod or SD card every time you enter the vehicle was an idiotic decision on GM's part. The fact that I have to wait up to 10 minutes to use my phone when entering the vehicle, or can't listen to iPod music because it takes even longer to sync it, is just plain inexcusable. Really, who looked at that functionality and thought it was a good idea?

Yes, we are being promised some sort of fix, but I am wondering, can a fix can really be done? After talking with the CUE rep on the phone yesterday, I was told that some vehicles don't have a hard drive to store all that information. So, what would the fix be? My 2013 SRX may not have an internal drive. It's also possible that the current hardware is not fast enough to speed up the indexing process. Are we really going to see a fix where you can get in your car and have the opportunity to immediately make a phone call? Can the iPod indexing really be fixed for those of us with thousands of songs?

I am keeping faith that the CUE team will come up with something to fix these problems for current owners, but something tells me that many of the shortcomings of the current units won't be fixed until faster hardware is made available for perhaps the 2014 models. If faster hardware is the answer to the problem, the right thing to do would be for Cadillac to recall every current vehicle when that hardware is made available. But we all know that will never happen -- but it should. Anyone who bought this expensive vehicle expecting CUE to meet their expectations should have the opportunity to get a new unit should processing speed be the culprit.

It all comes down to this....

Cadillac is a premium brand. The cost of owning their vehicles doesn't come cheap. Cadillac owners expect the very best of everything in that brand. CUE does not live up to those expectations and I am highly disappointed to see that this system was even greenlit to be installed in their fleet when it has problems like these. This has been said many times before....I feel like a beta tester for GM. Furthermore, I fear that through my entire future ownership of this very expensive vehicle I am going to be faced with problems related to this system just because the manufacturer did not take the time to get all the bugs out before introducing it to the market. It's very unfair for every Cadillac owner that expected something revolutionary from this CUE system.

With apologies to Andrew and Codeman. We do appreciate you being here. Sometimes some of us feel the need to vent about this.
 
#76 ·
I agree fully, I'm shocked that something of this nature got released and passed the expectations of the people connected with Cue.
To me it makes the system overall seem bad, and it ultimately seems that the overall goal is to allow voice dictation to control or select everything media based even though doing so makes usability or the index time suffer tremendously.
There is NO reason even in terms of CPU resources that the system needs to index every time at start up. How this is handled now just makes Cue seem slow, laggy, unusable, and overall kills the experience for the end user.
There is some form of memory or HDD space on Cue as it's used for time shifting radio broadcasts, and also tagging music from XM stations. I would certainly be willing to give up some time shifting space (still haven't even used the function) for a local index. Let alone all of the Nuance voice libraries, map data, Gracenote indexing, etc... are all stored on Cue somewhere.

There are many ways to accomplish this, GM if you're listening pick one!
It has been suggested (for SD/USB drives) to monitor these ports for a short time after powering down Cue or opening/closing the door. If the device that was plugged in wasn't removed once you've exited the vehicle then it hasn't changed! Leave the index the same and play music! This is merely 1 way of accomplishing this, and this way wouldn't require writing to the customers USB/SD card.

I will say this, and I mean it 100%!.. Other than a couple of unfortunate errors (power steering message, a charging/voltage problem, seat memory recall) Cue is the #1 problem with my ATS! It is the most frustrating part of the car and is seriously wrecking the overall great feel and drive-ability that the vehicle could be. It was marketed as revolutionary and had functions that I still to this day don't have (SMS being read to me, an App store, etc...) however even without the extra features the basic functionality is still flawed. Indexing is at the top of the list, followed by touch sensitivity and misplacement of touches vs on screen buttons (I'm told this is fixed), and still VERY laggy overall.

I really hope GM's listening because CUE is the #1 reason I wouldn't recommend the ATS to someone else, period!.
 
