When they decide to implement a hardware control, it's usually done well. But their records is hit-and-miss in my opinion.

Good: iPod click wheel, iPhone side buttons/switches, old chiclet keyboards, trackpad.

Bad: Butterfly keyboards, AppleTV remote is awful (swipes and edge-clicks for all sorts of things), their mice have always been a pain to use (wanna right click? Better lift your left finger completely away from the mouse)

But they also aggressively remove physical interfaces where possible. One-button mice, removal of home button on iPhone, removal of function keys on MacBooks, etc.

I hope they don't do that with a car. There should be a dozen knobs and buttons that have dedicated features. Not just wipers and signals either. I'm talking about volume control, seat adjustments, windows, etc.

I hadn't thought about this until your comment. While I think Apple building a car is... dubious (both the idea that they would and that they should even if they can), I'd been thinking "well, at least Apple is good at UI," but I really don't like Tesla-esque touchscreen-for-everything auto interfaces, and that would be a serious temptation for Apple.

I think Apple is smart enough to do marker research on this. Tesla used a big tablet to cheap out. Apple is not going to cheap out

A volume knob thats a blown up version of the wheel on the Apple Watch would be something.

Yes. That crown is really nice. Apple is good at tactile, when they want to be.

I just hope they agree that eyes-on-road interactions will require more of that, and less of the touchscreen-only stuff. They probably will. One way to look at it is how much they care about accessibility on iOS. If they put that much effort into those features there, then nailing those details in a car will be natural.

I think Apple is doing car exactly because we should be looking at the road. I am sure their AR technology will be incorporated into windshield head up display

I look forward to steering and shifting gears with a multipoint touchscreen, don’t you?