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Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible an

Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. When safety or productivity matters, you need more feedback, more options accessible and faster. That's also why you don't program on a tablet, even with a bt keyboard. Task switching is way to slow, not enough info directly accessible and multi tasking sucks.

checker659 7y ago
> why you don't program on a tablet I dare you to go tell that to /r/apple :)
- czechdeveloper 7y ago
  All "how to use tablet as development machines" I saw were just "how to connect keyboard to tablet and connect to remote computer".
  - zaarn 7y ago
    "how to use a table as development machine" has the unsurprising answer: "have a real computer do it".
- Causality1 7y ago
  Well the choice is less obvious when your two options are an iPad or a throttlebook with jam-happy butterfly switches. In all seriousness, too many of my Mac-loving friends and coworkers are using laptops that're 4+ years old because Apple decided shaving a millimeter off the thickness was worth cutting key travel by 60% and having display hinges crack off the frame. Considering how long most of them have been buying Apple they deserve better treatment.
  - torgian 7y ago
    Heh, a throttle book with jam-happy switches.I'm stealing that the next time someone asks me why I haven't upgraded from my 5 year old MacBook pro.
    - Causality1 7y ago
      The 2019 model actually made some progress with the throttle problem by undervolting the CPU, but it still has the broken keyboard and flawed display flex cable that's prone to breaking from repeated openings of the lid.
- gman83 7y ago
  What's a computer?
- closeparen 7y ago
  We already have popular IDEs guiding text input onto one of the few plausible symbols at a cursor; how long before a touchscreen app that gives your suggestions and snippets as touch targets, instead of a keyboard?
hyperpallium 7y ago
\dejectedly goes back to coding on termux on a phone with a bluetooth keyboard
mevile 7y ago
> There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. Have you seen photos of a 737 Max cockpit... https://www.google.com/search?q=737+max+cockpit&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=737+max+cockpit&tbm=isch Compare it with a 737-200 cockpit: https://www.google.com/search?q=737-200+cockpit&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=737-200+cockpit&tbm=isch
- lisper 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure [1] none of those are touch screens. However, there are aircraft avionics with touch screens, for example: https://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd/index.html https://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd/index.html [1] I'm a private pilot so I'm pretty familiar with the state of the art in aircraft avionics, but I don't fly a 737.
  - jillesvangurp 7y ago
    It takes a while for things to trickle down to certified jets and touchscreens are still relatively new. It will come: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-aims-for-airliner-cockpit-touchscreen-first-449481/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-aims-for-a... If recent business jets are an indication, it's all touch based at the high end already. Also, Ipads are getting pretty popular for pilots. My understanding is that most pilots would bring one by default (two plus extra batteries typically) and that especially for GA, there is a lot of equipment and software that integrates with them. One odd thing is that some pilots use ipads to control equipment in the plane because of UI and UX issues. E.g. you can control a garmin 530 with an ipad and it seems like pilots prefer doing that because it is just easier. I think both in cars and in the aviation industry there is the notion that the companies manufacturing UIs there are not necessarily that good at it because historically their focus was more hardware oriented. The UX of especially older equipment can be kind of clunky. E.g. many planes have an fms (flight management system) with a non qwerty keyboard that looks like it was designed in the nineteen sixties and just never updated. You still find the same design in relatively new planes like the A319. I agree that it is nice to have physical controls for some thing. E.g. I love volume dials. But overall, touch is great when hardware designs result in very complex UX. So, I suspect that Mazda getting rid of touchscreens is more their own inability to do good UI than any inherent problems with touch screens. The rest of the industry seems to be trying to catch up to Tesla. I recently sat in a very new Renault with Android Car and a big touch screen. It's a very nice upgrade from the previous generation which was very clunky to use and had lots of annoying bugs. Renault outsourcing the UI to a company that has a clue was a big improvement for them they were just hopelessly out of their depth.
ahartmetz 7y ago
Touchscreens became fashionable due to the iPhone and iPad hype. Welcome to IT, have a look at the upcoming fashions in the summer catalog.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Once something has been sold to nearly half the population of the planet for a decade or more, you can't sensibly call it a "fashion". Apple were the first people to deploy high quality capacitive multi touch screens to the general public, with a gesture UI underneath for things like pinch zoom. This was an amazing improvement over previous handheld systems.
  - ahartmetz 7y ago
    Smartphones obviously aren't just a fashion, touchscreen all the things is a fashion. IT fashions usually work that way - there is an actually useful killer application and suddenly the technologies used by the killer application must be applied to everything. Peer to peer (Napster), Ruby / "static typing sucks, testing is better" (Ruby on Rails), touchscreens (iPhone), JavaScript (one language for client and server), blockchain (bitcoin / getting rich through speculation), deep learning (great solution to SOME problems) - it's a fairly simple pattern. Also, the car industry has looong product cycles, so what you see now is what was hot 5-ish years ago.
  - oblio 7y ago
    > Once something has been sold to nearly half the population of the planet for a decade or more, you can't sensibly call it a "fashion". While I don't disagree with your main point, I have to say that this is wrong. That's what fashion literally is. Everybody wears clothes and so clothes are sold to the entire population of the planet. Yet we don't dress like in the 60's anymore. Maybe some do, but you definitely can't find big masses of people dressing like in the early 1800's, for example.
