[woozyolliew]

Always seemed like a cargo cult: iphone good; touch good; buttons bad (steve said).

Let’s hope it’s a new trend! I love that my Audi still has tactile buttons and wheels, and was a big factor in choosing it. My previous car had a touch screen and it was so dangerous having to brace my hand for accuracy and stare at my fingers while driving.

[closeparen]

How do you feel about the MMI scroll wheel? I don’t feel safe using that either; it still requires eyes on the screen to see what you’re selecting. Even my passengers, who can give it their full attention, are routinely stymied by the process of pairing their phones for Bluetooth audio playback.

At least I can get the volume and temperature knobs by feel.

[basch]

Whats interesting about Honda going with a dial, is that they designed, what I thought, was a pretty brilliant absolutely positioned touchpad for Acura. Have peopled used these, what is there feedback. It seems much more natural, intuitive, and fast compared to a dial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWOFtlLCyI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcKa9apjOX8

[flamtap]

Lexus also has a touchpad, and an interesting "tactile joystick" type of solution. Takes some getting used to but the tactile feedback goes a long way to reducing the need to look at the screen.

[Ambroos]

I think the MMI interface, in one specific generation (the one just before they introduced the touchscreen, where the four-corner buttons were dropped), has one big advantage: you learn the amount of clicks things are away.

It's been over a year since I had an Audi A3 with the system, but I still remember that going from anywhere to Android Auto would be pressing home, then just giving the wheel a big turn clockwise, then back one click counter-clockwise and confirm. You got used to the common operations, and you could do them blindly after a while. In a moving car, a touchscreen is almost always problematic because you need to see if your finger is going the right direction to compensate for car movements.

[close04]

I think there can be a balance between physical controls for actions that need to and will often be used while driving, and touch controls for stuff that you will most likely use when standing still.

Controlling the temperature or music volume will be done while driving so they should be actual buttons that your muscle memory will reach with no mental effort or distraction. Adjusting the suspension settings or typing in a GPS address can be done via a touchscreen since it's unlikely you'll do it on the move and touch offers a better experience for this.

[clairity]

yes, that's the best split--make frequently-used features and/or features used primarily while driving physical controls, while rarely-used features and/or features used while parked can be touch-based.

however, address input should be primarily by voice control rather than touch entry. changing destinations (for whatever reason) mid-drive on a navigation system is dangerous and somewhat common, and voice control is the best option for keeping your eyes on the road (absent a passenger who can do the touchscreen data entry).

[woozyolliew]

I mean, it certainly isn’t perfect at all. It has the down side that you are invited to stare at the screen. But if I’m disciplined, I can get away with a click-glance approach to adjusting things, which is still better than the multi-second hover I had to do with the touchscreen.

[agumonkey]

even on phones it's "bad", it requires high focus.. it's was only good in the theory that smartphones would be used for prolonged dedicated tasks. how i miss blind use of buttons on old dumbphones

[_bxg1]

It's good on phones because it allows them to become multi-tools. You can't have physical buttons for every thing any app might want to do; with a touch screen they can make their own buttons.

On cars it's silly. Cars are not multi-tools; they have a finite set of dedicated functions. Even for functions that benefit from a large high-res screen (maps, music library browsing, etc.), the actual input requirements are narrow enough to work with physical controls. Just look at the original iPod.

[nitrogen]

You can't have physical buttons for every thing any app might want to do

This is why the cursor keys exist, also keybindings

[pretendscholar]

There are general purpose buttons like back or home.

[agumonkey]

that's a fair point but having 4 buttons would allow for generic physical input

humans can learn how to make most important and quick features easily

[stainforth]

Phone manufacturers need to bring back keyboards

[orthecreedence]

To be honest, if I had a droid 4 with the specs of my pixel 3a I would probably not purchase another phone for a decade. I loved the slide-out physical keyboard on the droid line.

[Noumenon72]

I've been hanging onto my Galaxy S7 just because it has actual home and back buttons. Don't know if anyone else still does that.

[pmontra]

I share your feelings. I had to buy a newer phone and I pinned the 3 buttons to the bottom of the screen where I used to have the buttons on the bezel. The screen is at least 2 cm / 1 inch too tall anyway. The alternative is swiping to go back, which is unusable.

Sometimes the buttons disappear but bringing them back is not as complicated as I feared. Of course it's worse than having them. I'd take a 3 cm shorter screen and 1 cm bottom bezel with buttons.

[walterbell]

Next week's iPhone (9? SE2?) release brings back the home button and reliable Touch ID! It will fly off the virtual store shelves.

[agumonkey]

wait for 2025 invention of the physical extra-surfacic actuator, not a button, a xiaomi exclusive

[TomVDB]

Audi may be doing some things right (I love the location of the audio volume knob), it doesn't compensate for that ridiculous touch pad which you're supposed to use to enter street names by writing the characters one by one with your finger... and many other UI warts.

The best thing about Audi's console is that fact that they support Apple CarPlay.

[Dahoon]

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/03/20/new-study-shows-u...

Using Apple Carplay is more dangerous than texting.

