Automakers are starting to admit that drivers hate touchscreens

I had a car radio with volume, tone, balance controls etc. that used rotary knobs for adjustment. The trouble was that instead of the knob being connected to a rotary potentiometer which adjusted an analog circuit that responded instantly to rotation, it was connected to a digital rotary shaft encoder which converted the rotation of one's hand—an analog function—into digital which then changed the level of the analog audio.

So what you may ask. When I rotated the knob a finite and very annoying delay occurred, one's hand could be already off the knob before the volume altered.

This is not a slur on digital systems but on bad shoddy design. First, one questions why bother with such digital complexity in an otherwise analog radio, the second why put a complex digital system in place of about the simplest adjustable system around—a variable resistor. Third, if one designs a digital replacement for an analog system then one would expect it to be better or at least as good as the system it is replacing. In this case the digital system was far substandard to an equivalent analog one.

We see shitty design like this everywhere and it's very annoying. I could spend considerable time outlining why but that's a whole topic of itself. I'll just say this, if enough customers complain then it wouldn't happen. This story shows that consumers can get bad design problems fixed if enough complain, however garbage design would be rectified much faster if many more did so. Unfortunately, many people have high tolerance, it takes a lot to make them complain (manufacturers know this and use the fact and there's essentially no laws to stop them getting away with building crap products).

I neither said nor implied this. To be clear, the products in question were sold under false presences, as they were sold with features that—as far as the lay consumer is concerned—don't exist (just because I'm a technical person and I know they are almost certainly software bugs and or are not designed as per specifications is immaterial). In essence, by deliberately selling a substandard product they've committed fraud.

Here's one of the many examples I could list but it's a clearcut easy one to understand. I have three identical PVRs/STBs (Personal Video Recorders/Set Top Boxes) of one brand and type—so the problem is not just a single faulty unit. These are the type that you add external storage via USB, 2.5" or thumb drives.

Advertised on the outside of their boxes is the statement that they will take external storage to 2TB in size, the scanty manual—if you can call it that—that's sealed in the box which you can't read until one unboxes the device makes a very clearcut statement that the maximum limit of external storage is ONLY 700MB drive (a rather strange limit methinks), and 1/3rd that published on the box. In practice, these units simply wiil not work with ANY external USB drive 2.5" rotary or SSD drives—even the lowest current SSDs of 120GB or smaller—which is in direct contradiction to what's stated on the box and in the so-called manual.

They will however work with thumb drives up to 128GB (I haven't tried bigger). Incidentally, have you ever seen a 2TB thumb drive? Right, I haven't either.

Thats not all, there are software bugs and an UNSTATED limitation that only six programs can be programmed at one time (this is an unheard of restrictive limit, I've never reached the limit on my other units although one type, which has other bugs and problems, says its limit is 32).

I also have three other PVRs but of a different brand (a well-known international mob). All three have the SAME identical model number but two have completely different electronics and their firmware operates in a totally different fashion to the first (clearly built by a different subcontractor), Even the boxes they came in are all identical.

I discovered this when the first unit failed and I bought two more of the same. Moreover, the first unit wasn't even out of warranty so the second purchase was only about six months on from the first.

To make matters worse, before the first unit failed and after getting nowhere with the local distributer I'd hunted around the internet for a firmware upgrade to fix the annoying bugs but couldn't find an ungrade (little wonder if different hardware exists for a given model). The so-called identical replacements are not only operationally very different but they have so many bugs that they are actually unusable. I'm still working on exchange/warranties and such.

Those two brands are not alone in having masses of bugs, I've three other brands—five all up with even more model numbers (yes, I've boxes of these damned things). The bugs in a third band are so bad that it allows one to program the same timeslot on different channels simultaneously—which channel takes precedent and is recorded is pot luck, at other times, about one in three, it fails to record the scheduled program, only a black screen (it switches to blank instead of a channel—but give credit where credit's due, it does switch to blank at the correct time)!

And believe it or not that brand/model has been on the market for several years and it still is without any firmware upgrages being available.

Here, I've presented only the tip of the iceberg—and that's only the PVR/STB story. Where else would you like me to start?

People should not have to put up with this shit, it wastes time and human effort not to mention wastes resources and the environment is clogged up with dead and discarded e-waste and other junk. A simple way around the problem would be to license both companies and their design engineers and threaten them with loss of license for producing junk. With importers, bring in junk and they'd lose their import license.

Implement these rules and most of the problems would soon disappear. In extreme cases where irresponsible designs threaten safety and life then loss of license and jail time would be a just measure.

As with other professions, civil, chemical engineering etc., when the outcomes are the same (people killed or injured etc.) then the punishment should also be the same.

Software design should be no exception to any other profession just because it's common for programs to have bugs.

Moreover, the profession of programming now calls itself Software Engeering, if it wants to play with the Big Boys then it must face the same consequences when things go wrong.

Touchscreens are the wrong UI choice for cars. Full stop.