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Yay, more touch screen in cars. More ways to distract, frustrate and confuse users who are operating a big box of steel weighing 3 tons and going at speeds the

by GuiA 13y ago

Yay, more touch screen in cars. More ways to distract, frustrate and confuse users who are operating a big box of steel weighing 3 tons and going at speeds the human brain has never evolved to appropriately deal with. 1) Not only are touch screens a very poor interactor in the first place [0], but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls? For operating complex vehicles/apparatus, you just cannot do better than tangible controls. Knobs, switches, sliders can be operated without looking at them while giving rich tactile feedback, they have no modes = 0 risk for confusion, you know where they're going to be located on your dashboard regardless of what you're doing, etc. 2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point. Seriously- then you'll be able to fiddle all you want with your phone, drink, travel while sleepy, arguing your spouse, whatever you want- we'll be saving tens of thousands of lives every year [1], and the secondary social benefits will be fantastic (less cars produced since they don't have to sit on a parking lot 99% of the time, people won't have to spend a year's worth of wages just to buy a car (and then a significant chunk to maintain it), etc.). If society were a game of Civilization, I'd be putting all of my resource points towards the "Self driving cars" achievement. Of course the insurance companies, car manufacturers, oil companies, etc. don't want that to happen- but seriously, fuck those guys. The benefits on human society at large here are so significant that there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men. [0] http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in... (the views in this post are a bit on the extreme side- but that's how interesting conversations get started :-)