[TomVDB]

When you're driving: it can't possibly be more dangerous than the Audi system.

When you're not driving: irrelevant

Conclusion: CarPlay is better than the Audi system.

[president]

I always assumed companies were drawn to it not just because of the trendiness but because engineering and general development of these features are faster, cheaper, and easier to fix compared to dealing with physical parts (e.g. knobs, wiring).

[woozyolliew]

Yeah, there’s probably an awful lot of truth to that. More software eating the world.

[freepor]

It was never a cargo cult of being good... it was a cost cutting play that they correctly thought they could shove down consumers throats. Glad to see Honda acting on behalf of the driver again.

[pdimitar]

Not looking to start a fight but was a touchscreen really the cheaper option? I would be strongly surprised if that was the case.

[Steltek]

How could it not be cheaper? No molds (or just one bezel mold), far less industrial design, fewer individual wires. Not to mention the QA requirements for testing buttons vs a virtual screen.

[pdimitar]

I admit I am completely oblivious to those details. Quite interesting. I'd think 5-6 rolling dials and 3-4 buttons in total are still cheaper than a 8" touchscreen but apparently I was wrong.

[kevingadd]

They're probably cheaper at the small scale - big panel big price - but at the large scale might not be so cheap: Now you have a point of failure for each of those dials/buttons, the housing is more complex/expensive, you need to make replacement parts for all of those buttons, etc. More training for repair technicians, more parts they have to keep in stock. Possibly more damaged phones because each button is a weak point in the phone's housing.

Screen costs trended down pretty aggressively over time so over the course of a couple years it probably ended up being cost-effective even if it wasn't at day 1. If you're already throwing a relatively sizable high-quality panel into your phone making it a bit bigger may not be as much of a bump up in price.

[pdimitar]

Economies at scale. I didn't think of that. Thank you, this was eye-opening.

[s1artibartfast]

Molds and parts are cheap at volume and I would be surprised if the costs were above a few buck in total, including setup.

That said, a huge factor is assembly, maintaince, and repair.

[freepor]

Touchscreens are massively massively cheaper. Especially for products with warranties like cars. Thing fucks up, just swap out the entire brain+display unit.

[BrandonMarc]

... I see your cargo cult, and I raise you Elon Musk and Tesla with gargantic touch screens in their cars. Aesthetically neat; realistically trouble.

[woozyolliew]

Never owned a Tesla, but always worried about this when I’ve been inside one.

Elon says they drive themselves now though, so there’s that ;)

[briandear]

You (or maybe the market) are misinterpreting Steve Jobs. In a phone context, he is correct.

[hobs]

Still loved all my physical buttons which made input a breeze and didnt require constantly correcting my dang text, in a phone context, nah, he's still wrong; maybe a hybrid is even better, but amorphous movement and inferring intent is not a great user experience as things get more complex.

[debaserab2]

My nieces and nephews seem to have zero problems navigating a touch screen and type faster than I can.

Might not be intuitive to us, but it definitely is to them.

[salawat]

Mine don't. They've only ever really had tablets, and I just recently got a Pi for one of them to learn physical touch typing on.

I'm always annoyed phone typing specifically because I can't do anything but focus on the damn on screen keyboard until the message is complete. I remember being able to write reams of text on my old cell with a pop out keyboard, or even with the T9 setup on a Nokia brick entirely by feel, and nigh-automatic.

I don't think I've ever communicated/operated as smoothly as When I have a haptic interface to work with. That even comes down to learning unfamiliar interfaces too. With a strictly defined series of controls to be actuated in a particular order, I tend to be able to permute and learn faster when I have some level of feel to work with.

[takeda]

Agree, now it is very difficult to find a phone that has physical keyboard, sdcard, phone jack and is current.

I really hate those trends.

[robocat]

Instead you get a phone that can get wet, that the charging port doesn’t break after a year, and that has enough memory to not need to use an sdcard (I bought a good brand sdcard from a reliable retailer, and it fucked out in the phone: I would never make that mistake again).

I love equipment I can hack and fix myself, but I love reliable equipment more.

[takeda]

> Instead you get a phone that can get wet,

For 10 years I had smart phones, this was never the reason for breaking. I know that there are people who constantly break theirs, but I don't take my phone to shower.

> that the charging port doesn’t break after a year

That has nothing to do with it, micro USB had this failure and looks that USB-C is much more durable, if they opted for mini USB (which is pretty much the same size as micro USB, we wouldn't this problem at all).

> and that has enough memory to not need to use an sdcard (I bought a good brand sdcard from a reliable retailer, and it fucked out in the phone: I would never make that mistake again).

Not sure what you did, but I never had that experience. Not even sure how an sdcard can fuck up a phone.

[kevingadd]

Only correct in a "whatever people buy is good, and people buy iPhones so everything they do is right" sense. Hardware keyboards on phones still are faster to type on than even the best swipe keyboard, and they work through gloves (rather relevant now in these wear-gloves, wash-your-hands days).

Of course, optimizing for WPM over other factors is not right for all customers. But a car is definitely not a phone, so.

[mft_]

Was he not coming primarily from a design perspective?

Design =/= usability?