[logancbrown]

The volume button (dial) broke on my Ford Maverick in summer. Moving to a touchscreen car felt like a sigh of relief that I no longer had to worry about buttons and dials breaking when I need to use them, and don't have to worry about a trip to a dealer or tearing apart a dash to replace them. I will say a button "feels" nicer, but the added risk to me wasn't worth it. To each their own

[hatefulheart]

Yeah, wait until the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug, you’ll be wishing only your volume button was affected.

The fact you can rip open the dashboard and fix something is great and what I call a feature, not a bug.

[jjulius]

Or you reach for a certain area of the screen out of muscle memory, but the UI changed "just because" and now you're very distracted.

[vel0city]

> wait until the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug

Chances are if the whole thing is unresponsive due to heat or a bug the volume knob isn't going to actually change the volume as well. Its not like the knob is the actual pot directly changing the circuitry in the amp these days, its a digital input.

[hatefulheart]

Not convinced that is true.

[vel0city]

I've personally experienced it on at least six different car infotainment systems by four different manufacturers where the stereo will start playing whatever was left on, you turn the volume knob but the whole thing is still loading so it doesn't react for a few seconds.

Even outside of OEM head units, I've owned a few after market head unit stereos where the volume knob was technically a digital input and if the system was lagging hard the volume input could be delayed a good bit.

A number of these systems will have a different volume level for things like phone calls than for the music, but both volume levels are controlled by the knob. It'll also do things like automatically lower the volume level for notifications or have dynamic volume levels based on acceleration. The knob is rarely directly controlling the actual output of the system.

Here's a good question: if you press the volume buttons on the steering wheel controls, does the volume knob on the radio move?

[scottyah]

It'd be easy to check. It was true on my 1998 Mercury Mountaineer, I can't imagine car manufacturers would go back just for funsies.

[scottyah]

you're just describing another thing that can go wrong. Most likely when you "rip open the dashboard" there's a few different PCBs that can all go bad, then a bunch of fuses, small LEDs, other things that need to be fixed. People act like anyone with a touchscreen hasn't had a car before that had all those things. I replaced sensors, wires, and my oil temp gauge still didn't work. Two LEDs on the display had some kind of bad voltage or something because I had to replace them every few years. It's so cool having spare fuses and being able to identify the blown one and replace it until you get a touchscreen and you never have to.

A lot of people have their self-worth tied up in being the guy that can fix things, so it hurts when you just no longer have to.