5 ms·

> and every day I get into my car and watch the onboard computer struggle to handle bluetooth properly. I hate "me too" posts, but this gives me so much rage t

> and every day I get into my car and watch the onboard computer struggle to handle bluetooth properly. I hate "me too" posts, but this gives me so much rage that I can't help it. My car has a touch screen interface and I am puzzled why car manufacturers even bother. Who thinks the interface they made is even remotely good. It actively degrades the otherwise fine experience of my car. It is ugly, poorly made, and fails at even basic functionality. I am truly puzzled why these car manufacturers released such terrible user facing features. Maybe it's better these days (my car is ~5 years old), but it's just impressively bad in my car at least.

tashoecraft 7y ago
It's not any better. This past year I've driven something like 2 dozen rentals from a variety of manufactures, they all suck. The only saving grace is sometimes I can use CarPlay and I'm much happier for it. The fact that I have to struggle to adjust the climate control while driving to click through their terrible interface is just insane.
MS90 7y ago
I agree with you on the touch screen interfaces, especially considering how long people keep their vehicles nowadays. I have had my Tacoma for 11 years. Had I gotten one with some sort of touchscreen or other display interface, it would seem like utter dog shit now using a touchscreen and computer system from 2008. That's the first thing I think about when I see new cars with their fancy displays. How will this look and perform in five years? In ten?
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  “That's the first thing I think about when I see new cars with their fancy displays. How will this look and perform in five years? In ten?” I wonder about the same. I think there is a good chance that cars will go the way of the computer where it’s almost inconceivable to use something that’s ten years old. So people may buy cars every five years and used cars will be recycled instead of being sold as used cars.
paranoidrobot 7y ago
>Maybe it's better these days (my car is ~5 years old), but it's just impressively bad in my car at least. I honestly don't think it's getting any better. At best, it's just getting different - but maybe worse as manufacturers try to add more "smart" features. Was a passenger in a <1 year old BMW 5 series for about a week this year for a roadtrip. There were so many stupid behaviours with the software that we effectively gave up using it for anything except bluetooth music. Trying to use the built in GPS navigation was awful. Also a passenger in a new SUV style vehicle for two weeks last year, I forget what brand. It too had utterly bizarre behaviours that it wouldn't explain anywhere, and it took a variety of experimentation to figure out. For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again. However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item (as a passenger, mind) over a few days until I finally figured it out. In every case, the number of either unlabelled or poorly labelled buttons is overwhelming.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again. That's not a bug, that's intentional, and saves lives.
  - jwlake 7y ago
    This is a universal unfounded assumption. Lawyers have more to do with decisions like these than data.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
    I think that this is the UX Bug: > However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item Greyed out menu item = This is where it is on the UI, but it's not allowed at present. No menu item = maybe it's somewhere else?
  - sathackr 7y ago
sjwright 7y ago
It seems to be an ongoing truism that companies that see themselves as fundamentally hardware-oriented inevitably make terrible, terrible software. Just look at the historical shitpile that is printer drivers. Or the software bundled with digital cameras. Car companies are all hardware-oriented, with Tesla being the first and only mass-producing exception.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  It seems to be an ongoing truism that companies that see themselves as fundamentally hardware-oriented inevitably make terrible, terrible software. IBM saw itself as a hardware company when it came out with System/360. From what I've seen, System/360 was a good OS for its time.
  - jimbokun 7y ago
    Can you elaborate on that? Did they see themselves as a "hardware company", or as a "computer company" at a time when the hardware and the software all came together, and there wasn't really a separate software industry? Which would make them the Apple of their time, where they built and sold the hardware needed to deliver the software?
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      Did they see themselves as a "hardware company", or as a "computer company" at a time when the hardware and the software all came together, and there wasn't really a separate software industry? I think they did see themselves as a hardware company. Software was something they had to make to make their hardware work, but they didn't think of it as a major part of their business. I happened to work for the "world's first software company" which was founded by a star IBM salesman. (Cincom Systems Inc. in 1968.) The Smithsonian has a write up on it. It was the first time that a company was intended to make all of its money from the sale of software, and succeeded in doing so.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    My response to that is to say that IBM belongs in a third group—the fundamentally systems-oriented company. Systems-oriented companies are capable of understanding and delivering the whole product without either the hardware or software seen as more important. This would include the likes of 1970s IBM, Apple, Sun, Atari, Commodore, etc.
