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Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

motorauthority.com

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Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#13

Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible and faster. That's also why you don't program on a tablet, even with a bt keyboard. Task switching is way to slow, not enough info directly accessible and multi tasking sucks.

> why you don't program on a tablet

I dare you to go tell that to /r/apple :)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#14
Yes thank you. I’ve been saying this for a long time

My VW has an amazing UI where the centre console is a small touch screen but it has a bunch of tactile buttons around the edge that also interact with the console. So the only time you need to use the actual console as a touch screen is when entering precise details like an address into the sat nav or phone number to ring. Which, in both scenarios, I am more than happy to do at the start of the journey or pull over to do. Everything else, from the radio to the air con, is controlled via tactile buttons.

More over, any important announcements that come up on the centre console can also be displayed on the dashboard as well. Including sat nav. So it means I don’t even need to look at the centre console to glance at stuff if I don’t want want to.

VW have gotten a lot of bad press in recent years but when it comes to in car UIs, I’ve driven few vehicles that compare equally well.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#15
Touchscreen are so common because they're cheaper. They also look great when you're buying the car, and using the screen while parked in the store.

It's simply not optimised for usability but for attractiveness (both cost and aesthetic wise)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#16
The description of the jog controls sound a lot like those in my 2006 Honda.

The description of the torque "“Doing our research, when a driver would reach towards a touch-screen interface in any vehicle, they would unintentionally apply torque to the steering wheel, and the vehicle would drift out of its lane position,", doesn't make any sense. I doesn't matter whether you reach for a touchscreen, button, or bugle, it would produce the same effect.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#17

Finally we are back to Citroen CX design putting controls on the center console: https://photos.smugmug.com/Other/86-Citroen-DX-Prestige/i-Cv...

I can't imagine reaching those without "applying torque to the steering wheel" (or straight blocking it which is much worse).

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#19

Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible and faster. That's also why you don't program on a tablet, even with a bt keyboard. Task switching is way to slow, not enough info directly accessible and multi tasking sucks.

> why you don't program on a tablet I dare you to go tell that to /r/apple :)

All "how to use tablet as development machines" I saw were just "how to connect keyboard to tablet and connect to remote computer".

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#20
post #9
post #8

Recently switched from a Renault Captur (with touchscreen) to an Audi A3 (without touchscreen) and the amount of focus the touchscreen requires compared to a non-touchscreen with a radial button is amazingly scary. How did anyone thought it was a good idea in the first place? Can't imagine going back to having a touchscreen now, and hope they slowly disappear from everything cars.

The only reason the A3 still has a non-touchscreen is due to the fact that it's still running a rather old platform, which is outdated compared to the Golf, Leon -- the new A3 landing this year won't have dials.

I have recently bought a 1 year old Seat Leon with their newer touch screen setup. I find it pretty well made - you still have all the dials and buttons you need for climate control and audio volume, but if you want to set up navigation you have the touch screen in a well reachable location, which is much more convenient than a dial. Best of both worlds IMO. The only thing I do on touch screen while driving is to play/pause bluetooth audio and zooming in/out of navigation.
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