13 ms·

Some new BMWs won't have touchscreens thanks to chip shortage

128 points by elorant 5y ago

lqet 5y ago
Great. Now can we get rid of them on washing machines, dishwashers, fridges, radios, clocks, and doorbells?
- rightbyte 5y ago
  My washing machine is so annoying. Instead of a nob I need to press a touch screen to set temperature. And the selector goes in a circle for each press so to go one step colder I need to press around the circle ... old dishwasher UX were so much better.
h2odragon 5y ago
I hope they prove to be extremely popular, and car makers realize what a stupid idea touchscreens in cars were in the first place, and give up the idea completely. ...and then there will be unicorns and flutterbugs and cotton candy, and everyone will be happy and nothing bad will ever happen again.
- mc32 5y ago
  I hope all that goes the way of most digital speedometers and tachometers from the 90s where most are back to analogue dials and a testament to tackiness.
  - bruce343434 5y ago
    I actually enjoy digital speedometers, they are quicker to read than a "clock" dial
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  Why are you posting this under an article about BMW? They've done the best job at this out of all the carmakers. You can go buy a brand new 7er, all the important things have physical buttons. The screen is really only there for navigation and more complicated settings.
- pw6hv 5y ago
  Totally agree with you. However, some times I think most of the people take what they're given and the 'radicals' are just a small percentage of the total. Manufacturers simply decide to make what is cheaper for them (see for example 16:10 vs 16:9 for monitors).
  - Gargyle 5y ago
    When I got a coin everytime I watch people in newer SUVs being entirely confused why the damn thing doesn't start now completely stunned by the sheer number of stuff on the dashboard and middle screen. Or tell their passengers to go fiddle with the aircon system because the cognitive load is too high while driving. Old cars with knobs you learn it once and you can use it without eyes.
  - Waterluvian 5y ago
    Perhaps it’s not that most people take what they’re given but that the manufacturer does a good job discovering what people want.
    - DavidPeiffer 5y ago
      Unfortunately I think it's more driven by cost motivations. As noted in the Mk8 VW GTI review [1], the interfaces are often straight up awful, this being a particularly bad design. They're the biggest source of complaints/issues shortly after buying, and three years later. Additionally, distractions are already abundant in a vehicle. A crappy user interface, which most are, is a safety concern. At minimum, lag between screens loading should be extremely minimal. Staring at a screen for an extra second or two while it registers that you pressed a button and updates the screen is incredibly dangerous and has surely lead to some number of deaths. Two years ago Mazda announced they were moving away from touchscreens, which was very well received on HackerNews. [2] And I can't find the thread right now, but 1-3 years ago there was a really good discussion on here about an eye tracking study in a variety of car models. Touchscreen-only interfaces in cars are kind of like electronic-only voting machines. Technical people who know about computers breath funny thinking about it and see issues left and right while large swaths of people really want it. [1] https://youtu.be/XGbPHp6QfkQ?t=6m45s https://youtu.be/XGbPHp6QfkQ?t=6m45s [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335
- jcims 5y ago
  I don’t mind a touch screen for GPS/CarPlay. But control of the vehicles operation, environment and entertainment systems should have robust, tactile and intuitive physical input devices that don’t require eyeballs to use. Not to get too far on a tangent but one of the best ways to increase intuition of a control is to provide haptic feedback. This guy has a few projects related to that, this video summarizes them pretty nicely. https://youtu.be/9Eh1p_rUQMA https://youtu.be/9Eh1p_rUQMA
  - romwell 5y ago
    In the world of unicorns and ponies, sure. In the real world, once you put a screen anywhere, that's where the entire UX will go. The temptation to do so it's seemingly irresistible.
    - jcims 5y ago
      Oh yeah I totally agree. You're going to need a brand manager with brass balls and knuckles to match to maintain that separation.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      You can look at literally any non-electric BMW to disprove this. Everything important has physical controls. BMW doesn't exist in some world of unicorns, it's a very real carmaker.
      - rjzzleep 5y ago
        I rented a car in Germany ones but unfortunately I dont remember if it was a BMW or Mercedes. It had a fancy but horrendous touch nob and I just couldn't figure out how to move the car. Car makers consider everything touch a premium feature. The more touch the better/expensive. But to be fair I'm also extremely turned off by how Tesla "reimagined" the door knob.
        FDSGSG 5y ago
        BMWs have a touch nob clickwheel thing, there is no part of the UX that requires or even strongly encourages you to use the touch functionality.
- op00to 5y ago
  Also everyone clapped. Really this time. I think I would much prefer a controller than a touch screen.
- ahartmetz 5y ago
  I have worked on touchscreen UIs for cars. I have a car with touchscreen UI. As a user, I hate them. They are unergonomic and irresponsible.
  - nextaccountic 5y ago
    Here's a way to stop them: make it illegal to have car controls without tactile feedback. Changing volume or radio stations, changing AC, everything the driver might do in the car, should never be done only through a touchscreen, which is too distracting and unsafe.
    - throaway46546 5y ago
      It's illegal to use your smartphone while driving, but somehow if you integrate the same technology into the car it is perfectly fine.
      - foxfluff 5y ago
        Maybe they can start selling a hands-free add-on kit for the car's controls..
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Don’t most of these systems support voice control?
      - FDSGSG 5y ago
        In many EU countries it's definitely not illegal to use your smartphone while driving. Distracted driving is illegal, but using your smartphone doesn't automatically mean that you were distracted any more or less than using your car touchscreen would. The real truth is that enforcement is non-existent and almost nobody gets in trouble for using a phone while driving even if it's specifically forbidden.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- midasuni 5y ago