talklittle 13y ago
Looks like you forgot to scroll down. The second thing on the page: Control with a word. Or a touch. Or a twist. CarPlay features Siri voice control and is specially designed for driving scenarios. It also works with your car’s controls — knobs, buttons, or touchscreen. And the apps you want to use in the car have been reimagined, so you can use them while your eyes and hands stay where they belong.
- GuiA 13y ago
  > It also works with your car’s controls — knobs, buttons, or touchscreen It'll work with the knobs/buttons in the cars that have them and integrate them with whatever functionality they have (I have an old boss who had a Porsche Cayenne with a large screen controlled entirely with side buttons and a small scroll thingy, which was super awkward as the device's interface seemed designed with a touch screen in mind), but it seems that the car industry is largely moving towards touch screens in cars, with brands like Tesla leading the movement. I wouldn't be surprised if innovations like these encourage an even faster move towards touch screens in cars- Apple sure loves its touch screens.
JumpCrisscross 13y ago
>why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls Avionics has been moving away from tangible indicators and controls for some time. Honeywell has already announced that is working on "touchscreen-enabled avionics for the next-generation air transport and business aviation cockpits" [1]. I also believe SpaceX runs a largely virtualised command centre. >Self-driving cars...every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point Imagine a bond that pays, into perpetuity, 100% of the profits earned by auto manufacturers worldwide on non-self-driving cars. How much would you be willing to pay for this bond? Likely a non-trivial amount. Wanting to get to Mars doesn't make a Moon mission "useless fluff". The incremental steps add to our learning and help finance, even if indirectly, more ambitious goals. One could interpret Apple's move as an incremental step towards a future where a car's value is inside the cabin, not under the bonnet. [1] http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/avd_10_21_2013_p03-01-628244.xml http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/avd...
- gnaffle 13y ago
  Granted, the things that touchscreens replace in avionics are the stuff that you need your eyes on to operate in any case (navigation computer etc). And they often replace input systems that were far, far worse (read http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/garmin-gps http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/garmin-gps for a funny review of the old Garmin avionics). And in the air, you have a little more time to look at the instruments without risking crashing into a meeting car or driving off the road. I suspect (hope) that the current trend with touchscreens in cars will be a fad, and that manufacturers will realize that some features (climate control etc) are best implemented with traditional controls. It's sad when my 10 year old car has a UI on that part that allows me to use it without taking the eyes off the road.
  - renata 13y ago
    Having previously worked in avionics I'm a little annoyed that many of the things he complains about are a combination of overstrict FAA rules and the immense cost required for certification for some of the functionality he wants. For instance, you can't warn for terrain unless you're level A certified on almost all airframes - and there's a differences between TAWS A, which lets you warn with "Terrain - Pull Up" and TAWS B, where you can only warn with "Terrain". Approach plates require level B certification as well, although for some reason the FAA lets some people get away with releasing them for iPads with no certification whatsoever (they generally have a disclaimer about "not for navigation purposes" but the FAA used to frown upon that sort of thing). There was a collision on a runway a while ago that we passed around the news article for, because it could have very easily been prevented by features we had, but were not certified for the airframes that had the collision. It's understandable that we want to ensure that the new glass works just as well as old instruments, but it's frustrating when customers very clearly want functionality that we're not allowed to provide.
archagon 13y ago
Do you seriously think we'll have widespread self-driving cars — and not just the bare bones technology, but ones that we can ride in without any control at all, even while intoxicated — within a timespan short enough for every other advancement in car technology to not matter? I am almost 100% certain that we won't see that kind of thing even within the next few decades, if ever. Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet.
- BillinghamJ 13y ago
  That is by choice. I live in the UK. Personally, I don't see the point in driving manual, but most drivers in the UK enjoy using stick shift. In the context of a self-driving car, that doesn't matter. The self-driving car technology is also very viable to use right now. I have seen Google self-driving cars on the freeways driving next to me. It would not surprise me if they were being sold within the next 5 years, commonplace within 20-30 years.
  - girvo 13y ago
    I personally just love driving a manual car. Its not for any practical reason, I just get a kick out of shifting perfectly, the feel of the engine and the control that I have. That said, if there's a self driving car, you bet Id rather use that.
    - gambiting 13y ago
      >> I just get a kick out of shifting perfectly, the feel of the engine and the control that I have Funny how I feel exactly same way when I drive an automatic.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I am almost 100% certain that we won't see that kind of thing [self-driving cars] even within the next few decades, if ever. Come on -- self-driving cars are already legal in California -- "Self-driving cars now legal in California" : http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-car-california/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-c... -- and the military are testing self-driving trucks to prevent IUD casualties in hostile areas -- "Army tests self-driving trucks for the next big war: " http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/army-tests-self-driving-trucks-next-big-war-214248512.html http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/army-tests-self-drivi... -- so your doubts are anachronistic to say the least. > Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet. Hey -- wake up and smell the Cappuccino. :)