  - dsego 7y ago
    One username here ends with 1998, which is presumably the year they were born, so a 21-year-old. The original iPhone was released in 2007, when that person was ten. These kids grew up with touchscreens, of course they think it's normal to have them everywhere.
acd 7y ago
In air planes you have touch buttons and physical rotational dials on sides of the screen. Cars might eventually evolve into a voice controlled system to complement the dials. It is interesting that you may in certain countries not operate a cell phone while driving, yet you can operate a car touch screen. Air plane systems are for example Garmin GPS 430
- dmix 7y ago
  Most of Apple and android auto and Honda built in system is voice and dial controlled while driving in my experience. I only touch the screen when not driving. It’s not hard.
Quequau 7y ago
I think this conflict in ideas is very well captured by the differences in flight control instrument panels in the Orion Spacecraft as compared to SpaceX's Dragon v2. Here is an image of what I'm referring to: https://rocketry.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/orion-capsule.jpg https://rocketry.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/orion-capsule.j...
- toomanybeersies 7y ago
  The Orion control panel looks like it would be much easier to use in a heavily vibrating, high-G rocket. It's a lot harder to fat-finger a tactile, physical button/switch than a touchscreen. Notice that the switches even have cages so that they can't get accidentally toggled.
  - dingaling 7y ago
    Note also the use of colour on the Orion schematics that immediately directly the eyes to areas of alert or risk. Whereas on the SpaceX consoles even the message 'All systems nominal' is rendered in a pale blue colour that merges in with the muted pastel palette. I challenge readers to find it quickly.
floatingatoll 7y ago
Note that plans are a less apt comparison as the cockpit of a plane under most circumstances safely permits looking away from the windscreen for 5-10 seconds at a time (or more) while under no circumstances can cars tolerate more than 1-2 seconds without risk of catastrophe (crash, loss of life and limb, etc).
kkarpkkarp 7y ago
> Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. But Mazda's cockpit isn't plane cockpit either. Please go for a test drive with new Mazda 3 and you will be surpised how stupid is this decision. If you want to volume up, change a song, yes, it is easy. But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to: - leave a radio interface (you must look at screen and turn the wheel at the same time) - find where is a navi (by turning the wheel and pressing it, still looking at the screen) - choose, again with the wheel, to start typing your destination - and what most: again with wheel (turning it and pressing) type the address simultaneously looking on an onscreen keyboard. All that while not looking on the road and holding your steering wheel with one hand and another on navigation wheel on central canal. How come this is safer by tapping on the screen?!
- jacquesm 7y ago
  The proper way to do this is by voice input.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Voice input in cars is the worst idea I've ever seen. I've had a brand new Mercedes with the MBUX interface and extensively used Android Auto, and the voice commands just don't work. Half the time I'm sitting there repeating myself like an absolute idiot because the car completely misunderstood what I mean(yes car, "Navigate to Cramlington" totally means "Navigate to Boston, US"). I have so many horror stories of android Auto getting stuff wrong it's almost funny. And then it's just made worse when you are bilingual - voice interfaces suuuuck at working with two languages at once. Try saying "call Szczepańska" - guaranteed it won't work. Then try getting it to read a message in any language that isn't English - it's just garbled nonsense. My favourite one was when my wife sent me a link to something and Android Auto started reading the link out ....as H T T P colon slash slash W W W dot......what sort of madness is this. Who would ever want this crap in their car is beyond me.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      It can be done properly. The BMW Mini has a pretty good voice input for the navigation, it relies on spelling out the names of cities and streets, there is a button based back-up but I find that the voice recognition works more than well enough for almost all destinations. Voice output that spells is silly (as is Google's navigation, which overwhelms you with information you do not need).
throwayEngineer 7y ago
I find it fascinating to hear tech people hate on touch screens, when this is the best-in-class feature about Tesla. Can HN be consistent? The reality is that people prefer more features than less, and buttons are not the best way. What you probably hate are old, unresponsive automotive touch screens. The future will use more microphones, be faster, use AI to predict what you want to do, etc.... But this seems like a "pop opinion", popular on the internet, but little basis in reality.
- timc3 7y ago
  No, i hate large modern touch screens in cars and prefer proper buttons, and controls that I can memorize, like the controller in my BMW. I can do most things with minimal eyes off road. I would argue its not a best in class feature, its a liability.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  I'm a tech guy, and a car guy. I love cars. Keep the "features" the hell away from my cars. I don't want to sit about in a mobile cinema. I want a car I can drive. The big touch-screen is a reason why I would not buy a Tesla. The reasons to buy one are economy and performance. Hell, the Prius might have actually been a decent car if it didn't look like a shoe, sound like an overburdened vacuum cleaner, and handle like a beluga whale.
  - asdf21 7y ago
    Lol, the Prius is an excellent car, and it doesn't look, sound nor handle as you describe.
    - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
      You must never have driven any kind of decent car.
      - asdf21 7y ago
        TL, taurus, model s, mazda 3, p100d, sure bud.
throw0101a 7y ago
> There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. Umm, I guess you haven't see the FAA-approved Garmin G3X Touch: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8o0Nk8E0S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8o0Nk8E0S4 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuRFAAKdfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuRFAAKdfg

checker659 7y ago

> why you don't program on a tablet I dare you to go tell that to /r/apple :)

czechdeveloper 7y ago
All "how to use tablet as development machines" I saw were just "how to connect keyboard to tablet and connect to remote computer".
- zaarn 7y ago
  "how to use a table as development machine" has the unsurprising answer: "have a real computer do it".
Causality1 7y ago
Well the choice is less obvious when your two options are an iPad or a throttlebook with jam-happy butterfly switches. In all seriousness, too many of my Mac-loving friends and coworkers are using laptops that're 4+ years old because Apple decided shaving a millimeter off the thickness was worth cutting key travel by 60% and having display hinges crack off the frame. Considering how long most of them have been buying Apple they deserve better treatment.
- torgian 7y ago
  Heh, a throttle book with jam-happy switches.I'm stealing that the next time someone asks me why I haven't upgraded from my 5 year old MacBook pro.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    The 2019 model actually made some progress with the throttle problem by undervolting the CPU, but it still has the broken keyboard and flawed display flex cable that's prone to breaking from repeated openings of the lid.
gman83 7y ago
What's a computer?
closeparen 7y ago
We already have popular IDEs guiding text input onto one of the few plausible symbols at a cursor; how long before a touchscreen app that gives your suggestions and snippets as touch targets, instead of a keyboard?

hyperpallium 7y ago

\dejectedly goes back to coding on termux on a phone with a bluetooth keyboard

mevile 7y ago

> There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. Have you seen photos of a 737 Max cockpit... https://www.google.com/search?q=737+max+cockpit&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=737+max+cockpit&tbm=isch Compare it with a 737-200 cockpit: https://www.google.com/search?q=737-200+cockpit&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=737-200+cockpit&tbm=isch