  Touch screen for CarPlay stuff - changing map to overview, selecting a different route when you’re stuck in traffic, pressing back 15 on Spotify etc, that’s great. Non essential stuff, alternate is a phone in a cradle with a worse touchscreen.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > and car makers realize what a stupid idea touchscreens in cars were in the first place, and give up the idea completely. Why such a binary view of the world? Agreed, putting everything sans turn light and wiper control behind a touchscreen is a pretty reckless form-over-functionality idiocy, as you cannot operate vital functions of your car safely while driving. But that does not mean a touchscreen does not have its uses: Navigation, for one - a proper keyboard to enter addresses and phone numbers instead of that awful rotary thing (or the embedded write-a-single-letter touch thing) that BMWs use is so much faster to operate. Speech recognition is outright unusable outside of the English-speaking world or if you have children or a loud party going on in your car. Not to mention that it is insanely practical on a phone to be able to quickly rotate and zoom a map view for complicated intersections, and having that as a proper part of the car would be perfection. Media is the other major case - there absolutely need to be rotary dials for volume, station change and muting (e.g. if you get in a police stop and your music is blasting, or you hear sirens and need to know from where they come), but playlist selection and creation is so much better on a well-designed touch UI than (again) using knobs of any kind.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    I'll expound further: Any user interface that requires removing attention from the road should not be in reach of the driver while the car is operating. Let the passenger run the laptop that controls the media center and engine profiles and flamethrowers. Have a "next track" "off" and "volume" buttons for the driver.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  Unfortunately, in this case it sounds like the alternate input is a touchpad, which is no more tactile and clearly worse.
  - samjmck 5y ago
    BMWs actually use a dial that you can rotate in the centre console of the vehicle. It's actually very intuitive and easy to use, and a _lot_ less distracting than a touchscreen is.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      When do you need to use that dial while driving? It's exclusively useful for things that you should only do while stationary.
    - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      You know that this dial has a touch screen on top and you can draw with it? For example, it supposed to ocr letters for nav location. No idea who uses that...
- snarfy 5y ago
  You might want to buy a Mazda next time. [1] - https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
- vardump 5y ago
  I can't understand why no one mentioned voice control. Isn't that safer than both physical knobs or touch screen?
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    It's awful. I don't want to talk to my car to change stuff. I don't want to wave at it. Just give me a button.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  I had my heart set on a Toyota RAV-4 hybrid, until I actually sat down in the thing and saw the touch screen. Drove it around, other than the touchscreen it was nice, thought I might just have to suck it up and learn not to change settings while driving. On a whim, I checked out the Mazda CX-5. I'd never considered buying a Mazda before, but I found out they had institutionally banned touchscreens in their cars. And the CX-5 was so much more of a joy to drive than the RAV-4 that it made for a pretty easy decision.
- javajosh 5y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one that feel strongly anti-screen in the car. I feel so strongly about it that I drive an old car. I want an electric car eventually, and I hope that the automakers start building all cars, including electrics, with fully tactile control surfaces (didn't Honda say they'd eliminate screens in their cars? What happened with that?). It looks less Star-Trek sexy, but it also works 50x better. You know who gets this? Airplane pilots. They use screens but with a great deal of care.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    They aren’t removing the screens - they’re removing the touch functionality of the screen. Screens are vital for safety - how do you back-up safely without a screen to show you what’s behind you? Aeroplane pilots use an absolute ton of screens, front and centre.
    - prepend 5y ago
      > how do you back-up safely without a screen to show you what’s behind you? Turn your head and look behind you.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        You have blind spots doing that - that’s how children get run over and why it’s illegal to sell a new car without a screen these days.
        prepend 5y ago
        Not if you move properly. The idea is to know where a car’s blind spots are and to move your head to look around. It’s tragic how kids get run over, but it’s a tiny amount out of a country of 300 million. When I had toddlers, I would make sure I could see them in front of the car before I would back out. If I didn’t know where they were, I didn’t back up. Not a perfect system, of course. But the idea that rear cameras are a necessity is silly.
        5y ago
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  BMW does it right though Originally their interface could only be controlled by a knob, so the knob is a 1st class citizen in navigation. The touchscreen is there, but you never need to use it to navigate. My 124 Spider uses a Mazda infotainment system, and that takes it a step further by only enabling the touchscreen at a standstill. Once the car is in motion only the knob works
- shostack 5y ago
  I'm curious how touch screen glass cockpit pilots feel. Flying and messing with a touchscreen seems a lot more risky and dangerous on the surface, not to mention more difficult in turbulence thanks to bouncing around in three dimensions. In an industry arguably more obsessed with safety (from regulators down to pilots), surely this would be a more heated debate in that space?
- theshadowknows 5y ago
  I’ve got a 2016 civic and the entire touch screen is taken over when you make a right turn or go into reverse. And it takes several seconds for the system to boot when you turn the car on which is especially irritating in very hot or very cold weather. That and the response is laggy and slow. And sometimes it just stops responding entirely and you have to reboot the touch screen. It’s very annoying “feature” of an otherwise lovely car.
- m-p-3 5y ago
  Agreed. Your not supposed to even touch your smartphone while driving, how is operating your car touchscreen-based head unit any safer?! Dials and buttons provides a tactile feedback that allows you to keep focus on the road and can be operated even with gloves, which is great in Canada winter season.
jokowueu 5y ago
Main reason why I didn't buy a Tesla was because of touch screens . I really hope they will not be the norm in the future for other cars
- jcims 5y ago
  I rented a model X and was blown away by the drivability of the car. It’s truly one of the best driving experiences I’ve had in my life. However i very quickly developed disdain for how much of a dependency there was on the screen. It made the car feel very vulnerable and was super annoying. It was great for the gps though.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Same here. Made a test drive of the Model S, love almost everything about the car and would have bought it for sure if it wasn't for the unholy touchscreen that felt outright dangerous to use. I don't understand how it's legal to even put essential controls behind a touchscreen and I don't understand people who drive Teslas daily.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      What essential controls are you using from the touchscreen while driving? The music player? Navigation?
      - bdonlan 5y ago
        Windshield wipers.
        jontro 5y ago
        At least on Model S 2020 the windshield wipers are controlled normally on a stick to the left of the wheel. Maybe it's an EU/US difference.
        5y ago
m-app 5y ago
