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Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

theautopian.com

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Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#311
All these problems are caused by the mindless American consumer. If you look at a hardware review for absolutely anything tech related, it will be some absolutely useless 1 paragraph of content surrounded by 3 paragraphs of non useful information, and then some type of sponsor insert, like a pitch, or an Amazon referral link to the product. If you shop for LCDs, there is not even one website from 2000-2023 that provides real reviews (even tft central never says anything bad about products that have pushed the envelope of lowering quality, because the author is naturally biased against that due to his conflict of interest along with not really knowing what he's talking about). The most contentful review will merely talk about how good the build quality of the stand of the monitor is. If you go on whatever forum for discussing some subset of technology, you will get banned if you point out 2 issues with some product, (due to the fanboy effect, not claiming a conspiracy here).

Continuing from that last sentence, a big part of the problem is that the Christian religion is all but replaced with a corporate equivalent. It's now plausible to claim someone is racist and homophobic if they don't like Apple products. This is a huge part of the issue. There is almost no criticism in media about technology. On any nerd social internet corner, you'll have a bunch of burger eating slobs who do exactly what I complained about: You'll explain that this toaster is bad because it smells like burning plastic and has holes in it that drop bread crumbs all over your counter which get blown around the kitchen. They'll respond by saying, "how dare you insult this prestigious company that only existed for 5 minutes, they are my favorite. I have never actually tried another product but this is the best because I bought it and it had a shiny thing on it and I felt so good after this purchase". Thanks to this social environment, it's basically impossible to get a good review of any product what so ever on the internet. 99.9999% of "Nerd culture" is actually just about buying stuff. Any time I want to buy something I expect to take days out of my time just to find a product that isn't severely crippled so badly that the mindless consumer will complain about it (on 1/20 review sites). Don't get me wrong, this isn't an internet problem. Most people IRL hold the same mentality.

Vehicles have all the garbage you'd expect for this demographic:

  - ECU with shoddy and fraudulent software (dieselgate, uConnect, unintended acceleration)
  - LEDs that flicker worse than a CRT (these are actually dangerous as at night you can't immediately tell the position of a car within a split second, which goes to show how much shits regulators give, "at least they saved a penny and some carbon emissions (TM)")
  - Terrible inputs with issues like being touch screen, horrible debounce, etc
  - Cheap, vain, lack of taste, glossy paint that easily sells to idiots who like shiny things and they'll even pay extra for it despite it being worse in every way
  - All kinds of dangerous half working gimmicks around "steering for you" which are especially easy to upsell to idiots
  - Spyware that phones home

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#312
post #205

I don't want touch screens in cars period and I can't stand this trend of using them. I'm finally starting to understand the feelings my grandfather had for anything thing he considered superfluous or inconvenient in a car.

Touchscreens are the best option for nav - both for manual address entry and the map navigation, zooming, etc. This is a really good UX match, but they should've stopped there for sure.

I wish they had left navigation to external devices which can be updated independently of the rest of the car. It took less than a year for the in-car navigation system to be effectively obsolete.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#313
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in a car crash as a child. Two cars caught fire, although I didn't realise it until I got out. My door was blocked by another vehicle, as was my dad's. He was busy trying to get my sister to open her front passenger door, so he could clamber out after her. The other rear door was damaged, and I had to pull the latch and then kick it to open it. (Not sure how that would work with one of these small manual releas…

It might also be good to have a car window breaker tool (or maybe more than one) someplace easy to reach. They usually also include a seat belt cutter so you can get out of the crash has jammed your seat belt mechanism. Some newer cars have switched from tempered glass to laminated glass for their side windows though which may make these tools useless on your car, so check that first. Here's an article on these tools…

> It might also be good to have a car window breaker tool (or maybe more than one) someplace easy to reach.

Not to worry, I keep one in the glove box.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting to consider that your grandfather was probably wrong about somethings being superfluous. Im not saying that as a criticism — but there are probably necessities of modern cars you and I find magnificent and essential (whether we our conscious of them or not) that your grandfather disdained. Don’t get me wrong, touchscreen gloveboxes are stupid as hell, but as I get older and things change, i find myse…

Diminishing returns? Let me do an inverse car analogy. I know how to write a complicated SQL query in SQL and in maybe a couple of different ORMs, because customers don't know SQL and want everything in (say) Ruby, Python, Elixir. Then the world inflicts us another ORM and I have to waste hours to learn all of it again only for the ORM to build my original SQL query and send it to the DB. Rolling eyes and WTF!