zaroth 7y ago
I totally agree with you, having also had to deal with rental cars with batshit crazy touchscreens that barely functioned, lagged like crazy, and were obviously not fit for the purpose for which they were built. My last car was a 2006 G35 with no screens as all, and a nice analog clock. I loved that about it so much. I never understood why manufacturers tried to reinvent the wheel and not just use the phone for all things entertainment and navigation. I would never want GPS in my car, because they all were so horrifically bad. Until I got the Model 3. It take less than 1 second, literally two taps in almost exactly the same location on the screen, to activate GPS to my ‘Work’ or ‘Home’ presents. And if I do need to dial in an address it has a full keyboard, full POIs, and autocomplete which is as fast as Google Maps on my iPhone X. Traffic aware navigation which appears to use the same feed as Google Maps (estimates and routes seem to always match). The GPS on Model 3 is a joy to use, actually, truly. The best part is that it implements very good interpolation when GPS drops out using compass and velocity, so going through tunnels tracks almost perfectly compared to Google Maps on iPhone which gets hopelessly stuck. The interface is very reminiscent of an iPad, just as quick and responsive, and has a bunch of cool touches. For example you can drag the media player to be hidden, to be just showing key info, or to nearly full screen, based on the level of interaction you need in it. The drag is a quick flick of the finger and doesn’t require precise targeting at all. It’s amazingly natural to navigate. While driving all the media control you need (volume and skip) is on the steering wheel. You get free Slacker and free LTE and I’ve really enjoyed the streaming music and have actually been introduced to some new artists I didn’t know before. I never wanted a touchscreen in my car. Full stop. Until now. The fact that it’s all touch with consistent OTA upgrades give me confidence that it has staying power to remain functional, relevant, and looking elegant. Particularly with the way Tesla designs their cars, I would be surprised if Model 3 wasn’t essentially the same interior design 10 years from now. I know they designed 3 in particular to have as little as possible that might look “dated” in the future.
- cdkee 7y ago
  I just got a 2018 BMW 2 series and it's the best system I've personally used outside of a Tesla. It has a mobile connection so it can find POIs very quickly. It's surprised me many times when I've asked it to navigate somewhere. I'm sure the recent crop of Audis and Mercedes are the same. The German brands seem to be finally getting on the voice assistant train with a "Hey Mercedes" or "Hey BMW" cue.
CharlesColeman 7y ago
> My car has a touch screen interface and I am puzzled why car manufacturers even bother. IMHO, touch screen controls should be banned from cars, no matter how good. Tactile physical control based interfaces allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road. Touch screens inevitably take driver's eyes off the road and distract them, since they need to use those same eyes to figure out where on the screen they need to touch.
api 7y ago
Part of the problem is Bluetooth itself. The protocol is an over-engineered abomination full of totally unnecessary statefulness and special-casing and other nonsense. It's really hard to get Bluetooth to work reliably.
linuxftw 7y ago
Big fancy screens were an effective way to sell cars 10 years ago. Now, technology is so cheap, it's just cheaper to stuff those fancy screens into every car. I think for SUV's (the new ones) backup cameras are pretty much a standard safety feature because you certainly can't see behind them whatsoever due to their shape.
officeplant 7y ago
As someone with a car from 2015 that lacks both touchscreens and infotainment options due to going for the "value edition" I dread the day I have to move on from it. Of course it still has a terribly slow bluetooth connection time but I'm gonna miss real gauges and physical controls when it comes time to replace it. I also fear that it will be the last manual transmission car I've owned if those vanish from the market.
IOT_Apprentice 7y ago
Mercedes-Benz is certainly egregious in this regard. Their screens are non-touch screen and require you to move a weird joystick to move about major functions. Their radio channel display is a tired version of the iPod/Finder song carousel view and direct access to premium channels is a chore. Their Apple Carplay adaptation is a least free as opposed to BMW charging some bogus subscription.

tashoecraft 7y ago

It's not any better. This past year I've driven something like 2 dozen rentals from a variety of manufactures, they all suck. The only saving grace is sometimes I can use CarPlay and I'm much happier for it. The fact that I have to struggle to adjust the climate control while driving to click through their terrible interface is just insane.