roel_v 13y ago
Did you even read the article linked to?
alkonaut 13y ago
I agree it's a bad idea to have touch devices within an arms length of a drivers seat, even if the device can be interacted with also via voice and physical buttons. It would would be simple to not allow touch interaction while driving. So before you start and if you pull over you can text/call/setup navigation which is easy to do on the touch screen and hard to do with a few buttons. Once moving the touch screen should dumb down to stupid mode with only one valid interaction: hitting the screen hard a few times should silence the navigation voice (a feature I have found missing in most current models).
ekianjo 13y ago
> going at speeds the human brain has never evolved to appropriately deal with. Not to discuss your other points, but who are you to say the human brain has evolved or not to deal with X or Y ? The human brain is actually very capable of dealing with multiple sensory signals, and the fact that most people can drive cars on motorways without crashing in each other's every 2 seconds suggest that the human brain is perfectly up to the task.
- baddox 13y ago
  He is accidentally technically correct. Saying that "the human brain evolved to do x" implies that evolution has purpose or intention, which is not the case.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > He is accidentally technically correct. Saying that "the human brain evolved to do x" implies that evolution has purpose or intention, which is not the case. But to say that human behavior evolved to meet a specific environmental requirement isn't a purpose, it's an outcome that allowed the genotype to procreate. It's a gray area and one must be careful speaking of goals, but if one is addressing a specific adaptation to meet a specific environmental requirement, it's all right.
    - furyofantares 13y ago
      At the current fatality rate among young drivers I wonder how many years it would take us to notice statistically significant genetic changes in the population that could be attributed to automobiles.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        Or, more interesting, a correlation between innumeracy and traffic deaths. It turns out that the distance required to bring a car to a stop (after reaction time) is proportional to the square of the vehicle's speed. This is something that most people don't know, and that young drivers ignore at their peril. After the driver reacts and presses on the brake pedal, on dry, level pavement, a car requires about 20 feet to stop at 20 miles per hour, 80 feet at 40 miles per hour and 180 feet at 60 miles per hour (all approximate distances). Simple equation (reaction time not included): y = v^2 / 20 v = velocity MPH y = stopping distance in feet Another reason to learn some mathematics and science (it's based on the kinetic energy of the moving car). :)
nkozyra 13y ago
A touchscreen isn't tangible?
- pcurve 13y ago
  it is, but it's really limited in kind of tactile feedback it can provide. (haptic feedback).
sbuk 13y ago
http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/#integration http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/#integration
Angostura 13y ago
Good job on ignoring the main point of this pitch - that it integrates the phone with in car controls, obviating the need to use the touchscreen when on the move.
cmelbye 13y ago
You ignore the fact that this is meant to be controlled by Siri and, yes, tactile knobs and switches in your car. It says it right there on the linked page. Little to no distraction needed.
- moe 13y ago
  You ignore the fact that this is meant to be controlled by Siri Nothing to improve road safety like elaborate arguments with a speech recognition engine...
  - ProAm 13y ago
    You'll acclimate to it like you do everything else in life. People learned to drive just fine after coming out of horse drawn carriages and wagons. Don't act like people are not adaptable to innovation and change.
  - morganherlocker 13y ago
    Too late. The cat is already out of the bag and everyone is already doing all of this anyway, except awkwardly holding their phone up to their face at the same time.
  - robmcm 13y ago
    You think Siri is bad, try the ones built into 5 year old cars.
    - zacharyz 13y ago
      You don't even need to look that far back. Cars being released as new today have horrible speech recognition compared to what you can get with siri/google now.
  - cmelbye 13y ago
    C'mon, this is Hacker News. Let's try to look beyond the current state of technology and think about its potential instead.
hisyam 13y ago
I agree that certain dashboard functionality are better handled by knobs, switches, and sliders. However if you look into the webpage above, CarPlay only supports Phone, Music, Maps, and Messages, the kind of features that are better handled by touchscreen. As for Messages, it can read the text messages for you.
- wlesieutre 13y ago
  Also Podcasts, Beats Radio, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and Stitcher. I'm curious if Apple will be controlling what apps are allowed to work with CarPlay to keep people from putting millions of Flappy Bird clones on a screen that drivers shouldn't be looking at. My guess would be yes, but all it says for now is "Stay tuned for even more supported apps coming soon."
hnnewguy 13y ago
>The benefits on human society at large here are so significant that there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men. So insurance, oil and car companies are filled with stodgy, greedy, old men who we are not to care about, but I guess SV is filled with cool, hip, innovative people? Get your head out of the sand. I'll take the innovation of Ford and Toyota over Facebook and WhatsApp anyday of the week.
gambiting 13y ago
>>(the views in this post are a bit on the extreme side- but that's how interesting conversations get started :-) They are. I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion on HN, but I would like to drive my own car, thank you very much. I don't mind automatic mode on long journeys on the motorway, but other than that, I want to drive myself - and I hope that automatic driving will not be forced upon us during my lifetime.
- bennyg 13y ago
  Thank you. The only times I hate driving are long road trips and at night in the rain.
topbanana 13y ago
> greedy old white men Please stop doing this
rayiner 13y ago
I don't know what white men have to do with this. I bet a bunch of the people who are opposed to that are middle eastern!
deelowe 13y ago
My stepfather is a pilot. | but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls They haven't. Most new planes and retrofits are moving to touchscreens. It allows the pilot to display only the important information on screen at a given time. Like the airport map, for example.
- ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
  But the yoke, pedals, etc are not touch screen.
  - pisarzp 13y ago
    so is driving wheel and brakes
  - pisarzp 13y ago
    so is driving wheel and brakes
  - deelowe 13y ago
    huh? Are you claiming that they are in the case of this car interface? Also, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg
mschaecher 13y ago
The three cars I've owned in my lifetime all had 90% physical controls, with a small little digital screen that would display something like the radio station you're on, the temp, the strength of air, treble/bass, etc, etc. There was absolutely zero tactile feedback on all of them, as their were dedicated buttons that had to be cycled through to reach a state....and the only way you could know if you were getting to what you wanted was if you looked at the tiny little digital display. Want preset radio station #x? Jam the preset button a few times. Want to warm the passenger side a bit? Jam a button to select that side, then select heat, the turn it up. That's on a Honda, a Cadillac & a Toyota spanning a decade in years....so I'm guessing you must be referring to pre-1990 vehicles that literally had dial tuners and manual button to control valves...and 5x less options for stuff that could even be adjusted?? Or did you speak too soon?
- gnaffle 13y ago
  http://ipocars.com/imgs/a/b/n/u/s/citroen__citron_citron_berlingo_multispace_2_0_hdi_2005_2_lgw.jpg http://ipocars.com/imgs/a/b/n/u/s/citroen__citron_citron_ber... Here's an example of a car from ca. 2005 that has simple, manual controls for climate control. If the passenger is too warm, there's a separate button for opening the window :) Some newer cars also have separate dials for heat on each side: http://static.autoexpress.co.uk/sites/autoexpressuk/files/styles/gallery/public/3-bmw-interior_8.jpg?itok=6K-bXvDS http://static.autoexpress.co.uk/sites/autoexpressuk/files/st... ..but of course they still have pushbuttons for fan speed.
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  My 2002 Toyota Corolla might (does) have relatively few options for what you can adjust, but it certainly doesn't have cycling buttons requiring you to look at a tiny digital display. It doesn't have a display at all. The buttons are all labeled with what they do. The climate control is dials. Want to warm the passenger side a bit? Your option is to warm the whole car. Set the temperature dial to warm and the mode dial to (most likely) floor. Your pre-1990 estimate is way, way, embarrassingly off, at best.
  - ahlatimer 13y ago
o0-0o 13y ago
Dude I up voted your comment, but seriously with the white man racecard?
raverbashing 13y ago
"but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls?" Mainly because of technology. But more modern systems are doing away with this. " For operating complex vehicles/apparatus, you just cannot do better than tangible controls." You're not controlling the vehicle. " Knobs, switches, sliders can be operated without looking at them while giving rich tactile feedback, they have no modes = 0 risk for confusion, you know where they're going to be located on your dashboard regardless of what you're doing, etc." Physical controls in airplanes have caused confusion. Wrong switches have been activated by mistake several times (either because someone bumped into them, or switched the one next to the one intended)
wf 13y ago
>>why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls? They're not, Garmin has offered not only custom touch screen flight decks[0] but they also have an ipad app that can be flown with.[1] [0]https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/aviation/flight-decks/g3000-/prod66916.html https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/aviation/flight-decks/g3000-... [1]https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garmin-pilot/id340917615?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garmin-pilot/id340917615?mt=...
nhangen 13y ago
How is this the top comment? 'greedy old white men' should justify dead on its own, but it also completely misses the point.
- romanovcode 13y ago
  because patriarchy
- nackerhews 13y ago
  Because 1) he typed a lot and 2) cited some sources 3) early on when the link was submitted. That's instant upvote criteria.
- jisaacks 13y ago
  Because it is the only comment.
jsz0 13y ago
> Yay, more touch screen in cars. It's odd though that the number of auto accidents in the US has not increased with the increased use of in-dash touch screens and SmartPhones. Deaths from auto accidents have also been on the decline. It seems like people are doing a pretty good job adapting. 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 13.4 12.5 18.3 11.8 10.9 10.7 10.4 10.6 10.2 10.8
- jljljl 13y ago
  Population adjusted vehicle miles driven has also decreased during that time period: http://www.businessinsider.com/vehicle-miles-driven-2013-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/vehicle-miles-driven-2013-2 There's a lot of factors that go into reducing auto accidents, so that correlation doesn't really tell us anything about the danger of driving with touch screens in the car.
  - amalcon 13y ago
    It tells us something, just not something anyone seriously wondered about. We can be pretty sure that vehicles with touchscreens don't get into (for example) 10,000x as many accidents as vehicles with manual controls, as that should be visible in the statistics. What it doesn't tell us is whether or not touchscreens pose any significant additional danger.
- jarek 13y ago
  > It seems like people are doing a pretty good job adapting. Or something else is making it safer
chaz 13y ago
It depends on each manufacturer's implementation. The ever-growing complexity needs to be managed, both in learning curve as well as overall placement and design of features. For one, BMW does this right. The large screen is controlled by the iDrive knob in the middle, which rotates with haptic detents, is pushable, and has 4-directions on it. All of the major controls are still present with physical controls: radio volume, presets, dual temp control, fan speed, vents, cruise control, phone, etc. The only time you would regularly use the iDrive is for navigation, which is always going to be kludgy because of the complexity of putting in addresses. I welcome voice and touch here. http://www.moibibiki.com/images/bmw-4-series-interior-12.jpg http://www.moibibiki.com/images/bmw-4-series-interior-12.jpg
