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My toyota Corolla has a touch screen for interacting with audio. It has the following delightful features: - latency - it has a boot procedure when you turn t

My toyota Corolla has a touch screen for interacting with audio. It has the following delightful features: - latency - it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency. However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio. - there is a knob for adjusting volume, but it's still part of the same system as the rest of it. There is still substantial latency to this control, especially immediately upon turning the car on. However even a little latency here is really annoying, because one naturally adjusts volume via trial and error. - if you've paired the car with your phone via Bluetooth, it immediately sends a message to your phone to start playing whatever audio was played most recently at whatever the current volume is. I wrote a tasker routine to intercept this, but an android patch a while back helpfully broke this and I haven't bothered fixing it. All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car.

SCNP 4y ago
This is another benefit of truly analog manual controls: Memory. Used to be your stereo volume knob was just at a certain level; when you turned it on it was at that level. Now they're all software controlled. At least some stereo equipment maintains this paradigm but I'm with you on the phone volume as it's dictated by your phone and the volume for one device could be drastically different than another.
Arrath 4y ago
The wild variability in boot times for the entertainment center is what gets me. Sometimes, my bluetooth will start playing immediately, other times the car company's logo will grace the screen for a good 30 seconds before I can interact with it at all. There doesn't seem to be any relation to frequency of starting it up, time since the last drive, etc.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  Running fsck. We're now in the era of low effort embedded systems. Just slap Linux on it and don't bother tuning for usability in non-desktop use cases.
speedgoose 4y ago
I understand your critics against touchscreens and they are justified. Your car doesn’t have a good touchscreen interface from what you say and also from my experience when I drove the corollas from the car pool. However it’s not because many cars are bad that the technology is bad. A touchscreen from an 20 years old Archos MP3 player is extremely bad while an iPad Pro M1 is very good.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Some tools are just not good for the job. At least to me, I haven‘t seen a compelling reasons that touchscreens replacing analog car controls isn‘t a square peg going into a circle hole.
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    Well, analog controls are not very good to control a gps map or browse a music collection.
    - formerkrogemp 4y ago
      Why do we need screens on everything when we have a phone? A mobile computing device.
      - speedgoose 4y ago
        The last gen Citroen Ami uses the phone. You can check how it looks.
    - massysett 4y ago
      I find that a round knob with a push-button click, when coupled with a non-touch screen, is far superior to swiping around on a touchscreen to browse a music collection.
  - burnished 4y ago
    I'm wondering if part of that is that the companies producing these awful interfaces don't see themselves as 'software' companies, so they put these things in but no one has the time or passion or interest to make it a better experience. Not saying they'd definitely be good if only some one loved 'em, but judging from the car touch screens I've used I believe no one has tried yet.
CSSer 4y ago
My VW Jetta has Apple Carplay and similar issues abound. > it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency. I've got one better. Controls during bootup in my car are simply ignored, and the bootup duration for Carplay in particular is so bad that it makes the bluetooth delay seem acceptable. > However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio. This is ironic because I wish mine would start playing. There's no setting for playback behavior either. The only setting, in fact, is the ability to reorder and add/remove third-party apps. Oh, worse still, sometimes audio doesn't play even when you manually select something. The UI will register it as playing but the audio doesn't come through. When this happens, you have to disconnect and reconnect your phone, which is dangerous in motion. It's a joke. It makes me wonder what the deal is, and I have no idea who to report the bug to. > All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car. Yup. My beater in college that came with some random aftermarket radio was better. Carplay is pretty but beyond that it feels like an afterthought as an experience.
White_Wolf 4y ago
>>> "However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio." Yeah. In the same boat and my wife like to play pranks when she uses the car. Turns the volume to max right before removing the key. When her phone is not found it defaults to radio. That "saved me" from having to drink my morning coffee in the office on more than one occasion + it's good training for the heart. Edit: Forgot to mention that the volume knob is ignored until the system fully boots up and the audio starts as soon as you twist the key.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  This is what I used to do to torment my mom when I was a kid. Except with the physical knobs she had in her car (in the 80s), I could crank the volume without having to turn on the car.
d136o 4y ago
Hah our Subaru does this where it defaults to playing the radio at some volume whenever you “boot up” the car. I’ve got no idea what station is selected as the boot up station but every time I turn on our car it plays static. How about no sound? How about defaulting to silence? Nope…

SCNP 4y ago

This is another benefit of truly analog manual controls: Memory. Used to be your stereo volume knob was just at a certain level; when you turned it on it was at that level. Now they're all software controlled. At least some stereo equipment maintains this paradigm but I'm with you on the phone volume as it's dictated by your phone and the volume for one device could be drastically different than another.