lisper 7y ago
I'm pretty sure [1] none of those are touch screens. However, there are aircraft avionics with touch screens, for example: https://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd/index.html https://www.avidyne.com/products/ifd/index.html [1] I'm a private pilot so I'm pretty familiar with the state of the art in aircraft avionics, but I don't fly a 737.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  It takes a while for things to trickle down to certified jets and touchscreens are still relatively new. It will come: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-aims-for-airliner-cockpit-touchscreen-first-449481/ https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/airbus-aims-for-a... If recent business jets are an indication, it's all touch based at the high end already. Also, Ipads are getting pretty popular for pilots. My understanding is that most pilots would bring one by default (two plus extra batteries typically) and that especially for GA, there is a lot of equipment and software that integrates with them. One odd thing is that some pilots use ipads to control equipment in the plane because of UI and UX issues. E.g. you can control a garmin 530 with an ipad and it seems like pilots prefer doing that because it is just easier. I think both in cars and in the aviation industry there is the notion that the companies manufacturing UIs there are not necessarily that good at it because historically their focus was more hardware oriented. The UX of especially older equipment can be kind of clunky. E.g. many planes have an fms (flight management system) with a non qwerty keyboard that looks like it was designed in the nineteen sixties and just never updated. You still find the same design in relatively new planes like the A319. I agree that it is nice to have physical controls for some thing. E.g. I love volume dials. But overall, touch is great when hardware designs result in very complex UX. So, I suspect that Mazda getting rid of touchscreens is more their own inability to do good UI than any inherent problems with touch screens. The rest of the industry seems to be trying to catch up to Tesla. I recently sat in a very new Renault with Android Car and a big touch screen. It's a very nice upgrade from the previous generation which was very clunky to use and had lots of annoying bugs. Renault outsourcing the UI to a company that has a clue was a big improvement for them they were just hopelessly out of their depth.

ahartmetz 7y ago

Touchscreens became fashionable due to the iPhone and iPad hype. Welcome to IT, have a look at the upcoming fashions in the summer catalog.

pjc50 7y ago
Once something has been sold to nearly half the population of the planet for a decade or more, you can't sensibly call it a "fashion". Apple were the first people to deploy high quality capacitive multi touch screens to the general public, with a gesture UI underneath for things like pinch zoom. This was an amazing improvement over previous handheld systems.
- ahartmetz 7y ago
  Smartphones obviously aren't just a fashion, touchscreen all the things is a fashion. IT fashions usually work that way - there is an actually useful killer application and suddenly the technologies used by the killer application must be applied to everything. Peer to peer (Napster), Ruby / "static typing sucks, testing is better" (Ruby on Rails), touchscreens (iPhone), JavaScript (one language for client and server), blockchain (bitcoin / getting rich through speculation), deep learning (great solution to SOME problems) - it's a fairly simple pattern. Also, the car industry has looong product cycles, so what you see now is what was hot 5-ish years ago.
- oblio 7y ago
  > Once something has been sold to nearly half the population of the planet for a decade or more, you can't sensibly call it a "fashion". While I don't disagree with your main point, I have to say that this is wrong. That's what fashion literally is. Everybody wears clothes and so clothes are sold to the entire population of the planet. Yet we don't dress like in the 60's anymore. Maybe some do, but you definitely can't find big masses of people dressing like in the early 1800's, for example.
- dsego 7y ago
  One username here ends with 1998, which is presumably the year they were born, so a 21-year-old. The original iPhone was released in 2007, when that person was ten. These kids grew up with touchscreens, of course they think it's normal to have them everywhere.

acd 7y ago

In air planes you have touch buttons and physical rotational dials on sides of the screen. Cars might eventually evolve into a voice controlled system to complement the dials. It is interesting that you may in certain countries not operate a cell phone while driving, yet you can operate a car touch screen. Air plane systems are for example Garmin GPS 430

dmix 7y ago
Most of Apple and android auto and Honda built in system is voice and dial controlled while driving in my experience. I only touch the screen when not driving. It’s not hard.