I LOVE the iDrive controller and it is a definite plus for choosing a BMW over another car with a touchscreen only. My current BMW also has a touch screen, but I rarely use it. The iDrive controller is perfect for the BMW-specific UI, but also works pretty OK even with Apple CarPlay. I would not miss the touch screen at all.
elevanation 5y ago
My pre-touchscreen cars (past and present) were, and are, much easier to use. Of course there are good uses for touch screens, but like many technologies, we sometimes over-apply them for the wrong functions.
- jcims 5y ago
  I think that’s the main problem with having them in cars. They just attract functionality because it’s so easy to add to the screen.
tim_cookie 5y ago
I got a relatively cheap Honda for daily commute and the car is perfect except that it has got touchscreen and it is needlessly difficult to use when driving. Never misses to piss me off daily
- romwell 5y ago
  I paid more for my old Honda Fit maintenance than the car is worth, and will continue doing so until this touchscreen nonsense becomes passè.
littlecranky67 5y ago
Touchscreens in Cars are a prime example of copying someone else's solution to the wrong problem. Smartphones and Tablets have touchscreens because you are looking at the device when operating it - in contrast to cars, where you are supposed not to look at the control while using it but keep your eyes on the street.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Nah, it's just a good example of value engineering making things cheaper by sacrificing value. Touchscreens didn't get so widely adopted because they worked well for tablets - they were because they're cheaper. You no longer need to account for a changing set of physical controls in designing the interior of a car - all you need is to designate where the magic rectangle goes, and all the rest of the UI work can be done independently, without interfering with labor-intensive processes.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  I don’t get why people can be so obsessed with cars and have no thought for the non driving parts in these discussions. You’ll be setting up adresses, contacts, switching climate control patterns, connect playlists, pair and delete devices, setup accounts, manage diagnostics. Why wouldn’t you want a touchscreen for all of these tasks ? Be mad at car makers for being dumb at UX, intrinsically touchscreens have nothing to do with that though.
  - dafoex 5y ago
    I'd say the problem with touch screens is that they encourage car manufacturers to be dumb at UX (see also: that German who crashed because Tesla thought window wiper controls needed to be in the iPad). When I'm cold on my night time commute home, I want to reach for a knob and turn up the heat, when my music is loud and I'm approaching a roundabout, I want to thumb a rotary encoder and turn it down, when a call is coming in I want to feel a button and push it to answer, same for pausing music or skipping that song I don't like but is still in my playlist for some reason. All the common tasks that may have an impact on safety while driving need a physical control, and anything else can be relegated to the magic rectangle because I've no need to use them. As it stands I only use Android Auto to tap "Maps>Work" or "Maps>Home" just so I can have the best route through Milton Keynes with it's ever changing traffic.
c0nfused 5y ago
I think the biggest thing about car touchscreens is that they have historically sucked. They have always been a place to do vendor locking or a geewhiz upgrade. I don't think the touch screen approach is inherently flawed but in a world where you build a working car without one and then add it as an extra trim feature the experience is always going to be bad. I actually think the Tesla touchscreen approach works fairly well especially when coupled with the level of automation they tie into it. Turning your wipers on by touch screen inst great, but if you just automate turning on the wipers as needed it doesn't matter. It also eliminates the where is x control game you end up playing in some cars. You either find it via the UI or open the manual in the same place.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I actually agree. And there’s a secondary benefit: by requiring the touchscreen for some controls like wipers, it means they have to, by law, fix the touchscreen and infotainment computer if it fails early. So if your infotainment computer runs out of write cycles, you can get it fixed for free.
romwell 5y ago
Good. Also thanks to common sense, I hope.
albertopv 5y ago
Thanks God, I hate cars touchscreens, give me physical switchesp please.
drewg123 5y ago
Read the article: They are replacing touch-screens with a non-touch screen and a touchpad controller thing. They are not doing the sensible thing and moving back to analog controls!
- stephencanon 5y ago
  BMW is quite good about this; they have physical controls for almost everything, and voice controls for the rest. Our 2018 3-series wagon has a touch screen, but you don’t have to use it ever for normal driving functions.
- eganist 5y ago
  They're not replacing anything; they're simply not installing the required components to make touch screens work. The idrive module has been in every bmw with an infotainment system since the 745i in 2003; a touchpad was slowly introduced to the center control wheel about a decade later. The one in the video was also present in my 2014 model. It works well; they haven't had much of a reason to change it. The touchscreen was intended as an added input method.
  - drewg123 5y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. The impression that I had from the headline, and what seems like a large percentage of others had, is that they are doing away with modern infotainment and going back to 90s style analog controls, which they are not. I think this is unfortunate. It would be nice to have a new, modern retro performance sedan with totally analog controls. I think car controls were the best in the mid-late 90s, when there were levers and switches and dials for everything, and very few computers. And I say this as a long-time Tesla (X) owner. The Tesla climate control never fails to piss me off. Its amazingly hard to get it to just blow outside air at me. In an older car, nothing would change the fan speed or enable/disable recirc if I had the audacity to park my car overnight.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      What exactly do new ICE BMWs not have old 90s style analog controls for? As far as I can tell, the only things that don't have 90s style analog controls are 2000s digital features like navigation.
Bayart 5y ago
Sadly, there's no chip that's responsible for their dreadful font and color choices.
desktopninja 5y ago
I commend Mazda for taking the initiative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 Maybe its just my age but I distinctly remember driver advice/instructions of having no bright lights in the car cabin because it would adversely affect one's vision at night.
- Kaibeezy 5y ago
  classic Saab night panel ftw Also knobs Saab ftw rip Saab
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    FWIW, I had problems with the buttons on my Saabs. I get the touchscreen hate. But honestly, I prefer them.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      Wait, Saabs are still around? They made it to the touchscreen era?
      - Kaibeezy 5y ago
        I recently bought a 2003. Removed the aftermarket touchscreen, replaced it with the original audio system and dug out my box of tape cassettes. Here come the warm jets!
