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Apple CarPlay

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Re: Apple CarPlay

#251

Post by Marazan »

coldtea wrote: post #235
Marazan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove a new Vauxhall Corsa with automatic transmission a couple of months ago. It was the second worst driving experience of my life.

How much of it was placebo? How much of it was "feeling out of control"? "second worst driving experience" has nothing quantifiable.

I had absolutely no preconceptions going into using the automatic - I would even go so far as to say I was looking forward to it as I'd never driven an automatic before.

I would think my number 1 complaint about the driving experience was the occasional (but not predictable) incredible lag between pressing the accelerator and the car going faster and the ridiculous over-revving when I presume the car got confused about what gear it thought I should be in.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#252

Post by ahlatimer »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #185
mschaecher wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three cars I've owned in my lifetime all had 90% physical controls, with a small little digital screen that would display something like the radio station you're on, the temp, the strength of air, treble/bass, etc, etc. There was absolutely zero tactile feedback on all of them, as their were dedicated buttons that had to be cycled through to reach a state....and the only way you could know if you were getting to…

My 2002 Toyota Corolla might (does) have relatively few options for what you can adjust, but it certainly doesn't have cycling buttons requiring you to look at a tiny digital display. It doesn't have a display at all. The buttons are all labeled with what they do. The climate control is dials. Want to warm the passenger side a bit? Your option is to warm the whole car. Set the temperature dial to warm and the mode di…

Hell, my 2013 Subaru BRZ has dials and buttons for the A/C. Granted, there's a display that shows you the temperature, but if you want it warmer, you don't have to look at it unless you really want to set it to a specific temperature. If you want it warmer, just turn it a few clicks to the right. Same goes for the passenger (it's dual-zone). There are loads of 2014s out there that don't have the automatic climate control, even. It's the same, old system that you see on cars from pre-1990.

Contrast this to the sound system, which only has a volume knob. Jumping to the next track requires you to hit a small touchscreen button that offers no tactile feedback. It's frustrating to do it while driving.

IMO, there's a good middle-ground here. There are a lot of settings and features on my sound/navigation system that I don't need to access all the time, or really at all while driving. Bass is too high? I can wait until I come to a light. That stuff can remain touchscreen driven since it offers more flexibility in the design and allows you to build in a lot more features than you'd have otherwise without cluttering your dash with a ton of buttons and knobs. But stuff that I mess with pretty often, like skipping to the next song, should be a physical button. Other head units get this right.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#253

Post by morganherlocker »

moe wrote: post #225
cmelbye wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignore the fact that this is meant to be controlled by Siri and, yes, tactile knobs and switches in your car. It says it right there on the linked page. Little to no distraction needed.

You ignore the fact that this is meant to be controlled by Siri Nothing to improve road safety like elaborate arguments with a speech recognition engine...

Too late. The cat is already out of the bag and everyone is already doing all of this anyway, except awkwardly holding their phone up to their face at the same time.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#254

Post by Marazan »

grmarcil wrote: post #231
Marazan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove a new Vauxhall Corsa with automatic transmission a couple of months ago. It was the second worst driving experience of my life.

Very low cost automatic transmissions are terrible - the gap between gear shifts goes on for ages. The Vauxhall Corsa is an example of this; for the American market check out a Smart Car. Is this really a good argument against automatics though? The worst example of anything is usually going to be pretty bad. As a matter of current economics, yes, if you have a very tight budget and want a good driving experience, ma…

Well, I find the Vauxhall Corsa with manual transmission is lovely to drive so I am comparing the experience between the two. So sure, I might not have been looking at the best-of-the-best when it came to automatic gears but I was comparing like-for-like.

Maybe in another 10 years the automatic experience at my price range will be better but at that point we're 25 years on from coldtea's period where European cargo-cult bullshit started.

Apparently.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#256

Post by jobu »

Hopefully it works with mapping apps other than Apple's. Not only are the directions often questionable, the app has a terrible user experience. I don't need to be told five times that I should be turning left while I'm waiting at a long stoplight. It's also a pain to see what's coming up in the route.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#257

Post by ahlatimer »

grmarcil wrote: post #231
Marazan wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I drove a new Vauxhall Corsa with automatic transmission a couple of months ago. It was the second worst driving experience of my life.

Very low cost automatic transmissions are terrible - the gap between gear shifts goes on for ages. The Vauxhall Corsa is an example of this; for the American market check out a Smart Car. Is this really a good argument against automatics though? The worst example of anything is usually going to be pretty bad. As a matter of current economics, yes, if you have a very tight budget and want a good driving experience, ma…

Also worth noting that most of the modern super-cars don't even have a true manual (that is, a stick-shift and a user-operated clutch). They're mostly electronically controlled dual-clutch setups since a computer can shift faster than any human can. The 2015 BMW M3 was even rumored to not have a manual option at all, and it's known for being a driver's car. I believe they're keeping it around for now, but there's some worry that the clutch/stick-shift arrangement is going away in the future because the electronically controlled transmissions are that much faster.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#258

Post by jpalomaki »

I was not aware that there is also standard that is aiming to do the same thing, called MirrorLink. The concortium seems to have quite many members and this has existed for several years. Apparently it was demonstrated some years ago but I could not find any cars actually supporting it.

On mobile phone side it is supported by number of Nokia Symbian phones and quite many Sony Ericsson smartphones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MirrorLink

Re: Apple CarPlay

#259

Post by selectodude »

driverdan wrote: post #221
dipth wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try a proper DSG gearbox, they will change your mind and they're even faster and more economical than manual gearboxes. I have one in my VW Golf!

But DSG isn't a traditional auto. It's still clutch based, you just don't control the clutch yourself.

Automatic transmissions have a clutch that's operated automatically. DSGs have two clutches for quicker gear changes. That's the only major difference.

Re: Apple CarPlay

#260

Post by renata »

gnaffle wrote: post #55
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls Avionics has been moving away from tangible indicators and controls for some time. Honeywell has already announced that is working on "touchscreen-enabled avionics for the next-generation air transport and business aviation cockpits" [1]. I also believe SpaceX runs a largely virtualised command centre. > Self-driving cars...every…

Granted, the things that touchscreens replace in avionics are the stuff that you need your eyes on to operate in any case (navigation computer etc). And they often replace input systems that were far, far worse (read http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/garmin-gps for a funny review of the old Garmin avionics). And in the air, you have a little more time to look at the instruments without risking crashing into a meetin…

Having previously worked in avionics I'm a little annoyed that many of the things he complains about are a combination of overstrict FAA rules and the immense cost required for certification for some of the functionality he wants. For instance, you can't warn for terrain unless you're level A certified on almost all airframes - and there's a differences between TAWS A, which lets you warn with "Terrain - Pull Up" and TAWS B, where you can only warn with "Terrain". Approach plates require level B certification as well, although for some reason the FAA lets some people get away with releasing them for iPads with no certification whatsoever (they generally have a disclaimer about "not for navigation purposes" but the FAA used to frown upon that sort of thing).

There was a collision on a runway a while ago that we passed around the news article for, because it could have very easily been prevented by features we had, but were not certified for the airframes that had the collision. It's understandable that we want to ensure that the new glass works just as well as old instruments, but it's frustrating when customers very clearly want functionality that we're not allowed to provide.

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