- foobarqux 13y ago
  iDrive is terrible and distracting. Never has changing a radio station been so dangerous.
  - chaz 13y ago
    Yes, which is why they give you hard buttons for presets and up/down scan.
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      Only after 2012 as far as I can tell. I don't know if that finally makes the system sane but it certainly wasn't previously.
- chiph 13y ago
  Try the Lexus car-mouse. It's far better than the "knob" systems (Mercedes, BMW, Audi). You still get haptic feedback (magnets, how do they work?) and the motion of the controller corresponds directly with the screen display.
  - MBCook 13y ago
    I remember seeing that at the local auto show last year. I couldn't help but think that if you see a mouse in the car they did something wrong.
deveac 13y ago
>Yay, more touch screen in cars. More ways to distract, frustrate and confuse users who are operating a big box of steel weighing 3 tons and going at speeds the human brain has never evolved to appropriately deal with. This reduces distraction. You have to remember to take into account human behavior. In the real world, people get into their vehicle and use their phone's map application, as well as text, phone, and music applications. Not only do they do this, they do it in overwhelming numbers. This product takes common behavior that people engage in (and will continue to), and makes it safer and less confusing to engage in while driving. Vehicles have knobs and touch-screens now. This tech doesn't change that dynamic, -it works with the UI elements already present in order to reduce fumbling around with your phone and tiny touch-targets on your mobile device. >2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point. That's besides the point. They aren't here yet, and they won't be in the immediate future. Making driving safer in the meantime isn't fluff. > there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men. What a terrible, low-value comment to make in this forum.
- shas3 13y ago
  A good compromise on distractions and 'more inputs' is voice-based UI. Honestly, car companies and OEMs must be focusing on better voice-based UIs for cars rather than distracting touch screens. The Sync system in Ford cars is a well-intentioned example that doesn't work that well.
  - woobar 13y ago
    My pet peeve with Sync is they disable navigation input via touch screen when car is moving. Even when a passenger tries to enter it. Instead they force the driver to use their clunky voice-recognition to do this. Which is much more distracting. But this is a minor quip compared to how MS implemented Sync Services. It's 2014 and they use a voice(!) line from a pre-registered cell phone to connect to their services.
  - kolinko 13y ago
    That's a very American way of thinking about things. I assume you're American (or British), because voice-based systems are nearly useless for non-native english speakers. I'm a fluent english speaker, but due to my non-american accent, and the fact that my language is not one of the top 10 used in the world I still cannot operate Siri (or other voice systems) properly, and the dictation feature is nearly useless to me.
jjtheblunt 13y ago
"white men"? Why malign the minority in tech, people of European ancestry.
smspence 13y ago
I don't really understand the "greedy old white men" part of your comment... What do you mean specifically? By the way, touch screens in avionics are gaining a lot of traction in the commercial aviation market. See one such example here: http://www.rockwellcollins.com/prolinefusion/ http://www.rockwellcollins.com/prolinefusion/
csel 13y ago
One word. Siri.
joshmlewis 13y ago
I may be a dying bread, but I love driving. I love driving fast cars. I love racing (legitimate racing on legal tracks) and I love the thrill of being one with a powerful machine. Someone said recently that sports cars may well be the last drivable cars to exist, and I'm ok with that. If I'm not in the mood to drive and I just want to get from point a to point b then fine, a self-driving car is awesome, but I get a lot of joy, excitement, and pleasure from driving my car around. I'm not in a big city where it's an issue and there are lots of open roads to go down. I take great pride in how I drive and the example I represent when driving. I take it seriously and I wish that more people would. So no I don't think that every new innovation is bad and useless. There will always be auto racing and fast cars. There's nothing else like it.
mukundmr 13y ago
Touch screen in cars is debatable, but for the record, Apple's solution allows the use of physical knobs and buttons in the car to hook into CarPlay.
pwthornton 13y ago
We already know how to make transportation exponentially safer; simply don't drive. It's the No. 1 thing you can do to lower your risk of near-term mortality. I'm not joking around here either. I firmly believe we need safer cars, and self-driving cars would be a great step towards that, but the real issue here is how car-dependent our society is. If more trips could be done on foot or via public transportation, the U.S. would be a much safer place. Our reliance on car driving makes other forms of transportation unsafe too. The risk of riding a bike is not that you'll fall or hit another bicyclist, but rather that a car will hit you (and probably not even be cited). The biggest risk to walking is that a car will hit you in a cross walk or on a sidewalk (will trying to avoid hitting another car), just because. And we're so cavalier about killing people with cars. We don't need have to wait (or hope) for technology to save us. We can build better places to live today. Places that are safer and healthier. And that largely starts by making towns and cities more walkable. When I walk and take the train to work, I can send texts, read news stories, listen to podcasts and check Twitter, all without endangering people's lives. And no futuristic technology is needed to accomplish this. If society we're a game, I'd be putting my resources to building walking neighborhoods and better public transportation. Even if you have self driving cars, cars are still bad for your health from the lack of exercise and the pollution.