Quequau 7y ago

I think this conflict in ideas is very well captured by the differences in flight control instrument panels in the Orion Spacecraft as compared to SpaceX's Dragon v2. Here is an image of what I'm referring to: https://rocketry.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/orion-capsule.jpg https://rocketry.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/orion-capsule.j...

toomanybeersies 7y ago
The Orion control panel looks like it would be much easier to use in a heavily vibrating, high-G rocket. It's a lot harder to fat-finger a tactile, physical button/switch than a touchscreen. Notice that the switches even have cages so that they can't get accidentally toggled.
- dingaling 7y ago
  Note also the use of colour on the Orion schematics that immediately directly the eyes to areas of alert or risk. Whereas on the SpaceX consoles even the message 'All systems nominal' is rendered in a pale blue colour that merges in with the muted pastel palette. I challenge readers to find it quickly.

floatingatoll 7y ago

Note that plans are a less apt comparison as the cockpit of a plane under most circumstances safely permits looking away from the windscreen for 5-10 seconds at a time (or more) while under no circumstances can cars tolerate more than 1-2 seconds without risk of catastrophe (crash, loss of life and limb, etc).

kkarpkkarp 7y ago

> Good. There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. But Mazda's cockpit isn't plane cockpit either. Please go for a test drive with new Mazda 3 and you will be surpised how stupid is this decision. If you want to volume up, change a song, yes, it is easy. But if you want for example turn on GPS navigation, you need to use this wheel near the gearbox to: - leave a radio interface (you must look at screen and turn the wheel at the same time) - find where is a navi (by turning the wheel and pressing it, still looking at the screen) - choose, again with the wheel, to start typing your destination - and what most: again with wheel (turning it and pressing) type the address simultaneously looking on an onscreen keyboard. All that while not looking on the road and holding your steering wheel with one hand and another on navigation wheel on central canal. How come this is safer by tapping on the screen?!

jacquesm 7y ago
The proper way to do this is by voice input.
- gambiting 7y ago
  Voice input in cars is the worst idea I've ever seen. I've had a brand new Mercedes with the MBUX interface and extensively used Android Auto, and the voice commands just don't work. Half the time I'm sitting there repeating myself like an absolute idiot because the car completely misunderstood what I mean(yes car, "Navigate to Cramlington" totally means "Navigate to Boston, US"). I have so many horror stories of android Auto getting stuff wrong it's almost funny. And then it's just made worse when you are bilingual - voice interfaces suuuuck at working with two languages at once. Try saying "call Szczepańska" - guaranteed it won't work. Then try getting it to read a message in any language that isn't English - it's just garbled nonsense. My favourite one was when my wife sent me a link to something and Android Auto started reading the link out ....as H T T P colon slash slash W W W dot......what sort of madness is this. Who would ever want this crap in their car is beyond me.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    It can be done properly. The BMW Mini has a pretty good voice input for the navigation, it relies on spelling out the names of cities and streets, there is a button based back-up but I find that the voice recognition works more than well enough for almost all destinations. Voice output that spells is silly (as is Google's navigation, which overwhelms you with information you do not need).

throwayEngineer 7y ago

I find it fascinating to hear tech people hate on touch screens, when this is the best-in-class feature about Tesla. Can HN be consistent? The reality is that people prefer more features than less, and buttons are not the best way. What you probably hate are old, unresponsive automotive touch screens. The future will use more microphones, be faster, use AI to predict what you want to do, etc.... But this seems like a "pop opinion", popular on the internet, but little basis in reality.

timc3 7y ago
No, i hate large modern touch screens in cars and prefer proper buttons, and controls that I can memorize, like the controller in my BMW. I can do most things with minimal eyes off road. I would argue its not a best in class feature, its a liability.
yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
I'm a tech guy, and a car guy. I love cars. Keep the "features" the hell away from my cars. I don't want to sit about in a mobile cinema. I want a car I can drive. The big touch-screen is a reason why I would not buy a Tesla. The reasons to buy one are economy and performance. Hell, the Prius might have actually been a decent car if it didn't look like a shoe, sound like an overburdened vacuum cleaner, and handle like a beluga whale.
- asdf21 7y ago
  Lol, the Prius is an excellent car, and it doesn't look, sound nor handle as you describe.
  - yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
    You must never have driven any kind of decent car.
    - asdf21 7y ago
      TL, taurus, model s, mazda 3, p100d, sure bud.

throw0101a 7y ago

> There is a reason you don't see apple like designed plane cockpit. Umm, I guess you haven't see the FAA-approved Garmin G3X Touch: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8o0Nk8E0S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8o0Nk8E0S4 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuRFAAKdfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnuRFAAKdfg