Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles • Hacker News Board

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#461

Post by Fredej » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

gerbilly wrote: post #442

ken wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CarPlay is amazingly good As someone who recently rode in a car with CarPlay and saw two young technology professionals try to use it, I disagree. One of them owned the system and drove it every day it still didn't seem like either one really understood it ("Why's it doing that?" "Maybe because ..."). I agree that all the built-in systems I've seen are terrible, but CarPlay seems like merely the "least bad" impleme…

Why is carplay even a thing? Geez, can't people stop fiddling with their phones? They've become like a kind of soother, a techno nanny that people can't do without. The sooner people put those things down, the better off we'll be.

Well, it's a thing specifically to stop people from fiddling with their phones.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#462

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

Blackthorn wrote: post #430

Maybe I'm just a luddite but I can't stand any of these features in new cars. Feels more like misfeatures to me. I rent cars fairly often for work and so I see a lot of touchscreens, a lot of bluetooth, whatnot. My car at home has a simple radio, a CD player that rarely gets used, and cruise control. I prefer that to any of this new integrated tech. The only thing about new cars that I really miss is a backup camera.

[deleted]

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#463

Post by zaroth » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #397

zaroth wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, every single phone today is nothing but a “picture under glass” and, far from a paradigm of permanent numbness, humans are intimately connected to these devices they carry with them everywhere. Rant is the right way to describe this. Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen? The joy of panning and zooming around, tapping to learn more about any particular point! I remember…

You miss the point entirely: he acknowledges that touchscreens work. But he points out that they work by visual feedback only, and that this denies an enormous part of our tactile senses. In an ideal world, we would not have to choose between tactile and visual.

The responsiveness of properly done interactive multi-touch screens are undeniably tactile. They are, however, not haptic.

Haptic feedback in a touch interface is not always a feature. And the lack of haptic feedback does not, ipso facto, make an interface numb or non-immersive. Some older touch screens would vibrate in response to every touch as you typed — it made typing less accurate.

I take issue with the overly zealous defense of a haptic interface to the point where the overall experience is degraded in order to provide haptics.

Four arrow keys (or worse, a wheel-like joystick) are indeed haptic, but they are not a better way to pan a map, which is not generally done without looking anyway.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#464

Post by gerbilly » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #458

gerbilly wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is carplay even a thing? Geez, can't people stop fiddling with their phones? They've become like a kind of soother, a techno nanny that people can't do without. The sooner people put those things down, the better off we'll be.

So you can use your preferred maps app in your car, so you can choose music using your favorite music app, so you can send and receive text messages without taking your eyes off the road. Without it, people would just be looking at their phones anyways. Guess we should go back to paper maps and listening to AM radio.

Thanks, you're just making my point for me.

I mean you said app twice in it. Ten years ago, nothing was mediated via an app, somehow we managed to survive.

Now almost everyone has been turned into a phone zombie. You're wasting your lives people!

FOMO is entirely backwards, you shouldn't be afraid of missing out on something in your phone, you should be afraid of missing out on your entire life.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#465

Post by ehnto » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #381

ehnto wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we have pretty similar views while talking about the tech and usability itself. It is just that I fundamentally disagree that you need to touch or look at anything while driving. You say people need to interact with navigation while driving, which is simply not true. People want to interact with navigation while driving. They could cope without it. We didn't even have navigation all that long ago, to say we n…

> We didn't even have navigation all that long ago Yes we did, even if it wasn't an electronic system built into the car, and it wasn't unheard of for people to pull out physical maps and reference them while driving, or pull over and stop in unsafe locations to reference maps. N Electronic navigation systems are what make people less likely to do those things. There's a difference between introducing a digital tool…

I meant digital navigation, but fair point. Trying to interact with a digital map while underway is still dangerous, like trying to use a physical map was. Listening to a GPS is great, and I'm not advocating against digital navigation completely, just devices that require you to shift your attention away from driving.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#466

Post by jasonsync » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

jasonsync wrote: post #274

The worst is the touchscreens on some Honda models (eg. 2016 Fit EX). 1. They removed the volume knob in favour of a volume slider on the touch screen. Very difficult to use, and even after a couple of years I have not been able to get used to it, and keep reaching for a physical input. 2. There's many UI quirks (bugs and ill conceived design flows) that make menu navigation, managing saved stations, switching from A…

3. The answer and ignore touch screen buttons are so close together, it's easy to accidentally tap ignore when trying to answer a call ...

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#467

Post by ihuman » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

joking wrote: post #389

ubermonkey wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. Before phone integration, I might've agreed with you, or at least had no opinion on the subject. After watching many car companies, even high-end ones like BMW and Mercedes, fail utterly at producing reasonable phone integration systems or interfaces, though, I'm all-in on CarPlay. >It basically means they ha…

>CarPlay is amazingly good, and only really works well with a touchscreen. >At this point, it would be very hard for me to buy a car that didn't have CarPlay integration with a touchscreen. I've seen implementations without touch, and they're much, much less useful. Well, maybe the solution is to make apple carplay and android auto to work well with a dpad and buttons configuration, those interfaces have been working…

> those interfaces have been working perfectly for videoconsoles and tvs

Is this a joke? I find navigating my TV's menus with a remote to be the most infuriating part of using a TV.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#468

Post by gonehome » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #368

marapuru wrote: post #47

Praise to Mazda for making this decision. As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. For years I have been working on product interfaces (not just apps). Many studies I conducted actually told me that people favored analog controls over digital touch screens controls. It gives you tactile feedback, making it accessible for anyone with sense of touch. >…

>As a User Experience Professional, I was never able to grasp the true user's need for touch screens in cars. Before phone integration, I might've agreed with you, or at least had no opinion on the subject. After watching many car companies, even high-end ones like BMW and Mercedes, fail utterly at producing reasonable phone integration systems or interfaces, though, I'm all-in on CarPlay. >It basically means they ha…

The Tesla touchscreen interface is really good, partly I think because Tesla is just as much a software company as they are a car company.

The other car manufacturers UIs are atrocious and their historical unwillingness to use car play has set them back.

The tactile thing is one of those arguments that sounds good, but is just wrong. It’s like people arguing for the return of the blackberry form factor in smartphones.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#469

Post by alex_anglin » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

gerbilly wrote: post #442

ken wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CarPlay is amazingly good As someone who recently rode in a car with CarPlay and saw two young technology professionals try to use it, I disagree. One of them owned the system and drove it every day it still didn't seem like either one really understood it ("Why's it doing that?" "Maybe because ..."). I agree that all the built-in systems I've seen are terrible, but CarPlay seems like merely the "least bad" impleme…

Why is carplay even a thing? Geez, can't people stop fiddling with their phones? They've become like a kind of soother, a techno nanny that people can't do without. The sooner people put those things down, the better off we'll be.

Maps and audio (music/podcasts) are the two main reasons I use carplay. Built in options in all vehicles I've used since carplay has been available are horrible in comparison.

Re: Mazda is purging touchscreens from its vehicles

#470

Post by alex_anglin » Mon, Jun 17, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

tjoff wrote: post #456

inetknght wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Here's my 2006 iPod if you want music, or unplug it and plug in your phone if you want" Well, your 2006 iPod still uses a 3.5mm analog port. But that newfangled phone over there needs a new $400 Apple USB Thunderlightning Wireless Port. And your car doesn't seem to have an interface for that.

The solution is to not buy a phone without a 3.5mm jack.

With the 3.5mm jack, you need to handle your phone for the uses the parent mentioned. This is much more dangerous than using phone integration in the vehicle and illegal in many jurisdictions.