by GuiA 13y ago

talklittle 13y ago

Looks like you forgot to scroll down. The second thing on the page: Control with a word. Or a touch. Or a twist. CarPlay features Siri voice control and is specially designed for driving scenarios. It also works with your car’s controls — knobs, buttons, or touchscreen. And the apps you want to use in the car have been reimagined, so you can use them while your eyes and hands stay where they belong.

GuiA 13y ago
> It also works with your car’s controls — knobs, buttons, or touchscreen It'll work with the knobs/buttons in the cars that have them and integrate them with whatever functionality they have (I have an old boss who had a Porsche Cayenne with a large screen controlled entirely with side buttons and a small scroll thingy, which was super awkward as the device's interface seemed designed with a touch screen in mind), but it seems that the car industry is largely moving towards touch screens in cars, with brands like Tesla leading the movement. I wouldn't be surprised if innovations like these encourage an even faster move towards touch screens in cars- Apple sure loves its touch screens.

JumpCrisscross 13y ago

>why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls Avionics has been moving away from tangible indicators and controls for some time. Honeywell has already announced that is working on "touchscreen-enabled avionics for the next-generation air transport and business aviation cockpits" [1]. I also believe SpaceX runs a largely virtualised command centre. >Self-driving cars...every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point Imagine a bond that pays, into perpetuity, 100% of the profits earned by auto manufacturers worldwide on non-self-driving cars. How much would you be willing to pay for this bond? Likely a non-trivial amount. Wanting to get to Mars doesn't make a Moon mission "useless fluff". The incremental steps add to our learning and help finance, even if indirectly, more ambitious goals. One could interpret Apple's move as an incremental step towards a future where a car's value is inside the cabin, not under the bonnet. [1] http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/avd_10_21_2013_p03-01-628244.xml http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/avd...

gnaffle 13y ago
Granted, the things that touchscreens replace in avionics are the stuff that you need your eyes on to operate in any case (navigation computer etc). And they often replace input systems that were far, far worse (read http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/garmin-gps http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/garmin-gps for a funny review of the old Garmin avionics). And in the air, you have a little more time to look at the instruments without risking crashing into a meeting car or driving off the road. I suspect (hope) that the current trend with touchscreens in cars will be a fad, and that manufacturers will realize that some features (climate control etc) are best implemented with traditional controls. It's sad when my 10 year old car has a UI on that part that allows me to use it without taking the eyes off the road.
- renata 13y ago
  Having previously worked in avionics I'm a little annoyed that many of the things he complains about are a combination of overstrict FAA rules and the immense cost required for certification for some of the functionality he wants. For instance, you can't warn for terrain unless you're level A certified on almost all airframes - and there's a differences between TAWS A, which lets you warn with "Terrain - Pull Up" and TAWS B, where you can only warn with "Terrain". Approach plates require level B certification as well, although for some reason the FAA lets some people get away with releasing them for iPads with no certification whatsoever (they generally have a disclaimer about "not for navigation purposes" but the FAA used to frown upon that sort of thing). There was a collision on a runway a while ago that we passed around the news article for, because it could have very easily been prevented by features we had, but were not certified for the airframes that had the collision. It's understandable that we want to ensure that the new glass works just as well as old instruments, but it's frustrating when customers very clearly want functionality that we're not allowed to provide.

archagon 13y ago

Do you seriously think we'll have widespread self-driving cars — and not just the bare bones technology, but ones that we can ride in without any control at all, even while intoxicated — within a timespan short enough for every other advancement in car technology to not matter? I am almost 100% certain that we won't see that kind of thing even within the next few decades, if ever. Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet.

BillinghamJ 13y ago
That is by choice. I live in the UK. Personally, I don't see the point in driving manual, but most drivers in the UK enjoy using stick shift. In the context of a self-driving car, that doesn't matter. The self-driving car technology is also very viable to use right now. I have seen Google self-driving cars on the freeways driving next to me. It would not surprise me if they were being sold within the next 5 years, commonplace within 20-30 years.
- girvo 13y ago
  I personally just love driving a manual car. Its not for any practical reason, I just get a kick out of shifting perfectly, the feel of the engine and the control that I have. That said, if there's a self driving car, you bet Id rather use that.
  - gambiting 13y ago
    >> I just get a kick out of shifting perfectly, the feel of the engine and the control that I have Funny how I feel exactly same way when I drive an automatic.
lutusp 13y ago
> I am almost 100% certain that we won't see that kind of thing [self-driving cars] even within the next few decades, if ever. Come on -- self-driving cars are already legal in California -- "Self-driving cars now legal in California" : http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-car-california/ http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/tech/innovation/self-driving-c... -- and the military are testing self-driving trucks to prevent IUD casualties in hostile areas -- "Army tests self-driving trucks for the next big war: " http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/army-tests-self-driving-trucks-next-big-war-214248512.html http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/army-tests-self-drivi... -- so your doubts are anachronistic to say the least. > Self-driving cars have way too many hurdles to overcome before they reach that point. I mean, Europe hasn't even moved over to automatic transmission yet. Hey -- wake up and smell the Cappuccino. :)

roel_v 13y ago

Did you even read the article linked to?