#77 ·
Bungee, I cannot agree with you more about the frustration of CUE. I truly believe that Cadillac needs to offer what Microsoft offers on Windows 8 and that is the ability to go back to an older format if the user wants it. On W8 you can go to W7 with the click of a button and still retain most of the benefits of W8. It would seem like a simple mod to the program could offer, on the big screen, a radio button, nav, media, phone and settings but leave the A/C controls fixed on the lower panel along with the CD player and give an electronically unsophisticated person a car with immediate and instantly understandable controls. I do not see this as a big cost item since all the ingredients are already there. I cannot imagine loaning my SRX to someone who has had no experience with this kind of system out of fear for their safety. Sure the basic car is there but just the A/C system alone is complex if one doesn't realize that the silver thingys do nothing and the control is actually above them. Maybe your team can kick this around to see if it is feasible and practicable to offer a format change. I fear that Cadillac's future is in danger if this system as it now stands is their future offering. You have to realize that the people on this forum are avid fans of the CUE system and we spend a lot more time with it than most car owners do so we are not the typical owners. Thanks again Codeman for you frequent replies to our questions.
 
#79 ·
JWLaRue said:
I'm thinking that whether or not indexing can be made to work faster or store an existing index, the system should prioritize certain functions like the phone at startup and let indexing run in the background.

-Jeff
Or, as I posted earlier, disable it entirely. I recall Cody saying that indexing is for voice command prep. Voice command is redundant to on screen navigation. A very practical solution would be to simplify the on-screen music navigation (as would be warranted if considered the primary UI) and allow the user to turn off voice commands for music (and thereby reduce or eliminate time spent building redundant indices).

I can't foresee any reason why that solution would be technically impractical.
 
#80 ·
Codeman71... I love the fact that someone from Cadillac actually looked at this. Thank so very much. I just picked up my cadillac from the Dealer for the second time that they've had it for a week addressing various issues and small items. I will put some time in this weekend and provide more precise information with specific examples. I work in the technology integration business personally and deal with similiar things daily. Everytime I have to fight with my developers when I call something a bug and they tell me that its a feature. Anyway, my point is that I love what you guys have done with the car; and cadillac in General providing CUE is a great addition; rough on the edges at first and personally I don't mind the small issues and bugs. I want to participate to help make a better product for everyone.

Is there an submission method to report issues? or is it best to just stick to this forum?

on some items the dealer is completely useless and this is annoying as our only point of contact official is to talk to the dealer. My issues with the car are not only CUE related, but for this thread I will stick to DIC and CUE related items only. When I report an issue the dealer says "weve looked at other XTS's on the lot and they all have this same thing, so therefore its not an issue".

DAVe
 
#81 ·
Hi Dave,

I'm very glad this forum is here for me to be able to interact with you guys! The CUE support phone number would be another way to report an issue, but then it has to go through a few other groups to actually get back to my team. So, this forum is the most direct way, although issues officially reported probably get higher priority and attention.

I'm sorry to hear about the issues you're having with the vehicle itself and that the dealer isn't being very helpful. Hopefully they will become more knowledgeable about the vehicle as they see more and more of them.

Thanks again for your patience and your support of Cadillac/GM!

-Cody
 
#82 ·
Denchikd said:
Anyway, my point is that I love what you guys have done with the car; and cadillac in General providing CUE is a great addition; rough on the edges at first and personally I don't mind the small issues and bugs. I want to participate to help make a better product for everyone.



DAVe

My feeling as well. I would be happy to contribute to any process we follow to give Cody and his team the grassroots support for improving CUE.

I, too deal with similar design issues professionally, and in my world, having an informed an active user base can sometimes be helpful in prioritization discussions.
 
#84 ·
Hello everyone,

+1 Person from the CUE team paying attention to the comments of the forum. Cody, got me started on the forum and its been great to read the feedback that has been created so far. Even when it is sharp critique, we can use this as ammunition to start the dialogue for a change. As kevinr said, this is why we are here, and its great.

I can promise you this; I'm not as cool as Cody. He has been apart of the CUE development since the beginning. He has a lot more of the inner working knowledge of the system and he just a wiz in general.
I will however do what I can. I am generally not much of a forum, facebook or blogging type but I will pipe up and support ideas internally at GM that I see and hear.

Thanks so much,

-Mark
 
#83 ·
Here's another indexing issue that I haven't found elsewhere in the CUE forum. I have a 4S running IOS6 and, after giving it time to index (~2 minutes) it seemed to have found all my music.
I then tried the destination contact option in the navigation system. It found about 1/3 of the contact addresses that were in my phone. I checked to make sure that the missing addresses were iCloud and were not from one of my other iPhone contact lists (Outlook or GMail). I could not find a pattern to the missing contacts. This is somewhat trivial, but please add it to your list.

