> The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens.
The fact that everyone is moving to screens because they're flashy and cheap ($/feature) doesn't automatically make them a good idea.
GP is correct. The consensus from a safety and usability perspective is that touchscreens in cars are a bad idea. Fuck the bean counters.
> The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens.
Benchmarking? Really.
> Sure you might have a few models that remove the screen
Mazda is removing or de-emphasizing them across their product line if I understood correctly.
> You literally can't have a button for every car feature.
Yes, true, very very true. Also irrelevant. The point is that features like:
- climate control
- stereo volume (and other radio controls)
- defrost
- etc
> And if your car doesn't have all the features, you won't sell well.
The features that must have physical input methods, must have them, and the others can be touch screens if you really like.
Also, fewer features is kinda fine, really, if it makes the roads safer.
> And if you disagree with all of this, you probably aren't the type of person to drop 40k-50k on a new car. You'd be happy with a 2014 car for 10k.
I.e., I must be cheap. Or maybe I would be happy with older cars (or newer Mazdas) precisely because they have these physical inputs / lack those dangerous touchscreens that I detest.
More and bigger screens are certainly the way of the future for most cars/SUVs, but I'd advocate strongly for a large set of ergonomic, reassignable hard controls. The best thing about the Tesla Model 3 controls is the configurable control gadget on the steering wheel (though I wish they'd used better materials -- feels absurdly cheap in a $50k car).
You're confusing a benchmark with... something else. And I really dislike my new-ish MP3 player with it's damn screen that I have to keep looking at to operate, to do anything.
> And if your car doesn't have all the features
My MP3 player has a ton of features and I don't need 90% of them. I want it to do one job well - play my music and a few other basic controls, just like my old, physically-operated MP3 player did. I don't want awesome UX/UI bullshit to get in the way, I just want it to do its job.
(plz excuse rant)
My older car with no touch screen has a custom stereo installed - everything with physical buttons. And it can do more than my other car with a touchscreen. Its Bluetooth capabilities are superior. I can set it not to auto-play, etc.
Yes, no need to go old school. But no, you don't need a touchscreen to get a radio/stereo with better features.
> The vast majority of customers do not want something that basic.
And you accuse me of 'opinion'. Well, provide evidence of this claim.
Goes for literally anything, from cars to phones to music equipment. I definitely fall into this category for some of the things myself. However, it is important to remember that this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers.
> this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers
I was very careful to not to project my desires on others in my original post, but you're telling me about what "majority prefers". So back this up. I don't think you can.
Do you see dedicated single-purpose barebones MP3 players having a high demand? Or do people just use their smartphones for that purpose? When you walk into a room and ask people if they would find an MP3 player device useful and would like to get one, what answer do you expect to hear?
Also, try asking the same question from people about smartphones vs. single-purpose cellphones. Yes, there is obviously a niche of people who want to "disconnect" and not have to deal with smartphones. But they are in a tiny minority.
While market isn't a perfect representation of what people want, it is a great proxy, in a lot of cases. And for this situation specifically, it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want.
> Do you see dedicated single-purpose barebones MP3 players having a high demand?
I can't buy them. When I looked for a new one, there was none available I could find. I did ring the companies too. There's no choice so actual demand is difficult to ascertain.
Smartphones... OK, that's a good point.
> what answer do you expect to hear?
Irrelevant - give me figures, not asking what I expect to get. Facts please. And if you read the comments here, there's quite a few expressing preference for physical controls.
> But they [non-smartphone users] are in a tiny minority.
A minority or a tiny minority? Give me figures please. Don't just talk at me, throwing words around. Facts please. And BTW I'm one of these minorities. FYI.
> it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want
What's your job?
It is on my HN profile, I write code for living.
>Facts please.
The fact that you called up a bunch of companies, and none of them were producing dedicated barebones MP3 players, kind of speaks for itself. If there was a significant demand, why wouldn't they jump on this easy money-making opportunity, given that they would have pretty much no competitors?
>give me figures, not asking what I expect to get.
I don't have numbers, and neither do you. In the absence of actual numbers, anecdotal evidence is the second best thing. Do you have anecdotal evidence of talking to an average person and asking whether they would be willing to pay for a dedicated MP3 player? I do, which is why I asked you to imagine how that scenario would play out in real life.
If your scenario played out the opposite of mine, then we would be at a stall, as anecdotal evidence is nothing against opposing anecdotal evidence, only factual numeric evidence can beat anecdotal evidence. But if it played out the same, I feel like it would only act in support of my hypothesis.