alkonaut 13y ago

I agree it's a bad idea to have touch devices within an arms length of a drivers seat, even if the device can be interacted with also via voice and physical buttons. It would would be simple to not allow touch interaction while driving. So before you start and if you pull over you can text/call/setup navigation which is easy to do on the touch screen and hard to do with a few buttons. Once moving the touch screen should dumb down to stupid mode with only one valid interaction: hitting the screen hard a few times should silence the navigation voice (a feature I have found missing in most current models).

ekianjo 13y ago

> going at speeds the human brain has never evolved to appropriately deal with. Not to discuss your other points, but who are you to say the human brain has evolved or not to deal with X or Y ? The human brain is actually very capable of dealing with multiple sensory signals, and the fact that most people can drive cars on motorways without crashing in each other's every 2 seconds suggest that the human brain is perfectly up to the task.

baddox 13y ago
He is accidentally technically correct. Saying that "the human brain evolved to do x" implies that evolution has purpose or intention, which is not the case.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > He is accidentally technically correct. Saying that "the human brain evolved to do x" implies that evolution has purpose or intention, which is not the case. But to say that human behavior evolved to meet a specific environmental requirement isn't a purpose, it's an outcome that allowed the genotype to procreate. It's a gray area and one must be careful speaking of goals, but if one is addressing a specific adaptation to meet a specific environmental requirement, it's all right.
  - furyofantares 13y ago
    At the current fatality rate among young drivers I wonder how many years it would take us to notice statistically significant genetic changes in the population that could be attributed to automobiles.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      Or, more interesting, a correlation between innumeracy and traffic deaths. It turns out that the distance required to bring a car to a stop (after reaction time) is proportional to the square of the vehicle's speed. This is something that most people don't know, and that young drivers ignore at their peril. After the driver reacts and presses on the brake pedal, on dry, level pavement, a car requires about 20 feet to stop at 20 miles per hour, 80 feet at 40 miles per hour and 180 feet at 60 miles per hour (all approximate distances). Simple equation (reaction time not included): y = v^2 / 20 v = velocity MPH y = stopping distance in feet Another reason to learn some mathematics and science (it's based on the kinetic energy of the moving car). :)

nkozyra 13y ago

A touchscreen isn't tangible?

pcurve 13y ago
it is, but it's really limited in kind of tactile feedback it can provide. (haptic feedback).

sbuk 13y ago

http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/#integration http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/#integration

Angostura 13y ago

Good job on ignoring the main point of this pitch - that it integrates the phone with in car controls, obviating the need to use the touchscreen when on the move.

cmelbye 13y ago

You ignore the fact that this is meant to be controlled by Siri and, yes, tactile knobs and switches in your car. It says it right there on the linked page. Little to no distraction needed.

moe 13y ago
You ignore the fact that this is meant to be controlled by Siri Nothing to improve road safety like elaborate arguments with a speech recognition engine...
- ProAm 13y ago
  You'll acclimate to it like you do everything else in life. People learned to drive just fine after coming out of horse drawn carriages and wagons. Don't act like people are not adaptable to innovation and change.
- morganherlocker 13y ago
  Too late. The cat is already out of the bag and everyone is already doing all of this anyway, except awkwardly holding their phone up to their face at the same time.
- robmcm 13y ago
  You think Siri is bad, try the ones built into 5 year old cars.
  - zacharyz 13y ago
    You don't even need to look that far back. Cars being released as new today have horrible speech recognition compared to what you can get with siri/google now.
- cmelbye 13y ago
  C'mon, this is Hacker News. Let's try to look beyond the current state of technology and think about its potential instead.

hisyam 13y ago

I agree that certain dashboard functionality are better handled by knobs, switches, and sliders. However if you look into the webpage above, CarPlay only supports Phone, Music, Maps, and Messages, the kind of features that are better handled by touchscreen. As for Messages, it can read the text messages for you.

wlesieutre 13y ago
Also Podcasts, Beats Radio, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and Stitcher. I'm curious if Apple will be controlling what apps are allowed to work with CarPlay to keep people from putting millions of Flappy Bird clones on a screen that drivers shouldn't be looking at. My guess would be yes, but all it says for now is "Stay tuned for even more supported apps coming soon."