      - Robotbeat 5y ago
        Well, I was still using my Saab in the touchscreen era…
        rsj_hn 5y ago
        Lucky you! I miss those quirky cars.
  - breckenedge 5y ago
dml2135 5y ago
How about cars just have built-in phone mounts? We’re all carrying a touch screen with us already.
- aembleton 5y ago
  The only cars I know with this are the Skoda citigo and the vw up. Like this https://www.obautodily.cz/userdata/products/99/1st051435b.jpg https://www.obautodily.cz/userdata/products/99/1st051435b.jp...
lbayes 5y ago
I have a 2015 Audi A3. I didn't want the brand at all, but loved (and still love) the dial control. I've been dreading getting a new car specifically because I do not want the touch screen. Fortunately, I still have a few years left of good life in this machine, otherwise I'd jump on one of those immediately! I still wish something like this UI would have caught on. https://youtu.be/XVbuk3jizGM https://youtu.be/XVbuk3jizGM
jarek83 5y ago
Just been chatting with a local dealer guy, and he said that just after the covid outbreak the car manufacturers made 2-3 year commitments into smaller orders for the electronic parts, so the chip producers shifted sales to other markets. So by his point of view there is no real shortage, just wrong decisions were made. Wonder how true is this.
- akmarinov 5y ago
  Very true
- philistine 5y ago
  At some point in our recent history, car factories were the most important and complex factories in our global economy. Now fabs have clearly taken that cultural crown from them.
benjamir 5y ago
Funny considering a spokesman from BMW boasted on Deutschlandfunk (German broadcast), that they selling a lot of cars because they aren't affected by supply chain issues because they, contrary to the other car makers were having fair agreements with their suppliers... Yeah. So much for that :-)
DecoPerson 5y ago
The control dial on BMWs is incredible. Having used both extensively, for both in-car entertainment systems and CarPlay, I far prefer to use the control dial. Even if it didn’t have the safety advantage, I would still use it — it’s just so easy.
varispeed 5y ago
I hope something will be done with Chinese speculators who buy all stock of certain components as soon as it becomes available and then resell at 10x margin. What is a chip manufacturer gaining when they sell components to them rather than to businesses that actually use them in their products? Currently my friends company had to hire two more engineers to redevelop product to use a different chip manufacturer who so far has not been badly affected. But this may become a kind of whack-a-mole game. If this causes so much harm to businesses, why agencies don't treat this as a national security problem and actually put these Chinese companies on terrorist list?
- nikau 5y ago
  I find this comment very amusing in its irony. Your friends company no doubt leverages the cheap labour arbitrage of manufacturing in China vs locally, but the Chinese buying chips and making arbitrage money is suddenly a bad thing.
  - varispeed 5y ago
    They actually manufacture in the UK.
dntrkv 5y ago
This thread is a great example of the HN bubble. All else being the same, the vast majority of people will opt for the car with the bigger touch screen.
wabbu 5y ago
what about blinkers?
- dafoex 5y ago
  What, those things you put on horses eyes?
dusted 5y ago
That's great news! I don't want a fcking touchscreen in my car.
Rnewbs 5y ago
My BMW was delayed for a few months due to a screen shortage years ago, seems to happen fairly often.
cletus 5y ago
Touch screens work on phones because phones have limited real estate. Even then some people doggedly held onto their physical keyboards for years (eg Blackberrys). To me, touch screens are usually an excuse for terrible UI/UX. Why? Because it makes the maker lazy. "We'll fix/update it later" I'm sure is the mantra as they cut corners to get it out the door. Physical buttons force you to do more work up front and think about how the UI works. And of course that "later" rarely ever happens. It's onto the next model. Physical buttons, knobs and switches allow you to use the interface without looking at the screen, something incredibly important for a driver of a vehicle. You shouldn't have to look away from the road to adjust the AC, for example. This may be a blessing in disguise.
- raisedbyninjas 5y ago
  Physical buttons aren't practical for the amount of features a modern luxury car has. I was just trying to use a point and shoot camera yesterday without a touchscreen and the physical buttons were a UI disaster
  - hulahoof 5y ago
    This seems like the same case the parent raised about touch screens, in that a camera also has limited real estate
sebiw 5y ago
I own a 7 series that has both, touch controls and the iDrive knob with physical controls. I mostly use the physical controls because BMW's user interface works quite nice with it and the physical controls are positioned where the driver's arm is resting, making it kind of natural to use. Touchscreen requires more leaning towards the screen, making it impractical to use while driving (of course, always be cautious while interacting with your infotainment while driving).
smitty1e 5y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but automobiles predate integrated circuits. One could offer zero-chip models that would: - continue production in times of chip scarcity, and - roll on through EMP events with gusto. Niftier than an NFT, these low-tech solutions.
- aembleton 5y ago
  But they would fail emissions regulations without engine management and safety regulations without a reversing screen or airbags.
  - Scroedingershat 5y ago
    Make them electric (electric cars predate integrated circuits and arguably reliable ICE cars), put a mirror and a fresnel lens on the back, regulate that the driver has to be able to see the average 2 year old standing anywhere behind the car even with no mirror, and put in a 5pt harness with a quick release on one shoulder for reversing (which is better than all but the last couple of generations of airbag). There is no need for SUVs or even anything as big as a 'subcompact' to exist for private travel in cities, microcars from the 70s are better in every way except for compensating for tiny penises and scaring mothers into making the roads more dangerous via a prisoner's dilemma.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    Perhaps those regulations bear revision.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      They are actively being revised in the right direction (which involves more chips). It would be idiotic to worry about EMPs over emissions and crash safety.
      - smitty1e 5y ago
        Very arguably idiotic, until the EMP occurs. Maybe better engineering captures the emissions and crash concerns in simpler, sturdier designs.
qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
I drove my brother’s Landrover recently and amount of cognitive overload and distraction in just getting to change the volume on the touchscreen is so much it almost made me hit the car in front on me on a 25 mph traffic. On the other hand my Mazda CX-5 has a CarPlay touchscreen as well as knobs and real switched for volume, Nav and phone. It’s orders of magnitude easier to drive. This whole touchscreen started when the MBAs at automakers started to barge into design rooms under the assumption that the “millennials are attracted to and at home with touchscreens”.