I can also bring out hard factual numbers for the sales numbers of dedicated MP3 players going down as smartphone proliferation increased, if you want, but you probably already know how those numbers look.
Not really. From here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23405591
"It is fascinating just how poorly modern touch interfaces do compared to older vehicles" with a response of
"I can't figure out how to turn the HVAC system on in a newish car"
This proves that the market is demanding worse interfaces, otherwise why would people have to deal with them?. That's how your argument goes, and it's bunk. Remember the cries of pain over windows 8? That's because people liked pain. The market spoke, right?
> I don't have numbers, and neither do you.
Then again I only spoke for myself. Whereas you "...this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers" & "it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want" believe you can speak for others. Nope. Facts please.
> I can also bring out hard factual numbers for the sales numbers of dedicated MP3 players going down as smartphone proliferation increased, if you want, but you probably already know how those numbers look.
Irrelevant. I spoke about dedicated MP3 players, and if you'd bothered to read what I said, I actually said yours was a good point. Still, dedicated MP3 players have a market because they are still being sold - https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3... So a market for them still exists. It's not about smartphones vs dedicated MP3 players, this is about interfaces and choice.
That says nothing about touchscreen interfaces themselves, it says about their poor implementation in certain cars. Just like touchscreen interfaces on phones, they were all various degrees of trash for daily usage, until iPhone came out with touchscreen-oriented UI and lead by example of what touchscreen-oriented UIs for phones are supposed to be, as opposed to just regular phone UI with touchscreen functionality bolted on.
A similar thing can be observed in cars. I had so many hellscape-ish experiences with touchscreens in cars, I can rant about those for days. But then I had an opportunity to extensively test its implementation in Tesla cars, and it was extremely pleasant.
Not that your criticism of touchscreens in modern cars is invalid, it totally is valid. Touchscreen interface implementation in modern cars, on average, is totally inferior to the older physical control interface implementation. Which makes sense, as we had over half a century to perfect that.
However, as demonstrated by the Tesla interface I experienced (hybrid touchscreen+physical controls on the steering wheel), those issues are not inherent to all touchscreen interfaces. The other manufacturers just need to catch up (for some of them, I can already seem them being very close). You cannot just bolt a touchscreen onto the interface designed with physical controls in mind and call it a day. Because that's pretty much why those touchscreen interfaces in most modern cars are awful to use.
It'd be even safer if we removed the radio all together, and banned any physical controls that aren't on the steering wheel (to ensure you don't have to take your hand off the wheel to use them).
Why do we only care about public safety in one circumstance but not the other?
Outside of armchair theorists online, I'm not convinced anyone in charge of car design actually cares about car safety at all.
Car accidents are the leading cause of death for people age 15-29 and the second leading cause of death for people age 5-14. Nearly 3,300 people die every day in car accidents, and double that number are permanently disabled.
If people actually cared about car safety, it feels like these numbers would have gone down in the last 30 years. They haven't. [1]
My hope is that driverless cars end up solving this faster than we otherwise could politically, but obviously that may be a bit ambitious.
But those, too, could be controlled by physical buttons on the steering wheel and/or voice commands.
So, as a matter of fact, yes, you can have _one_ button for every car feature.
Because Europe and Japan also had this idea how touch screen is cool, new and the future. 2016-2018 were the blunder years with everything being touch. And soon people realized that touch, no surprise, is shit. So for most common operations makers have added buttons back - climate and audio controls.
For never used settings - like should interior lights come up when you open the door, beep sound loudness, interior light brightness, etc - yea, touch screen is good. For stuff that you actually use - no.
It blows my mind people think touch screens are good. If they are so good, why don't we use touch inputs for blinker signals behind steering wheel? For steering itself? Swipe left to go left. Why no touch input for shift paddles? Hell, why I never saw anyone using touch screen keyboard instead of a physical one? Silicon valley devs could easily afford one and to them touch is superior to physical buttons. Nope, 1970s or w/e physical keyboards for every computer, it's like there's a bubble somewhere where "new = always good and old = always bad".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6YYun90S8g&feature=youtu.be...
The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens. Sure you might have a few models that remove the screen, but these are cheap cars with limited features.
You literally can't have a button for every car feature.
And if your car doesn't have all the features, you won't sell well.
And if you disagree with all of this, you probably aren't the type of person to drop 40k-50k on a new car. You'd be happy with a 2014 car for 10k.