Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles • Hacker News Board

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#761

Post by Fins » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #680

Fins wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if I still find that it is terrible implementation by people who should not be allowed to make anything that could be used as a deadly weapon?

Try to help make a better one I suppose, if that’s really what you think. But not from a position of ignorance.

It is interesting that Tesla fans can't even imagine for a moment that someone might have actually tried it and did not like it...

In this case, though, this has been basically a solved problem for the past 50 years, if not longer. Yeah, there might be an argument whether a radial switch or a touchpad with gesture recognition is better, and you can play with positioning, but you don't just go to an objectively inferior touchscreen system and then try to make it slightly better.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#762

Post by JaggedNZ » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

celticmusic wrote: post #703

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The giant but not very useful 11in touchscreen in my 2017 Toyota Prius Prime can just be turned off. No really vital functions live in there, it's mostly the (iffy) GPS and settings like the audio source, which I don't need to change much. Almost all the normal things, like temp, lights, cruise etc. are still accessible via physical controls.

I think the big one for me would be radio and temp. I assume no one in their right mind would put lights or cruise control behind a touch screen, but I could be wrong there. And maybe part of it is me being set in my old man ways, but I don't want a touch screen for any of that. Probably the only 2 things I can see being useful on that screen are the reverse camera and GPS that talks to you and you can glance at it o…

Just brought the 2019 RAV 4 Hybrid a few months ago, but also test drove the Corolla. The US models differ, but I'm pretty sure the UX is pretty consistent.

The A/C on both vehicles is 100% physical controls, no touch screen required, in fact I've yet to see an A/C option on any of the touch screen menus.

Yes, the radio is mostly configured via the touch screen, but skipping stations / tracks and volume are controllable via controls on the steering wheel and a physical volume knob on the dash. We don't have carplay yet, but I think it is in the US, this might make my moot, but my main complaint is that it can be quite delayed in starting to play my itunes. I suspect this is because my phone is the secondary audio device (I usually let my wife pick/control the music), but thats a minor annoyance at most.

Edit: 6.3l/100km 37.3mpg on Hilly -> Urban commute in an SUV :)

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#763

Post by frosted-flakes » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:33 PM UTC

xedeon wrote: post #712

frosted-flakes wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What you're alluding to here is personal preference. I wasn't alluding to anything. I said so explicitly that it was my personal opinion. > If the Blackberry form factor is truly the best, people would still be buying them today. People are buying them. They're not as popular as Apple's iPhone, but that says more about Apple's marketing than anything else. > you can make the UI better over time on touchscreen inter…

> And a hardware keyboard doesn't mean you can't make the user interface better. How can you do this when the device has already been shipped with the keyboard? Unless you're suggesting that Blackberry offers an unrealistic replacement program to change the keys and their function. Also tactile keyboard takes away a significant screen real estate. The market has also proven that people want bigger screens. There is n…

I don't know if you've ever used a BlackBerry, but it's not like the buttons on a car radio, which are fixed in function. The keyboard is merely an input method, like the keyboard on a desktop or laptop computer. And those don't seem to have a problem with changing user interfaces.

Furthermore, the keyboard does not significantly impact the size of the screen (it's only about an inch tall)[1], and it means the software keyboard doesn't pop-up and change the size of the screen, which is always disruptive. Also, the keyboard is touch sensitive, so the behaviour of the gestures can be changed in software (like swipe left to delete a word).

[1] The screen is too large for my preferences anyway.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#764

Post by laughinghan » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

JangoSteve wrote: post #741

laughinghan wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 2. One for power and one for data. Usually they're replacing a lot more than 2 buttons/knobs.

> They have 2. One for power and one for data. I don't think I've ever seen a touch screen with only two wires. For one thing, even power requires two wires, not one. Data for a touch screen typically requires more than one wire as well, especially considering there are two completely distinct types of data a touchscreen must transmit, those being display output and touch input. Most touch screens I'm aware of have w…

Most touch screens I'm aware of have wire connections more like this [...]

That link is to a toy touchscreen. Are we counting every strand of metal as its own wire now? I think the power and the data cables are each bundles of lots of such strands, and no car manufacturers worry about the individual strands because each cable plugs into the circuit board as a cohesive unit, like: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Customized-odm-15-6-i...

(First Google result for "touchscreen alibaba", it's not like this is an obscure, rarely used configuration.)

Either way, both of these savings though would be on the design and engineering side, not the bill of materials.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Those sound like good points to me, but I don't know anything about this stuff.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#765

Post by autoexec » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

bumby wrote: post #360

jodrellblank wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people vastly prefer touch screens Do they? A car's dashboard doesn't have to be small enough to fit in your pocket; it doesn't have a screen you want to look at constantly where there's a direct trade-off between screen space and physical keyboard space; a car's dashboard doesn't have limits of where buttons can be because you have to hold it around the edges without pressing the buttons accidentally. I still hate t…

If people really do vastly prefer touch screens, I would expect to see different control mechanisms moving in this direction (steering, shifting, etc.) The fact that they aren't going this way in the systems that __really__ matter seems to indicate that people don't really prefer touch screens.

I was thinking the other day that there isn't really a good reason why I couldn't control my car with a PS4 controller. I wouldn't advocate for that as an industry wide change, but I'm willing to move beyond huge steering wheels and gear shifts

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#766

Post by rco8786 » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

CelestialTeapot wrote: post #518

rco8786 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't commenting on the current state of self-driving car's safety...we can debate that endlessly so I won't. But the direction we're currently heading in is pretty darn clear.

Alright, but that's not how I read your comment. Regardless, until we as a society are so confident in autonomous vehicles that we eliminate manual control systems as outmoded and unnecessary, those systems should be designed to minimize cognitive load on the operator of the vehicle.

I don't necessarily disagree...that's just not what's happening in the real world. Car manufacturers are moving forward, quickly, with self-driving tech.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#767

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

asdf21 wrote: post #729

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must never have driven any kind of decent car.

TL, taurus, model s, mazda 3, p100d, sure bud.

Yeah I don't know. Rent a 911 for a day, and then sit in the Prius again.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#768

Post by twblalock » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

Mazdas still have screens. They have a knob and a few buttons between the seats to control the screen. This change doesn't do much for safety or usability.

The knobs are just as distracting as using a touch screen -- you have to look at the screen to see what is being selected, and you have to take a hand off the wheel to use the knob. In many cases it takes several knob movements and button presses to get to something I could have just reached out and touched. How is that any safer?

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#769

Post by Causality1 » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

torgian wrote: post #68

Causality1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the choice is less obvious when your two options are an iPad or a throttlebook with jam-happy butterfly switches. In all seriousness, too many of my Mac-loving friends and coworkers are using laptops that're 4+ years old because Apple decided shaving a millimeter off the thickness was worth cutting key travel by 60% and having display hinges crack off the frame. Considering how long most of them have been buying…

Heh, a throttle book with jam-happy switches.I'm stealing that the next time someone asks me why I haven't upgraded from my 5 year old MacBook pro.

The 2019 model actually made some progress with the throttle problem by undervolting the CPU, but it still has the broken keyboard and flawed display flex cable that's prone to breaking from repeated openings of the lid.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#770

Post by officeplant » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

I wish everyone would follow suit. There is nothing I hate more in a modern vehicle than a touchscreen.

Automatic headlights come close, but my hate for those is mostly from drivers that fail to turn them on when the sensors fail or aren't sensitive enough to come on. So many heavy downpours / fog in our area and I see plenty of new cars without their tail lights on and just low beam/running lights.