Thanks
Jim
 
#86 ·
UXMinion,

Welcome.

Perhaps you or someone from the CUE team can tell us how the update that was supposed to be available to us this month is going?

I would like the ability to actually be able to place a phone call when I get in my vehicle.

I'd also like the ability to use my iPod. Have had my vehicle for 2 months now and I can't use my iPod in the Cadillac because of the indexing issues.

All this was "supposed" to be fixed in an update this month, but the month is now over.
 
#87 ·
All this was "supposed" to be fixed in an update this month, but the month is now over.
don't take this the wrong way... i'm not trying to pick on you - but the opinion you're voicing is from disappointment of a deadline missed (and i understand that)
but if codeman was never here on the forum, all we would have is owners complaining and not getting much info from their dealers (because we don't have much info)

this is why GM (and other companies) doesn't like it when employees/people with inside info let it out in public (like codeman has been doing)
it can cause this unnecessary disappointment

their internal target for the update was this month
codeman tells us to expect it
all the owners get a bit upset when the date comes and goes
but GM never had the update roll-out set in stone ... they just had an internal target
it will roll-out when it's ready, which is a good thing... you don't want any problems with a software update of this magnatude
(plus we're not talking about peoples home or work computer here)

but just FYI we got our first notification (as a dealer) of this update and how it will be rolled-out
it will roll-out slowly to make sure the dealer can provide the level of service that cadillac wants to provide and the owners expect
you will get a notification from GM and/or your dealer when they are ready to schedule you in
 
#88 ·
I used my NAVIGATION CONTACT command today to check it out and got a mixed results. The first time I tried it after the CUE lady gave me the beep I got as far as her repeating "Say Navigation Contact" to which I replied "Home". She then went into a tutorial on how to say or enter navigation contacts including several examples. I tried once more with "Navigation Contact" to which she replied "Say contact name or address" and then I replied "Home'. She then told me to look at the screen on my right and confirm the contact was correct. I waited for the tone each time and used the exact words both times. There has to be an improvement or it will be like driving with a spouse with a bad attitude. I have learned to use the exact terms she uses to help cut down on the confusion factor. An example is when she asks "Correct"? I always say "Correct" instead of "Yes". It looks like she will teach us old folks how to speak or she'll make driving a living hell. BTW, Rippy is right about the update to our systems. If we had never known of the upcoming update then we would have just been p oed with no one to turn to. Codeman has done a good job of making us all feel that help was on the way even if the date was not certain. Our next level of angst will be AFTER the update when or if there are not the improvements we are all expecting. I am betting on somewhere in the middle of all the complaints that we have seen on this forum but nothing earth shattering.
 
#90 ·
jreihsen said:
It found about 1/3 of the contact addresses that were in my phone. I checked to make sure that the missing addresses were iCloud and were not from one of my other iPhone contact lists (Outlook or GMail). I could not find a pattern to the missing contacts. This is somewhat trivial, but please add it to your list.

Thanks
Jim
Jim, I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but did u check the Bluetooth settings on your phone? iOS lets you choose which contacts sync.

In Settings: Bluetooth, if u click on the triangle next to Cadillac CUE, you will see a Contacts sync setup screen. The bottom half of that screen allows you to set-up which Contacts *group* gets synced to your phone.

If that set-up pointed to a group that was only a partial list of your contacts, it could result in the behavior you specified.

This happened to me, in that for some reason, my phone was configured to sync with a contact group that I had started to set-up long ago, had not finished and so it had like six old contacts, none of which were useful.



Text Font Technology Electronic device Parallel
 
#103 ·
Jim, I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but did u check the Bluetooth settings on your phone? iOS lets you choose which contacts sync.

In Settings: Bluetooth, if u click on the triangle next to Cadillac CUE, you will see a Contacts sync setup screen. The bottom half of that screen allows you to set-up which Contacts *group* gets synced to your phone.

If that set-up pointed to a group that was only a partial list of your contacts, it could result in the behavior you specified.

This happened to me, in that for some reason, my phone was configured to sync with a contact group that I had started to set-up long ago, had not finished and so it had like six old contacts, none of which were useful.