128 points by elorant 5y ago

lqet 5y ago

Great. Now can we get rid of them on washing machines, dishwashers, fridges, radios, clocks, and doorbells?

rightbyte 5y ago
My washing machine is so annoying. Instead of a nob I need to press a touch screen to set temperature. And the selector goes in a circle for each press so to go one step colder I need to press around the circle ... old dishwasher UX were so much better.

h2odragon 5y ago

I hope they prove to be extremely popular, and car makers realize what a stupid idea touchscreens in cars were in the first place, and give up the idea completely. ...and then there will be unicorns and flutterbugs and cotton candy, and everyone will be happy and nothing bad will ever happen again.

mc32 5y ago
I hope all that goes the way of most digital speedometers and tachometers from the 90s where most are back to analogue dials and a testament to tackiness.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  I actually enjoy digital speedometers, they are quicker to read than a "clock" dial
FDSGSG 5y ago
Why are you posting this under an article about BMW? They've done the best job at this out of all the carmakers. You can go buy a brand new 7er, all the important things have physical buttons. The screen is really only there for navigation and more complicated settings.
pw6hv 5y ago
Totally agree with you. However, some times I think most of the people take what they're given and the 'radicals' are just a small percentage of the total. Manufacturers simply decide to make what is cheaper for them (see for example 16:10 vs 16:9 for monitors).
- Gargyle 5y ago
  When I got a coin everytime I watch people in newer SUVs being entirely confused why the damn thing doesn't start now completely stunned by the sheer number of stuff on the dashboard and middle screen. Or tell their passengers to go fiddle with the aircon system because the cognitive load is too high while driving. Old cars with knobs you learn it once and you can use it without eyes.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  Perhaps it’s not that most people take what they’re given but that the manufacturer does a good job discovering what people want.
  - DavidPeiffer 5y ago
    Unfortunately I think it's more driven by cost motivations. As noted in the Mk8 VW GTI review [1], the interfaces are often straight up awful, this being a particularly bad design. They're the biggest source of complaints/issues shortly after buying, and three years later. Additionally, distractions are already abundant in a vehicle. A crappy user interface, which most are, is a safety concern. At minimum, lag between screens loading should be extremely minimal. Staring at a screen for an extra second or two while it registers that you pressed a button and updates the screen is incredibly dangerous and has surely lead to some number of deaths. Two years ago Mazda announced they were moving away from touchscreens, which was very well received on HackerNews. [2] And I can't find the thread right now, but 1-3 years ago there was a really good discussion on here about an eye tracking study in a variety of car models. Touchscreen-only interfaces in cars are kind of like electronic-only voting machines. Technical people who know about computers breath funny thinking about it and see issues left and right while large swaths of people really want it. [1] https://youtu.be/XGbPHp6QfkQ?t=6m45s https://youtu.be/XGbPHp6QfkQ?t=6m45s [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335
jcims 5y ago
I don’t mind a touch screen for GPS/CarPlay. But control of the vehicles operation, environment and entertainment systems should have robust, tactile and intuitive physical input devices that don’t require eyeballs to use. Not to get too far on a tangent but one of the best ways to increase intuition of a control is to provide haptic feedback. This guy has a few projects related to that, this video summarizes them pretty nicely. https://youtu.be/9Eh1p_rUQMA https://youtu.be/9Eh1p_rUQMA
- romwell 5y ago
  In the world of unicorns and ponies, sure. In the real world, once you put a screen anywhere, that's where the entire UX will go. The temptation to do so it's seemingly irresistible.
  - jcims 5y ago
    Oh yeah I totally agree. You're going to need a brand manager with brass balls and knuckles to match to maintain that separation.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    You can look at literally any non-electric BMW to disprove this. Everything important has physical controls. BMW doesn't exist in some world of unicorns, it's a very real carmaker.
    - rjzzleep 5y ago
      I rented a car in Germany ones but unfortunately I dont remember if it was a BMW or Mercedes. It had a fancy but horrendous touch nob and I just couldn't figure out how to move the car. Car makers consider everything touch a premium feature. The more touch the better/expensive. But to be fair I'm also extremely turned off by how Tesla "reimagined" the door knob.
      - FDSGSG 5y ago
        BMWs have a touch nob clickwheel thing, there is no part of the UX that requires or even strongly encourages you to use the touch functionality.
op00to 5y ago
Also everyone clapped. Really this time. I think I would much prefer a controller than a touch screen.
ahartmetz 5y ago
I have worked on touchscreen UIs for cars. I have a car with touchscreen UI. As a user, I hate them. They are unergonomic and irresponsible.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  Here's a way to stop them: make it illegal to have car controls without tactile feedback. Changing volume or radio stations, changing AC, everything the driver might do in the car, should never be done only through a touchscreen, which is too distracting and unsafe.
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    It's illegal to use your smartphone while driving, but somehow if you integrate the same technology into the car it is perfectly fine.
    - foxfluff 5y ago
      Maybe they can start selling a hands-free add-on kit for the car's controls..
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Don’t most of these systems support voice control?
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      In many EU countries it's definitely not illegal to use your smartphone while driving. Distracted driving is illegal, but using your smartphone doesn't automatically mean that you were distracted any more or less than using your car touchscreen would. The real truth is that enforcement is non-existent and almost nobody gets in trouble for using a phone while driving even if it's specifically forbidden.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
midasuni 5y ago
Touch screen for CarPlay stuff - changing map to overview, selecting a different route when you’re stuck in traffic, pressing back 15 on Spotify etc, that’s great. Non essential stuff, alternate is a phone in a cradle with a worse touchscreen.
mschuster91 5y ago
> and car makers realize what a stupid idea touchscreens in cars were in the first place, and give up the idea completely. Why such a binary view of the world? Agreed, putting everything sans turn light and wiper control behind a touchscreen is a pretty reckless form-over-functionality idiocy, as you cannot operate vital functions of your car safely while driving. But that does not mean a touchscreen does not have its uses: Navigation, for one - a proper keyboard to enter addresses and phone numbers instead of that awful rotary thing (or the embedded write-a-single-letter touch thing) that BMWs use is so much faster to operate. Speech recognition is outright unusable outside of the English-speaking world or if you have children or a loud party going on in your car. Not to mention that it is insanely practical on a phone to be able to quickly rotate and zoom a map view for complicated intersections, and having that as a proper part of the car would be perfection. Media is the other major case - there absolutely need to be rotary dials for volume, station change and muting (e.g. if you get in a police stop and your music is blasting, or you hear sirens and need to know from where they come), but playlist selection and creation is so much better on a well-designed touch UI than (again) using knobs of any kind.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  I'll expound further: Any user interface that requires removing attention from the road should not be in reach of the driver while the car is operating. Let the passenger run the laptop that controls the media center and engine profiles and flamethrowers. Have a "next track" "off" and "volume" buttons for the driver.
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
Unfortunately, in this case it sounds like the alternate input is a touchpad, which is no more tactile and clearly worse.
- samjmck 5y ago
  BMWs actually use a dial that you can rotate in the centre console of the vehicle. It's actually very intuitive and easy to use, and a _lot_ less distracting than a touchscreen is.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    When do you need to use that dial while driving? It's exclusively useful for things that you should only do while stationary.
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    You know that this dial has a touch screen on top and you can draw with it? For example, it supposed to ocr letters for nav location. No idea who uses that...
snarfy 5y ago
You might want to buy a Mazda next time. [1] - https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-purging-touchscreens-from-its-vehicles https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur...
vardump 5y ago
I can't understand why no one mentioned voice control. Isn't that safer than both physical knobs or touch screen?
- rad_gruchalski 5y ago
  It's awful. I don't want to talk to my car to change stuff. I don't want to wave at it. Just give me a button.
moron4hire 5y ago
I had my heart set on a Toyota RAV-4 hybrid, until I actually sat down in the thing and saw the touch screen. Drove it around, other than the touchscreen it was nice, thought I might just have to suck it up and learn not to change settings while driving. On a whim, I checked out the Mazda CX-5. I'd never considered buying a Mazda before, but I found out they had institutionally banned touchscreens in their cars. And the CX-5 was so much more of a joy to drive than the RAV-4 that it made for a pretty easy decision.
javajosh 5y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one that feel strongly anti-screen in the car. I feel so strongly about it that I drive an old car. I want an electric car eventually, and I hope that the automakers start building all cars, including electrics, with fully tactile control surfaces (didn't Honda say they'd eliminate screens in their cars? What happened with that?). It looks less Star-Trek sexy, but it also works 50x better. You know who gets this? Airplane pilots. They use screens but with a great deal of care.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  They aren’t removing the screens - they’re removing the touch functionality of the screen. Screens are vital for safety - how do you back-up safely without a screen to show you what’s behind you? Aeroplane pilots use an absolute ton of screens, front and centre.
  - prepend 5y ago
    > how do you back-up safely without a screen to show you what’s behind you? Turn your head and look behind you.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      You have blind spots doing that - that’s how children get run over and why it’s illegal to sell a new car without a screen these days.
      - prepend 5y ago
        Not if you move properly. The idea is to know where a car’s blind spots are and to move your head to look around. It’s tragic how kids get run over, but it’s a tiny amount out of a country of 300 million. When I had toddlers, I would make sure I could see them in front of the car before I would back out. If I didn’t know where they were, I didn’t back up. Not a perfect system, of course. But the idea that rear cameras are a necessity is silly.
      - 5y ago
BoorishBears 5y ago
BMW does it right though Originally their interface could only be controlled by a knob, so the knob is a 1st class citizen in navigation. The touchscreen is there, but you never need to use it to navigate. My 124 Spider uses a Mazda infotainment system, and that takes it a step further by only enabling the touchscreen at a standstill. Once the car is in motion only the knob works
shostack 5y ago
I'm curious how touch screen glass cockpit pilots feel. Flying and messing with a touchscreen seems a lot more risky and dangerous on the surface, not to mention more difficult in turbulence thanks to bouncing around in three dimensions. In an industry arguably more obsessed with safety (from regulators down to pilots), surely this would be a more heated debate in that space?
theshadowknows 5y ago
I’ve got a 2016 civic and the entire touch screen is taken over when you make a right turn or go into reverse. And it takes several seconds for the system to boot when you turn the car on which is especially irritating in very hot or very cold weather. That and the response is laggy and slow. And sometimes it just stops responding entirely and you have to reboot the touch screen. It’s very annoying “feature” of an otherwise lovely car.
m-p-3 5y ago
Agreed. Your not supposed to even touch your smartphone while driving, how is operating your car touchscreen-based head unit any safer?! Dials and buttons provides a tactile feedback that allows you to keep focus on the road and can be operated even with gloves, which is great in Canada winter season.