Arrath 4y ago

The wild variability in boot times for the entertainment center is what gets me. Sometimes, my bluetooth will start playing immediately, other times the car company's logo will grace the screen for a good 30 seconds before I can interact with it at all. There doesn't seem to be any relation to frequency of starting it up, time since the last drive, etc.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
Running fsck. We're now in the era of low effort embedded systems. Just slap Linux on it and don't bother tuning for usability in non-desktop use cases.

speedgoose 4y ago

I understand your critics against touchscreens and they are justified. Your car doesn’t have a good touchscreen interface from what you say and also from my experience when I drove the corollas from the car pool. However it’s not because many cars are bad that the technology is bad. A touchscreen from an 20 years old Archos MP3 player is extremely bad while an iPad Pro M1 is very good.

bobthepanda 4y ago
Some tools are just not good for the job. At least to me, I haven‘t seen a compelling reasons that touchscreens replacing analog car controls isn‘t a square peg going into a circle hole.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  Well, analog controls are not very good to control a gps map or browse a music collection.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    Why do we need screens on everything when we have a phone? A mobile computing device.
    - speedgoose 4y ago
      The last gen Citroen Ami uses the phone. You can check how it looks.
  - massysett 4y ago
    I find that a round knob with a push-button click, when coupled with a non-touch screen, is far superior to swiping around on a touchscreen to browse a music collection.
- burnished 4y ago
  I'm wondering if part of that is that the companies producing these awful interfaces don't see themselves as 'software' companies, so they put these things in but no one has the time or passion or interest to make it a better experience. Not saying they'd definitely be good if only some one loved 'em, but judging from the car touch screens I've used I believe no one has tried yet.

CSSer 4y ago

My VW Jetta has Apple Carplay and similar issues abound. > it has a boot procedure when you turn the car on. While this happens, the controls have quite substantial latency. I've got one better. Controls during bootup in my car are simply ignored, and the bootup duration for Carplay in particular is so bad that it makes the bluetooth delay seem acceptable. > However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio. This is ironic because I wish mine would start playing. There's no setting for playback behavior either. The only setting, in fact, is the ability to reorder and add/remove third-party apps. Oh, worse still, sometimes audio doesn't play even when you manually select something. The UI will register it as playing but the audio doesn't come through. When this happens, you have to disconnect and reconnect your phone, which is dangerous in motion. It's a joke. It makes me wonder what the deal is, and I have no idea who to report the bug to. > All of this combines for a user experience dramatically worse than an aux cord. It's kind of spectacular in its terribleness. And this is an otherwise great car. Yup. My beater in college that came with some random aftermarket radio was better. Carplay is pretty but beyond that it feels like an afterthought as an experience.

White_Wolf 4y ago

>>> "However the first thing that happens is it begins playing audio." Yeah. In the same boat and my wife like to play pranks when she uses the car. Turns the volume to max right before removing the key. When her phone is not found it defaults to radio. That "saved me" from having to drink my morning coffee in the office on more than one occasion + it's good training for the heart. Edit: Forgot to mention that the volume knob is ignored until the system fully boots up and the audio starts as soon as you twist the key.

olyjohn 4y ago
This is what I used to do to torment my mom when I was a kid. Except with the physical knobs she had in her car (in the 80s), I could crank the volume without having to turn on the car.

d136o 4y ago

Hah our Subaru does this where it defaults to playing the radio at some volume whenever you “boot up” the car. I’ve got no idea what station is selected as the boot up station but every time I turn on our car it plays static. How about no sound? How about defaulting to silence? Nope…