View attachment 103148
Kevin
Thanks for the hint. I had not seen the Group selection in the iPhone Cadillac CUE Bluetooth options.

The "All Contacts" option had been checked default, along with some other groups. I tried selecting "All Contacts" only and restarting the car and the phone to no avail. I then tried creating duplicates of the ignored contacts, also to no avail. For some reason, it just doesn't want to go to my brother in law's house.
 
#93 ·
I hope that you're kidding as I said nothing wrong or against the rules.

In fact I only reflected on what's been stated in this forum, and referenced complaints from user's having issues (including myself!), and then my opinion or feeling.
Yes, I'm still not confident things will be much better, however I do applaud the techs and people responsible for fixing problems.
I apologize if optimism isn't my strong suit here, however I do strongly believe some of these things should have been fixed prior to release, however that is merely my opinion.

----------

I continue to be very frustrated with Cadillac overall for approving this CUE system in the state that it is in. This system does not belong in a flagship vehicle with these problems intact. I have written letters to the CEO and President of the company, but I don't expect anything out of it.
It's not just me who believes the same, optimism or not.

----------

I apologize for de-railing this thread.

Has there been any fix for playback from the SD card not properly resuming at times?
I've read at least one other member's comment with similar issues as myself.
 
#97 ·
Codeman,

I am going to put you on the spot here and hope that you are able to answer these questions...

1. Does it look like the phone and iPod indexing problem will be totally fixed with the next update? By that I mean iPods with thousands of songs will have their content correctly accessed as soon as you get into the vehicle? Also, a phone call can be made immediately upon entering the vehicle despite the size of the contacts list?

2. If not, is it true that vehicles will need a hard drive to permanently store what is being indexed for best performance?

3. Does the 2013 SRX have an internal hard drive? If so, could that be manipulated into solving the problem with indexing?


And, for the record, I don't dislike you either. I am very happy you are here. My anger is with Cadillac for allowing this system to be placed into their flagship vehicles with the bugs that it has.
 
#102 ·
1. I'm sorry, but I do not know for certain. I do not believe the phone indexing issue will be fixed, so there will still be some time delay for that. I have a feeling that the iPod indexing issue will still be there as well, but that's the one I'm trying very hard to see what's going on because it shouldn't be doing this.

2. No, a hard drive is not required. There is ample flash memory embedded in the unit so an HDD is not required. It all comes down to determining what has changed (if anything) on a connected device to make sure that all the content has been indexed and that the system isn't missing something.

3. No, none of the CUE systems have hard drives. I don't know why the call center is saying this but I have gotten in touch with them to clear that up - so thanks for the heads up on that one. But like I said, there's flash memory, so storage space isn't the issue...it's the logic behind determining what's been updated, and a certain amount of file checking is required for this.
 
#98 ·
I have a '13 SRX and no it doesn't have a HDD. My '11 did and why they took it out is beyond me. I only have about 100 songs on my Windows phone and it still takes about three of four minutes for the system to not say that "A device is being initialized and cannot be used at this time". What puzzles me is that the crew designing this system did not use their own Iphones or whatever brand they had to realize that it was not going to work until all of the contents of their phones was re-scanned each start up. Codeman is straight with us about the short comings of CUE but it does bring to mind that there should have been more real world testing with it before it was launched.
 
#99 ·
I really don't see a need for a hard drive due to the memory that already exists in the system and the ease of putting in a USB or SD card that holds many gigs of storage. It's very easy to load music onto an SD card from a computer and insert it into the car. As far as a place to store the index, the radio has a lot of memory in it since it can store up to 30 minutes of audio. An index of thousands of songs would take up very little space, especially compared to storing even 1 minute of audio. Perhaps that area could be used to store the index. Also, they could use space on the users USB or SD Card.
 
#100 · (Edited)
I think someone else has offered that they could use a search after shutdown of the engine to determine if the prior plug ins were still plugged in and to not require a new scan on the next start up. This would require no big memory use just a device scan that had not changed. I personally think that the CUE people did not imagine that many people would have THOUSANDS of songs on their phones/Ipods or SD cards that had to be scanned at every start up. I think they will solve this problem but wonder about the management of the team that did not think this through.
 
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