Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#911

Post by dreamcompiler »

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…

This is basic soft realtime programming 101, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be taught in schools much. Nor do many managers seem to understand that it's even a thing, much less a desirable thing, much less a dealbreaker if it's not done.

I also suspect many of these in-vehicle infotainment systems are using a non-realtime OS like plain-vanilla Linux without PREEMPT_RT.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#912

Post by the_overseer »

kgwgk wrote: post #816
the_overseer wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually know for a fact that a new iDrive version was reimplemented from scratch even though it was just an upgrade from the previous version and there would have been enough code to reuse. Maybe he was sarcastic but this actually happens a lot.

Do you also know for a fact that each version of iDrive has been reimplemented from scratch twenty or thirty times - once for each car model?

I don't think that they are reimplemented for every car. But the lineup for 2024 will basically have 90% rewritten code from the, say, 2022 lineup.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#913

Post by dreamcompiler »

wolrah wrote: post #864
patentatt wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. And I also feel your pain with the car "booting up" phenomenon. I don't even have a particularly tech-heavy vehicle and upon starting the car the entire infotainment system feels like booting up a packard bell in 1996.

> I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. Also a rotary encoder doesn't age in the same way as a potentiometer. A potentiometer can wear out the area being used most heavily while simultaneously developing oxidation on the areas not being used. Eventually this leads to crackling, dead areas on the dial, and other misbehavior. A rotary encoder on the…

Relative rotary encoders are much cheaper than absolute rotary encoders, and I expect that's the problem here. If the encoders were absolute, one could make them work just like a potentiometer (because potentiometers are absolute). Relative encoders cannot remember where they were last set because they only sense dp/dt, rather than position itself. So it's up to the software to remember the last position, and everybody knows car companies won't pay software engineers tech company salaries, so by definition car companies get B-level and C-level programmers, and the driver gets weird misbehaving audio in the car.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#914

Post by kgwgk »

the_overseer wrote: post #912
kgwgk wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you also know for a fact that each version of iDrive has been reimplemented from scratch twenty or thirty times - once for each car model?

I don't think that they are reimplemented for every car. But the lineup for 2024 will basically have 90% rewritten code from the, say, 2022 lineup.

Ok.

That's very different from "This time BMW wants infotainment and a third party wins the contract [...] For the next BMW car another company wins the contract. Everything is rebuilt from scratch."

(And "code being rewritten" is very different from "no chance to iterate and improve on the previous version" when it comes to perfecting the UI - but it wasn't you who introduced that confusion. Rewriting the code could actually facilitate incremental improvements to the interface - and arguably that's what BMW tries to do.)

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#915

Post by dreamcompiler »

toast0 wrote: post #881
patentatt wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. And I also feel your pain with the car "booting up" phenomenon. I don't even have a particularly tech-heavy vehicle and upon starting the car the entire infotainment system feels like booting up a packard bell in 1996.

You can't really use a user facing pot for volume control when you've also got volume control buttons on the steering wheel and keywords for voice control.

Well you can and some kinds of high-end audio equipment are actually built to do this by putting servo motors on the pots so that settings can be stored and retrieved automatically. But that's probably too expensive for a car company to consider.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#916

Post by ascorbic »

davnn wrote: post #718
ascorbic wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how they got the idea that it's ever acceptable to need to press a button to open a menu in order to turn wipers on. Particularly when the rain sensor is so bad that auto is basically useless.

The problem is that there is no rain sensor :)

Well, something is trying to make the wipers work automatically. It's just not very good at it.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#917

Post by masfuerte »

wolrah wrote: post #864
patentatt wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. And I also feel your pain with the car "booting up" phenomenon. I don't even have a particularly tech-heavy vehicle and upon starting the car the entire infotainment system feels like booting up a packard bell in 1996.

> I guess that's what we get when a rotary encoder is much much less expensive than a 4-6 gang potentiometer. Also a rotary encoder doesn't age in the same way as a potentiometer. A potentiometer can wear out the area being used most heavily while simultaneously developing oxidation on the areas not being used. Eventually this leads to crackling, dead areas on the dial, and other misbehavior. A rotary encoder on the…

Old school wire-wound potentiometers are nearly indestructible.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#918

Post by Gordonjcp »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #866
Gordonjcp wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there no buttons on your car's steering wheel? Really, not even a horn?

In that case, you're not wrong; but as per the original topic, touchscreens are also not your issue.

No, and it is *glorious*.

The only electronic thing on the whole dashboard is the clock, and it's never worked.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#919

Post by Gordonjcp »

Rediscover wrote: post #793
Gordonjcp wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turning the wipers off and on, is critical, adjusting delay timings is not You've never driven in rain, have you?

Fun story: My ex (one of my best friends), born and raised in Seattle, used to give me serious grief anytime I mention rain in Boston or NYC. She had no belief in what I would describe. Work finally ships her out to (NYC). She calls me up to say she just ran ~2meters from the hotel to the taxi and is soaking wet. She has never commented on Seattle "rain" since. REAL rain.

I'm from north-west Scotland.

Many years ago we had a guy working for us who was sent over from our company's parent company in Southern Cali. He was not keen on going out in the rain at all, and was absolutely terrified that we still drove at 60mph when it was raining. "But what if you skid? It's raining!" he'd wail.

He'd never driven in rain. He just did not take well to a Scottish January, especially the bit where you get 140mph winds for a couple of weeks.

Re: Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

#920

Post by ytreyrty »

bedobi wrote: post #89

Audi have some very recent cars that are completely screen free - they have a screen which completely retracts into the dashboard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_F2dpj5Kas&t=42s and if you have analog gauges too, there are no screens. (except the tiny one between the gauges which doesn't count imo) They're also completely piano black free. Best car interior maybe ever. Thread here https://old.reddit.com/r/Audi/comm…

I hate that Porsche has gone all in on the touch screens instead of buttons, as they had been one of the last holdouts.

My 911 has physical buttons for pretty much everything, and the small touch screen can be turned off so it is completely dark. The new models are not interesting to me as they have replaced all the gauges and physical buttons with touch screens and touch sensitive buttons

and dont get me started on the fact that barely any 911s come in manual anymore

Post reply on HN