jokowueu 5y ago

Main reason why I didn't buy a Tesla was because of touch screens . I really hope they will not be the norm in the future for other cars

jcims 5y ago
I rented a model X and was blown away by the drivability of the car. It’s truly one of the best driving experiences I’ve had in my life. However i very quickly developed disdain for how much of a dependency there was on the screen. It made the car feel very vulnerable and was super annoying. It was great for the gps though.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Same here. Made a test drive of the Model S, love almost everything about the car and would have bought it for sure if it wasn't for the unholy touchscreen that felt outright dangerous to use. I don't understand how it's legal to even put essential controls behind a touchscreen and I don't understand people who drive Teslas daily.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    What essential controls are you using from the touchscreen while driving? The music player? Navigation?
    - bdonlan 5y ago
      Windshield wipers.
      - jontro 5y ago
        At least on Model S 2020 the windshield wipers are controlled normally on a stick to the left of the wheel. Maybe it's an EU/US difference.
        5y ago

m-app 5y ago

I LOVE the iDrive controller and it is a definite plus for choosing a BMW over another car with a touchscreen only. My current BMW also has a touch screen, but I rarely use it. The iDrive controller is perfect for the BMW-specific UI, but also works pretty OK even with Apple CarPlay. I would not miss the touch screen at all.