That reminds me of payment processors. They usually have SDKs for PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, and maybe others. Often these just end up doing a simple HTTPS post of name=value pairs.

It is almost always easier and cleaner to use their HTTPS name=value post interface directly if they officially allow it and support it.

Often you are going to get your payment information from the user in that format anyway, such as via a post from your checkout page, or as a row of named columns when you retrieve on file payment information from your database.

In that case submitting name=value pairs mostly just requires translating the field names from your checkout page or column names from database to the names that the payment processor uses, plus adding a few more name=value pairs.

Going through their language specific SDKs often requires building up some ridiculous object oriented mess.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whisker controls are even better. No need to take hands off the wheel.

> whisker controls Tried a quick search and couldn't find it. Is it like the scoll wheel on a mouse? Would be nice to have those on the steering wheel instead of up/down buttons.

I assume they mean the buttons on steering wheel spokes (the parts which connect the wheel to the center).

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#316
post #305

The author answers their own question. It's in the marketing research! /s Did they do focus groups for this feature? Did they get responses like these? “I hate how easy and quick it is to get the glovebox open. Can you guys solve that?” “Is there any way to make simple acts I’m used to doing a real fucking chore?” “How can I be sure every single tiny fucking thing on this car will be an expensive hassle to repair in…

10 years? I prefer when my car fucks me in the first year of ownership. I can't hold out that long!

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame GM for something Tesla popularized...

That's incredibly naive. It sounds like you're saying it's okay to do stupid stuff as long as someone popular does it first.

The OP's comment implies that GM is responsible for this trend, whereas they may simply be trying to meet consumer demand. Many consumers would like their cars to feel as "premium" as a Tesla and they are willing to vote with their wallet.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we banned using cellphones while driving. Isn't a touch screen interface on a car basically the same as issuing a cellphone?

No, even worse. You can take phone to the front of your face. So you may still be able to peek the road depends on situation. But a damn touch screen fixed to the car itself? Enjoy your car accident. The last thing I want to do when driving a car is turn my head away from the road.

Somewhat counterintuitively even just talking with your phone near your face or on speaker greatly increases your accident risk when compared to talking with someone else in the car.

This seems to be because when you are talking to someone in person there are two things that help offset the risk from the increased distraction of the conversation.

First, your conversational partner being in car provided another set of eyes that might spot something the conversational distraction makes you miss. I personally saw this once where I was driving and started to pull out into an intersection after a stop sign where cross traffic did not have a stop sign and somehow completely missed a car approaching from the passenger side. My friend in the passenger seat saw it and yelled "STOP!" and I immediately hit the brakes.

Second, when you are in situations where you need to devote extra attention to the road such as dealing with heavier traffic or trying to navigate an in person conversation tends to slow down or pause naturally. On the phone the other person has no clue what is going on at the car and so conversational flow control is not as good.

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#319
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aye my skoda has a touch screen but I rarely use it (2016 model with touch screen and proper buttons, not the horrific current design of xbox style touch buttons) because I have 2 scroll wheels (volume and screen between the rev counter and speedo control), buttons to skip back and forward music, button for voice assistant, and a phone button. Its the best design out there I'm convinced.

TIL Skoda was manufacturing cars at least until 2016. I’m now that much more nervous about driving.

TUL: Skoda makes reliable cars at a good price. VW bought them out; they're basically VW models built in Czechia factories that apparently have great quality control. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/business/skoda-named-most...

Re: Nobody wants touch-screen glove box latches

#320

Well how are you going to make Passenger Storage+ a $2.99 monthly subscription if the latch isn’t software controlled? Is a robolatch cheaper, compared to a manual latch? Is there a cost saving for the manufacturer?

This reminds of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik, where the main character has to pay the door a fee for getting out of his apartment.
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