My last car was a 2006 G35 with no screens as all, and a nice analog clock. I loved that about it so much.

I never understood why manufacturers tried to reinvent the wheel and not just use the phone for all things entertainment and navigation. I would never want GPS in my car, because they all were so horrifically bad.

Until I got the Model 3.

It take less than 1 second, literally two taps in almost exactly the same location on the screen, to activate GPS to my ‘Work’ or ‘Home’ presents. And if I do need to dial in an address it has a full keyboard, full POIs, and autocomplete which is as fast as Google Maps on my iPhone X. Traffic aware navigation which appears to use the same feed as Google Maps (estimates and routes seem to always match). The GPS on Model 3 is a joy to use, actually, truly.

The best part is that it implements very good interpolation when GPS drops out using compass and velocity, so going through tunnels tracks almost perfectly compared to Google Maps on iPhone which gets hopelessly stuck.

The interface is very reminiscent of an iPad, just as quick and responsive, and has a bunch of cool touches.

For example you can drag the media player to be hidden, to be just showing key info, or to nearly full screen, based on the level of interaction you need in it. The drag is a quick flick of the finger and doesn’t require precise targeting at all. It’s amazingly natural to navigate. While driving all the media control you need (volume and skip) is on the steering wheel. You get free Slacker and free LTE and I’ve really enjoyed the streaming music and have actually been introduced to some new artists I didn’t know before.

I never wanted a touchscreen in my car. Full stop. Until now. The fact that it’s all touch with consistent OTA upgrades give me confidence that it has staying power to remain functional, relevant, and looking elegant.

Particularly with the way Tesla designs their cars, I would be surprised if Model 3 wasn’t essentially the same interior design 10 years from now. I know they designed 3 in particular to have as little as possible that might look “dated” in the future.

I'm sure the recent crop of Audis and Mercedes are the same. The German brands seem to be finally getting on the voice assistant train with a "Hey Mercedes" or "Hey BMW" cue.

In return I'm a bit scared of buying a Tesla because I live in Europe and read quite bad stories about the service wait time here.

Just look at the historical shitpile that is printer drivers.

Or the software bundled with digital cameras.

Car companies are all hardware-oriented, with Tesla being the first and only mass-producing exception.

IBM saw itself as a hardware company when it came out with System/360. From what I've seen, System/360 was a good OS for its time.

Did they see themselves as a "hardware company", or as a "computer company" at a time when the hardware and the software all came together, and there wasn't really a separate software industry?

Which would make them the Apple of their time, where they built and sold the hardware needed to deliver the software?

I think they did see themselves as a hardware company. Software was something they had to make to make their hardware work, but they didn't think of it as a major part of their business. I happened to work for the "world's first software company" which was founded by a star IBM salesman. (Cincom Systems Inc. in 1968.) The Smithsonian has a write up on it. It was the first time that a company was intended to make all of its money from the sale of software, and succeeded in doing so.

The fact that I have to struggle to adjust the climate control while driving to click through their terrible interface is just insane.

IMHO, touch screen controls should be banned from cars, no matter how good. Tactile physical control based interfaces allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road. Touch screens inevitably take driver's eyes off the road and distract them, since they need to use those same eyes to figure out where on the screen they need to touch.

I honestly don't think it's getting any better. At best, it's just getting different - but maybe worse as manufacturers try to add more "smart" features.

Was a passenger in a <1 year old BMW 5 series for about a week this year for a roadtrip. There were so many stupid behaviours with the software that we effectively gave up using it for anything except bluetooth music. Trying to use the built in GPS navigation was awful.

Also a passenger in a new SUV style vehicle for two weeks last year, I forget what brand. It too had utterly bizarre behaviours that it wouldn't explain anywhere, and it took a variety of experimentation to figure out. For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again. However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item (as a passenger, mind) over a few days until I finally figured it out.

In every case, the number of either unlabelled or poorly labelled buttons is overwhelming.

That's not a bug, that's intentional, and saves lives.

> However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item

Greyed out menu item = This is where it is on the UI, but it's not allowed at present.

No menu item = maybe it's somewhere else?

If only there were some way that someone besides the driver could manipulate the in car system.

My Chevrolet handles this well, using the passenger seat occupancy sensor. If someone is sitting in a passenger seat, it gives the option "I am the passenger" to allow access to normally blocked-while-moving screens.

And the behavior the parent described is just annoying. The device has the capability to know if the car is in motion or not. Permanently locking out the function until the car is turned off and on is dumb.

That's the first thing I think about when I see new cars with their fancy displays. How will this look and perform in five years? In ten?

I wonder about the same. I think there is a good chance that cars will go the way of the computer where it’s almost inconceivable to use something that’s ten years old. So people may buy cars every five years and used cars will be recycled instead of being sold as used cars.

Their Apple Carplay adaptation is a least free as opposed to BMW charging some bogus subscription.

I think for SUV's (the new ones) backup cameras are pretty much a standard safety feature because you certainly can't see behind them whatsoever due to their shape.