elevanation 5y ago

My pre-touchscreen cars (past and present) were, and are, much easier to use. Of course there are good uses for touch screens, but like many technologies, we sometimes over-apply them for the wrong functions.

jcims 5y ago
I think that’s the main problem with having them in cars. They just attract functionality because it’s so easy to add to the screen.

tim_cookie 5y ago

I got a relatively cheap Honda for daily commute and the car is perfect except that it has got touchscreen and it is needlessly difficult to use when driving. Never misses to piss me off daily

romwell 5y ago
I paid more for my old Honda Fit maintenance than the car is worth, and will continue doing so until this touchscreen nonsense becomes passè.

littlecranky67 5y ago

Touchscreens in Cars are a prime example of copying someone else's solution to the wrong problem. Smartphones and Tablets have touchscreens because you are looking at the device when operating it - in contrast to cars, where you are supposed not to look at the control while using it but keep your eyes on the street.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 5y ago
Nah, it's just a good example of value engineering making things cheaper by sacrificing value. Touchscreens didn't get so widely adopted because they worked well for tablets - they were because they're cheaper. You no longer need to account for a changing set of physical controls in designing the interior of a car - all you need is to designate where the magic rectangle goes, and all the rest of the UI work can be done independently, without interfering with labor-intensive processes.
makeitdouble 5y ago
I don’t get why people can be so obsessed with cars and have no thought for the non driving parts in these discussions. You’ll be setting up adresses, contacts, switching climate control patterns, connect playlists, pair and delete devices, setup accounts, manage diagnostics. Why wouldn’t you want a touchscreen for all of these tasks ? Be mad at car makers for being dumb at UX, intrinsically touchscreens have nothing to do with that though.
- dafoex 5y ago
  I'd say the problem with touch screens is that they encourage car manufacturers to be dumb at UX (see also: that German who crashed because Tesla thought window wiper controls needed to be in the iPad). When I'm cold on my night time commute home, I want to reach for a knob and turn up the heat, when my music is loud and I'm approaching a roundabout, I want to thumb a rotary encoder and turn it down, when a call is coming in I want to feel a button and push it to answer, same for pausing music or skipping that song I don't like but is still in my playlist for some reason. All the common tasks that may have an impact on safety while driving need a physical control, and anything else can be relegated to the magic rectangle because I've no need to use them. As it stands I only use Android Auto to tap "Maps>Work" or "Maps>Home" just so I can have the best route through Milton Keynes with it's ever changing traffic.

c0nfused 5y ago

I think the biggest thing about car touchscreens is that they have historically sucked. They have always been a place to do vendor locking or a geewhiz upgrade. I don't think the touch screen approach is inherently flawed but in a world where you build a working car without one and then add it as an extra trim feature the experience is always going to be bad. I actually think the Tesla touchscreen approach works fairly well especially when coupled with the level of automation they tie into it. Turning your wipers on by touch screen inst great, but if you just automate turning on the wipers as needed it doesn't matter. It also eliminates the where is x control game you end up playing in some cars. You either find it via the UI or open the manual in the same place.

Robotbeat 5y ago
I actually agree. And there’s a secondary benefit: by requiring the touchscreen for some controls like wipers, it means they have to, by law, fix the touchscreen and infotainment computer if it fails early. So if your infotainment computer runs out of write cycles, you can get it fixed for free.

romwell 5y ago

Good. Also thanks to common sense, I hope.

albertopv 5y ago

Thanks God, I hate cars touchscreens, give me physical switchesp please.

drewg123 5y ago

Read the article: They are replacing touch-screens with a non-touch screen and a touchpad controller thing. They are not doing the sensible thing and moving back to analog controls!

stephencanon 5y ago
BMW is quite good about this; they have physical controls for almost everything, and voice controls for the rest. Our 2018 3-series wagon has a touch screen, but you don’t have to use it ever for normal driving functions.
eganist 5y ago
They're not replacing anything; they're simply not installing the required components to make touch screens work. The idrive module has been in every bmw with an infotainment system since the 745i in 2003; a touchpad was slowly introduced to the center control wheel about a decade later. The one in the video was also present in my 2014 model. It works well; they haven't had much of a reason to change it. The touchscreen was intended as an added input method.
- drewg123 5y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. The impression that I had from the headline, and what seems like a large percentage of others had, is that they are doing away with modern infotainment and going back to 90s style analog controls, which they are not. I think this is unfortunate. It would be nice to have a new, modern retro performance sedan with totally analog controls. I think car controls were the best in the mid-late 90s, when there were levers and switches and dials for everything, and very few computers. And I say this as a long-time Tesla (X) owner. The Tesla climate control never fails to piss me off. Its amazingly hard to get it to just blow outside air at me. In an older car, nothing would change the fan speed or enable/disable recirc if I had the audacity to park my car overnight.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    What exactly do new ICE BMWs not have old 90s style analog controls for? As far as I can tell, the only things that don't have 90s style analog controls are 2000s digital features like navigation.

Bayart 5y ago

Sadly, there's no chip that's responsible for their dreadful font and color choices.

desktopninja 5y ago

I commend Mazda for taking the initiative: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20200335 Maybe its just my age but I distinctly remember driver advice/instructions of having no bright lights in the car cabin because it would adversely affect one's vision at night.