MS90 7y ago

I agree with you on the touch screen interfaces, especially considering how long people keep their vehicles nowadays. I have had my Tacoma for 11 years. Had I gotten one with some sort of touchscreen or other display interface, it would seem like utter dog shit now using a touchscreen and computer system from 2008. That's the first thing I think about when I see new cars with their fancy displays. How will this look and perform in five years? In ten?

maxxxxx 7y ago
“That's the first thing I think about when I see new cars with their fancy displays. How will this look and perform in five years? In ten?” I wonder about the same. I think there is a good chance that cars will go the way of the computer where it’s almost inconceivable to use something that’s ten years old. So people may buy cars every five years and used cars will be recycled instead of being sold as used cars.

paranoidrobot 7y ago

>Maybe it's better these days (my car is ~5 years old), but it's just impressively bad in my car at least. I honestly don't think it's getting any better. At best, it's just getting different - but maybe worse as manufacturers try to add more "smart" features. Was a passenger in a <1 year old BMW 5 series for about a week this year for a roadtrip. There were so many stupid behaviours with the software that we effectively gave up using it for anything except bluetooth music. Trying to use the built in GPS navigation was awful. Also a passenger in a new SUV style vehicle for two weeks last year, I forget what brand. It too had utterly bizarre behaviours that it wouldn't explain anywhere, and it took a variety of experimentation to figure out. For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again. However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item (as a passenger, mind) over a few days until I finally figured it out. In every case, the number of either unlabelled or poorly labelled buttons is overwhelming.

mschuster91 7y ago
> For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again. That's not a bug, that's intentional, and saves lives.
- jwlake 7y ago
  This is a universal unfounded assumption. Lawyers have more to do with decisions like these than data.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago
  I think that this is the UX Bug: > However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item Greyed out menu item = This is where it is on the UI, but it's not allowed at present. No menu item = maybe it's somewhere else?
- sathackr 7y ago

sjwright 7y ago

It seems to be an ongoing truism that companies that see themselves as fundamentally hardware-oriented inevitably make terrible, terrible software. Just look at the historical shitpile that is printer drivers. Or the software bundled with digital cameras. Car companies are all hardware-oriented, with Tesla being the first and only mass-producing exception.

stcredzero 7y ago
It seems to be an ongoing truism that companies that see themselves as fundamentally hardware-oriented inevitably make terrible, terrible software. IBM saw itself as a hardware company when it came out with System/360. From what I've seen, System/360 was a good OS for its time.
- jimbokun 7y ago
  Can you elaborate on that? Did they see themselves as a "hardware company", or as a "computer company" at a time when the hardware and the software all came together, and there wasn't really a separate software industry? Which would make them the Apple of their time, where they built and sold the hardware needed to deliver the software?
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    Did they see themselves as a "hardware company", or as a "computer company" at a time when the hardware and the software all came together, and there wasn't really a separate software industry? I think they did see themselves as a hardware company. Software was something they had to make to make their hardware work, but they didn't think of it as a major part of their business. I happened to work for the "world's first software company" which was founded by a star IBM salesman. (Cincom Systems Inc. in 1968.) The Smithsonian has a write up on it. It was the first time that a company was intended to make all of its money from the sale of software, and succeeded in doing so.
- sjwright 7y ago
  My response to that is to say that IBM belongs in a third group—the fundamentally systems-oriented company. Systems-oriented companies are capable of understanding and delivering the whole product without either the hardware or software seen as more important. This would include the likes of 1970s IBM, Apple, Sun, Atari, Commodore, etc.

