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Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

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Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#351

Post by speeder »

ISO-morphism wrote: post #308
sircastor wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." I used to be an infotainment software engineer for an Auto maker. There’s this idea in the software industry that because the software behaves poorly on your car’s system, it must’ve been written poorly by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. In my experience it was almost always a matter of the hardware being stretched way past its limits.…

I believe that the engineers are competent at developing software, and think that a lot of the quality issues are due to engineers abdicating authority over the software to managers and never saying "No, adding in that feature at this point in the timeline is going to make this a steaming pile of shit and I refuse to do it and still call myself a software engineer." I get that we have families to feed, but I've seen…

I have a 2 month old baby, and got fired from my last job after 6 months of unpaid overtime...

I am currently trying (again) to get into embedded development. I would gladly take the job of the guy that refused to make shitty software, if that means I can keep feeding my baby. Unless it would be too unethical. (I refuse to do work that will kill people, for example I won't work for Palantir, companies that make sketchy software related to flight controls or medicine or other critical applications and so on... but the car media player? yeah, I am willing to make a crappy one if I get the job, I prefer to make a good one, but if my boss want a crappy one... then what I can do? overtime to get a promotion, clearly doesn't work ;) )

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#353

Post by modzu »

flyinghamster wrote: post #39

I think one of the most frustrating aspects of this whole kerfluffle is the automakers' longstanding willingness to ignore customers and double down at any pushback. It's downright stupid that it has taken this level of screaming from customers to roll back a design choice that should never have been made.

in every large business there is a very simple formula for decision making: what option maximizes profit? if we have to kill 100,000 cyclists and pedestrians in the process, who gives a shit, people die every day for no damn reason at all. lets kill em all, bastards arent our customers anyway

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#354

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

cypress66 wrote: post #344
14 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would require a device with the power of an iPad. I’m sure it could be done but again adds another $500-$1000 to the final price of the car. A physical button costs a couple bucks. If we are going to get people on board with electric cars we need to get an economy version and any cost cutting they can do will make the difference.

First of all, an SoC comparable to an iPad isn't $1000 more expensive than what they're using. More so, the current hardware they use is quite faster than the original 2010 iPad, yet the og iPad is dramatically more responsive than all these laggy cars.

Comparing Apples to oranges. The iPad ran so smooth because Apple spared no dev time expense in optimizing the SW to perfection using budgets of millions and devs with wages in the six figures plus.

Meanwhile automotive software is developed by the lowest paid and most crunched people in the industry, in line with the gaming industry, in bottom of the barrel, race to the bottom of cost cutting.

Especially that in Automotive you often have tons of legacy code that gets carried over because nobody wants to touch the old codebase, so all the crust keeps getting carried over, with new layers added on top because the device can't exist in a vacuum or in a tightly controlled ecosystem of the same manufacturer like the iPad, bust must be compatible to all the the other ECUs in the car developed by other companies and still be backwards compatible with the old platform.

Imagine having the iPad team operate at 10% of their budget and write their SW on top of Symbian OS, and be compatible with the Android ecosystem. Good luck getting a smooth experience there.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#355

Post by 4gotunameagain »

sircastor wrote: post #229
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #189

I wouldn't mind touchscreens as long as these imbecile developers would strictly limit UI response time to under 16ms. In no world where you're barrelling 3,000+ lbs of mass at tens of miles an hour should you be distracted by some moronic app or subsystem failing to respond in time because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." Any software running as a part of a motor vehicle should be federally…

> because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." I used to be an infotainment software engineer for an Auto maker. There’s this idea in the software industry that because the software behaves poorly on your car’s system, it must’ve been written poorly by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. In my experience it was almost always a matter of the hardware being stretched way past its limits.…

A computer running at 2.048 MHz and with 2048 words RAM took men to the moon.

I don't buy it that a 4 year old SoC cannot run GPS navigation, play music, do whatever a car infotainment system does, without half a second delay

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#356

Post by nixass »

gonehome wrote: post #266
adrr wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know that would be helpful. I hate digging through my Tesla’s menus to control the wipers even though it is very responsive.

You can put the wipers icon at the bottom bar now, that makes it much better.

That's us solving a problem that hasn't existed until few years ago nor should exist in first place. Tesla is really trying to reinvent the wheel here

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#357

Post by jimnotgym »

Well the market is failing again...

Manufacturers continue to push unsafe changes on us, as well as infuriating changes, to save money. The comments here are full of people complaining about it...

Time for more regulation. Tactile buttons, reasonable response time. How about some actual qualifications for people working in this field? We have Chartered Engineers, Accountants etc. Why not software engineers?

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#358

Post by nixass »

thepasswordis wrote: post #290
stevage wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That surprises me. I seem to recall having read something about the difficulty Tesla had in getting their fancy screens and how much they cost. $50 for a tiny one maybe.

The Tesla screen is incompatible to almost everything else. It’s fast, its huge, and it looks nice. The latest design changes have been annoying, but Tesla is far and away the closest to anybody has come to a good touchscreen in a car. It’s more like using an iPad than using an infotainment system in a car.

> It’s more like using an iPad than using an infotainment system in a car.

And this is whole problem here, we shouldn't be doing it while driving. We're trying to solve problems that haven't existed few years ago. Touchscreens in cars in this form should just die

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#359

Post by alkonaut »

sircastor wrote: post #229
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #189

I wouldn't mind touchscreens as long as these imbecile developers would strictly limit UI response time to under 16ms. In no world where you're barrelling 3,000+ lbs of mass at tens of miles an hour should you be distracted by some moronic app or subsystem failing to respond in time because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." Any software running as a part of a motor vehicle should be federally…

> because it was written by under-experienced software "engineers." I used to be an infotainment software engineer for an Auto maker. There’s this idea in the software industry that because the software behaves poorly on your car’s system, it must’ve been written poorly by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. In my experience it was almost always a matter of the hardware being stretched way past its limits.…

Unless the hardware can and will be upped from a $20 to a $200 SoC because it’s required to keep response times low, then someone isn’t doing their job. There has obviously been mountains of specs during these projects, but the most important one - the response time - was obviously overlooked.

I’m not saying like the GP that this indicates inexperienced developers, but it does indicate poor technical leadership and priorities. Further, good/senior developers would have been more likely to call this out.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#360

Post by kolinko »

naikrovek wrote: post #225
anamexis wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to look to find where to press. With real buttons, you can find the right button purely with tactile feedback, as well.

> You still have to look to find where to press. With real buttons, you can find the right button purely with tactile feedback, as well. that's not a given at all. maybe for computer keyboards I guess, but not for cars. car makers always seem to want buttons to be flush with their surroundings and have no bumps or dips on them to help you find the button you're after. I always have to look for the button if it isn't…

It really depends on a car. Camaro has possibly the best knobs for changing stations and AC I've ever seen. The AC ones are integrated with two air outlets in the center - they are big, distinguishable and I could find them blindfolded with no problem.

Mini is not as good, but also similar - all the important buttons are physical and distinguishable easily.

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