Kaibeezy 5y ago
classic Saab night panel ftw Also knobs Saab ftw rip Saab
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  FWIW, I had problems with the buttons on my Saabs. I get the touchscreen hate. But honestly, I prefer them.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    Wait, Saabs are still around? They made it to the touchscreen era?
    - Kaibeezy 5y ago
      I recently bought a 2003. Removed the aftermarket touchscreen, replaced it with the original audio system and dug out my box of tape cassettes. Here come the warm jets!
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Well, I was still using my Saab in the touchscreen era…
      - rsj_hn 5y ago
        Lucky you! I miss those quirky cars.
- breckenedge 5y ago

dml2135 5y ago

How about cars just have built-in phone mounts? We’re all carrying a touch screen with us already.

aembleton 5y ago
The only cars I know with this are the Skoda citigo and the vw up. Like this https://www.obautodily.cz/userdata/products/99/1st051435b.jpg https://www.obautodily.cz/userdata/products/99/1st051435b.jp...

lbayes 5y ago

I have a 2015 Audi A3. I didn't want the brand at all, but loved (and still love) the dial control. I've been dreading getting a new car specifically because I do not want the touch screen. Fortunately, I still have a few years left of good life in this machine, otherwise I'd jump on one of those immediately! I still wish something like this UI would have caught on. https://youtu.be/XVbuk3jizGM https://youtu.be/XVbuk3jizGM

jarek83 5y ago

Just been chatting with a local dealer guy, and he said that just after the covid outbreak the car manufacturers made 2-3 year commitments into smaller orders for the electronic parts, so the chip producers shifted sales to other markets. So by his point of view there is no real shortage, just wrong decisions were made. Wonder how true is this.

akmarinov 5y ago
Very true
philistine 5y ago
At some point in our recent history, car factories were the most important and complex factories in our global economy. Now fabs have clearly taken that cultural crown from them.

benjamir 5y ago

Funny considering a spokesman from BMW boasted on Deutschlandfunk (German broadcast), that they selling a lot of cars because they aren't affected by supply chain issues because they, contrary to the other car makers were having fair agreements with their suppliers... Yeah. So much for that :-)

DecoPerson 5y ago

The control dial on BMWs is incredible. Having used both extensively, for both in-car entertainment systems and CarPlay, I far prefer to use the control dial. Even if it didn’t have the safety advantage, I would still use it — it’s just so easy.

varispeed 5y ago

I hope something will be done with Chinese speculators who buy all stock of certain components as soon as it becomes available and then resell at 10x margin. What is a chip manufacturer gaining when they sell components to them rather than to businesses that actually use them in their products? Currently my friends company had to hire two more engineers to redevelop product to use a different chip manufacturer who so far has not been badly affected. But this may become a kind of whack-a-mole game. If this causes so much harm to businesses, why agencies don't treat this as a national security problem and actually put these Chinese companies on terrorist list?

nikau 5y ago
I find this comment very amusing in its irony. Your friends company no doubt leverages the cheap labour arbitrage of manufacturing in China vs locally, but the Chinese buying chips and making arbitrage money is suddenly a bad thing.
- varispeed 5y ago
  They actually manufacture in the UK.

dntrkv 5y ago

This thread is a great example of the HN bubble. All else being the same, the vast majority of people will opt for the car with the bigger touch screen.

wabbu 5y ago

what about blinkers?

dafoex 5y ago
What, those things you put on horses eyes?

dusted 5y ago

That's great news! I don't want a fcking touchscreen in my car.

Rnewbs 5y ago

My BMW was delayed for a few months due to a screen shortage years ago, seems to happen fairly often.

cletus 5y ago

Touch screens work on phones because phones have limited real estate. Even then some people doggedly held onto their physical keyboards for years (eg Blackberrys). To me, touch screens are usually an excuse for terrible UI/UX. Why? Because it makes the maker lazy. "We'll fix/update it later" I'm sure is the mantra as they cut corners to get it out the door. Physical buttons force you to do more work up front and think about how the UI works. And of course that "later" rarely ever happens. It's onto the next model. Physical buttons, knobs and switches allow you to use the interface without looking at the screen, something incredibly important for a driver of a vehicle. You shouldn't have to look away from the road to adjust the AC, for example. This may be a blessing in disguise.

raisedbyninjas 5y ago
Physical buttons aren't practical for the amount of features a modern luxury car has. I was just trying to use a point and shoot camera yesterday without a touchscreen and the physical buttons were a UI disaster
- hulahoof 5y ago
  This seems like the same case the parent raised about touch screens, in that a camera also has limited real estate

sebiw 5y ago

I own a 7 series that has both, touch controls and the iDrive knob with physical controls. I mostly use the physical controls because BMW's user interface works quite nice with it and the physical controls are positioned where the driver's arm is resting, making it kind of natural to use. Touchscreen requires more leaning towards the screen, making it impractical to use while driving (of course, always be cautious while interacting with your infotainment while driving).

smitty1e 5y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but automobiles predate integrated circuits. One could offer zero-chip models that would: - continue production in times of chip scarcity, and - roll on through EMP events with gusto. Niftier than an NFT, these low-tech solutions.

aembleton 5y ago
But they would fail emissions regulations without engine management and safety regulations without a reversing screen or airbags.
- Scroedingershat 5y ago
  Make them electric (electric cars predate integrated circuits and arguably reliable ICE cars), put a mirror and a fresnel lens on the back, regulate that the driver has to be able to see the average 2 year old standing anywhere behind the car even with no mirror, and put in a 5pt harness with a quick release on one shoulder for reversing (which is better than all but the last couple of generations of airbag). There is no need for SUVs or even anything as big as a 'subcompact' to exist for private travel in cities, microcars from the 70s are better in every way except for compensating for tiny penises and scaring mothers into making the roads more dangerous via a prisoner's dilemma.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  Perhaps those regulations bear revision.
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    They are actively being revised in the right direction (which involves more chips). It would be idiotic to worry about EMPs over emissions and crash safety.
    - smitty1e 5y ago
      Very arguably idiotic, until the EMP occurs. Maybe better engineering captures the emissions and crash concerns in simpler, sturdier designs.

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago

I drove my brother’s Landrover recently and amount of cognitive overload and distraction in just getting to change the volume on the touchscreen is so much it almost made me hit the car in front on me on a 25 mph traffic. On the other hand my Mazda CX-5 has a CarPlay touchscreen as well as knobs and real switched for volume, Nav and phone. It’s orders of magnitude easier to drive. This whole touchscreen started when the MBAs at automakers started to barge into design rooms under the assumption that the “millennials are attracted to and at home with touchscreens”.