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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

#221

Post by andyrew »

Ambroos wrote: post #163
Angostura wrote: post #106

I'm a heavy Apple CarPlay user and I am delighted that my car (a 2016 Seat) has analogue controls that work with it. I know that when I'm required to use the on screen controls for certain functions, I am a less safe driver.

Yeah, my daily driver was an Audi with a rotary dial for about a year (no touchscreen at all), and Android Auto was great on it. You get to know the structure of all menus and can take actions blindly after a while. It's been almost a year since I've driven that car and I still know exactly what to press to show alternative routes in Google Maps, for example. Later I had a bunch of rentals with touchscreen Android Au…

Completely agree with you. I drive an Audi A4 with rotary control for CarPlay and it works perfectly fine. Moving to touchscreens is purely an exercise in cost-cutting.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#223

Post by dsego »

littleboi1998 wrote: post #87
gambiting wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice input in cars is the worst idea I've ever seen. I've had a brand new Mercedes with the MBUX interface and extensively used Android Auto, and the voice commands just don't work. Half the time I'm sitting there repeating myself like an absolute idiot because the car completely misunderstood what I mean(yes car, "Navigate to Cramlington" totally means "Navigate to Boston, US"). I have so many horror stories of and…

Just because the technology sucks right now does not mean it's a bad idea. I can EASILY see voice commands in cars being commonplace and far superior to anything that exists right now.

So why not wait until it works instead of pretending? They sell it as if it is perfect right now, the future has come, except it's not.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#224

Post by majewsky »

gambiting wrote: post #64
cm2187 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, except when you need to type a name.

Then MB/BMW approach of having a touchpad near your wrist is perfect - you can draw letters with your finger without having to worry about hitting miniscule letters on the screen.

Do they have a second touchpad for us lefties?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#225

Post by majewsky »

_carl_jung wrote: post #184
rland wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pull over to adjust the map. Does anyone really believe that adjusting GPS while in a moving vehicle is safe?

This gave me pause for thought. It really toes the line of socially acceptable behaviour for a driver, as evidenced by how common it is to do so. How many times have you been a passenger in a car and the driver has pulled over to adjust GPS? I don't think I have particularly dangerous friends and family, but they rarely do.

> How many times have you been a passenger in a car and the driver has pulled over to adjust GPS?

When I'm in the front passenger seat, dealing with the GPS and the A/C becomes my responsibility.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#226

Post by SomeOldThrow »

kkarpkkarp wrote: post #56
sametmax wrote: post #10

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.

> Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. But Mazda's cockpit isn't plane cockpit either. Please go for a test drive with new Mazda 3 and you will be surpised how stupid is this decision. If you want to volume up, change a song, yes, it is easy. But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to: - leave a radio interface (you must look…

To be fair, navigating with carplay is also highly distracting because the voice controls are so basic and it forces you to pull over and deal with one of the two touchscreens to deal with route changes, adding a stop, evaluating express lanes, dismissing modals, looking at upcoming directions, etc etc. Navigation is highly distracting period.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#228

Post by dwighttk »

grey-area wrote: post #84
marapuru wrote: post #47

Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…

All these tactile controls are going to be deleted in the next decade as self driving cars go mainstream. This is a foolish move.

Decade? Psh... Elon says 6-18 months!

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#229

Post by kaybe »

sizzle wrote: post #196
WalterBright wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the AC: the buttons are shaped like a human, and you press the part of your body where you want air I was driving a friend's newer car down the freeway once, and had to call him to find out how to turn on the godam defroster. There were so many knobs, switches, and dials that influence this, all labelled with icons so I had no idea what they did. Turns out that you had to push two buttons, toggle a toggle, and turn…

I want to speak to the car with my hands on the steering wheel and tell it to defrost the windows like I'm talking to an Alexa device. I can't wait for this day to come...

An automatic co-pilot would be nice indeed. It should also hand me drinks and snacks and keep me awake with conversation.

ATM it's still a co-pilot job to translate navigation system information into actionable directions in foreign cities..

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#230

Post by dwighttk »

_carl_jung wrote: post #184
rland wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pull over to adjust the map. Does anyone really believe that adjusting GPS while in a moving vehicle is safe?

This gave me pause for thought. It really toes the line of socially acceptable behaviour for a driver, as evidenced by how common it is to do so. How many times have you been a passenger in a car and the driver has pulled over to adjust GPS? I don't think I have particularly dangerous friends and family, but they rarely do.

I’ve never been in a moving car where the driver did anything with the gps more than listening or asking a passenger to adjust it.
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