zaroth 7y ago

I totally agree with you, having also had to deal with rental cars with batshit crazy touchscreens that barely functioned, lagged like crazy, and were obviously not fit for the purpose for which they were built. My last car was a 2006 G35 with no screens as all, and a nice analog clock. I loved that about it so much. I never understood why manufacturers tried to reinvent the wheel and not just use the phone for all things entertainment and navigation. I would never want GPS in my car, because they all were so horrifically bad. Until I got the Model 3. It take less than 1 second, literally two taps in almost exactly the same location on the screen, to activate GPS to my ‘Work’ or ‘Home’ presents. And if I do need to dial in an address it has a full keyboard, full POIs, and autocomplete which is as fast as Google Maps on my iPhone X. Traffic aware navigation which appears to use the same feed as Google Maps (estimates and routes seem to always match). The GPS on Model 3 is a joy to use, actually, truly. The best part is that it implements very good interpolation when GPS drops out using compass and velocity, so going through tunnels tracks almost perfectly compared to Google Maps on iPhone which gets hopelessly stuck. The interface is very reminiscent of an iPad, just as quick and responsive, and has a bunch of cool touches. For example you can drag the media player to be hidden, to be just showing key info, or to nearly full screen, based on the level of interaction you need in it. The drag is a quick flick of the finger and doesn’t require precise targeting at all. It’s amazingly natural to navigate. While driving all the media control you need (volume and skip) is on the steering wheel. You get free Slacker and free LTE and I’ve really enjoyed the streaming music and have actually been introduced to some new artists I didn’t know before. I never wanted a touchscreen in my car. Full stop. Until now. The fact that it’s all touch with consistent OTA upgrades give me confidence that it has staying power to remain functional, relevant, and looking elegant. Particularly with the way Tesla designs their cars, I would be surprised if Model 3 wasn’t essentially the same interior design 10 years from now. I know they designed 3 in particular to have as little as possible that might look “dated” in the future.

cdkee 7y ago
I just got a 2018 BMW 2 series and it's the best system I've personally used outside of a Tesla. It has a mobile connection so it can find POIs very quickly. It's surprised me many times when I've asked it to navigate somewhere. I'm sure the recent crop of Audis and Mercedes are the same. The German brands seem to be finally getting on the voice assistant train with a "Hey Mercedes" or "Hey BMW" cue.

CharlesColeman 7y ago

> My car has a touch screen interface and I am puzzled why car manufacturers even bother. IMHO, touch screen controls should be banned from cars, no matter how good. Tactile physical control based interfaces allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road. Touch screens inevitably take driver's eyes off the road and distract them, since they need to use those same eyes to figure out where on the screen they need to touch.

api 7y ago

Part of the problem is Bluetooth itself. The protocol is an over-engineered abomination full of totally unnecessary statefulness and special-casing and other nonsense. It's really hard to get Bluetooth to work reliably.

linuxftw 7y ago

Big fancy screens were an effective way to sell cars 10 years ago. Now, technology is so cheap, it's just cheaper to stuff those fancy screens into every car. I think for SUV's (the new ones) backup cameras are pretty much a standard safety feature because you certainly can't see behind them whatsoever due to their shape.

officeplant 7y ago

As someone with a car from 2015 that lacks both touchscreens and infotainment options due to going for the "value edition" I dread the day I have to move on from it. Of course it still has a terribly slow bluetooth connection time but I'm gonna miss real gauges and physical controls when it comes time to replace it. I also fear that it will be the last manual transmission car I've owned if those vanish from the market.

IOT_Apprentice 7y ago

Mercedes-Benz is certainly egregious in this regard. Their screens are non-touch screen and require you to move a weird joystick to move about major functions. Their radio channel display is a tired version of the iPod/Finder song carousel view and direct access to premium channels is a chore. Their Apple Carplay adaptation is a least free as opposed to BMW charging some bogus subscription.