3 ms·
The distinction I'm drawing is that we expect software to improve. My first car had no software, so I didn't expect anything to get better. But the most recent
by wpietri 4y ago
The distinction I'm drawing is that we expect software to improve.
My first car had no software, so I didn't expect anything to get better. But the most recent thing I drove frequently had significant amounts of software, especially the touchscreen that did audio and navigation. Even when it first came out it was not very good software, so it was the kind of thing I'd want to get better. And 5 years later, having watched all the rest of the software in my life improve, the flaws were ever more grating.
- wpietri 4y agoAnd I should add that I suspect there's a technology stage issue here. If you look at a model T dashboard, the controls were by modern standards terrible. All of us are used to cars where they spent decades refining physical controls, all of which were pretty uncomplicated compared to what we routinely expect software to do. So it's reasonable to me that if we count the number and severity of driver experience issues, the graph bottoms out sometime in the mid-1980s (1986 being the first time they put touch-screens in cars).