hnnewguy 13y ago

>The benefits on human society at large here are so significant that there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men. So insurance, oil and car companies are filled with stodgy, greedy, old men who we are not to care about, but I guess SV is filled with cool, hip, innovative people? Get your head out of the sand. I'll take the innovation of Ford and Toyota over Facebook and WhatsApp anyday of the week.

gambiting 13y ago

>>(the views in this post are a bit on the extreme side- but that's how interesting conversations get started :-) They are. I know this is an extremely unpopular opinion on HN, but I would like to drive my own car, thank you very much. I don't mind automatic mode on long journeys on the motorway, but other than that, I want to drive myself - and I hope that automatic driving will not be forced upon us during my lifetime.

bennyg 13y ago
Thank you. The only times I hate driving are long road trips and at night in the rain.

topbanana 13y ago

> greedy old white men Please stop doing this

rayiner 13y ago

I don't know what white men have to do with this. I bet a bunch of the people who are opposed to that are middle eastern!

deelowe 13y ago

My stepfather is a pilot. | but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls They haven't. Most new planes and retrofits are moving to touchscreens. It allows the pilot to display only the important information on screen at a given time. Like the airport map, for example.

ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
But the yoke, pedals, etc are not touch screen.
- pisarzp 13y ago
  so is driving wheel and brakes
- pisarzp 13y ago
  so is driving wheel and brakes
- deelowe 13y ago
  huh? Are you claiming that they are in the case of this car interface? Also, this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Airbus_A380_cockpit.jpg

mschaecher 13y ago

The three cars I've owned in my lifetime all had 90% physical controls, with a small little digital screen that would display something like the radio station you're on, the temp, the strength of air, treble/bass, etc, etc. There was absolutely zero tactile feedback on all of them, as their were dedicated buttons that had to be cycled through to reach a state....and the only way you could know if you were getting to what you wanted was if you looked at the tiny little digital display. Want preset radio station #x? Jam the preset button a few times. Want to warm the passenger side a bit? Jam a button to select that side, then select heat, the turn it up. That's on a Honda, a Cadillac & a Toyota spanning a decade in years....so I'm guessing you must be referring to pre-1990 vehicles that literally had dial tuners and manual button to control valves...and 5x less options for stuff that could even be adjusted?? Or did you speak too soon?

gnaffle 13y ago
http://ipocars.com/imgs/a/b/n/u/s/citroen__citron_citron_berlingo_multispace_2_0_hdi_2005_2_lgw.jpg http://ipocars.com/imgs/a/b/n/u/s/citroen__citron_citron_ber... Here's an example of a car from ca. 2005 that has simple, manual controls for climate control. If the passenger is too warm, there's a separate button for opening the window :) Some newer cars also have separate dials for heat on each side: http://static.autoexpress.co.uk/sites/autoexpressuk/files/styles/gallery/public/3-bmw-interior_8.jpg?itok=6K-bXvDS http://static.autoexpress.co.uk/sites/autoexpressuk/files/st... ..but of course they still have pushbuttons for fan speed.
thaumasiotes 13y ago
My 2002 Toyota Corolla might (does) have relatively few options for what you can adjust, but it certainly doesn't have cycling buttons requiring you to look at a tiny digital display. It doesn't have a display at all. The buttons are all labeled with what they do. The climate control is dials. Want to warm the passenger side a bit? Your option is to warm the whole car. Set the temperature dial to warm and the mode dial to (most likely) floor. Your pre-1990 estimate is way, way, embarrassingly off, at best.
- ahlatimer 13y ago

o0-0o 13y ago

Dude I up voted your comment, but seriously with the white man racecard?

raverbashing 13y ago

"but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls?" Mainly because of technology. But more modern systems are doing away with this. " For operating complex vehicles/apparatus, you just cannot do better than tangible controls." You're not controlling the vehicle. " Knobs, switches, sliders can be operated without looking at them while giving rich tactile feedback, they have no modes = 0 risk for confusion, you know where they're going to be located on your dashboard regardless of what you're doing, etc." Physical controls in airplanes have caused confusion. Wrong switches have been activated by mistake several times (either because someone bumped into them, or switched the one next to the one intended)

wf 13y ago

>>why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls? They're not, Garmin has offered not only custom touch screen flight decks[0] but they also have an ipad app that can be flown with.[1] [0]https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/aviation/flight-decks/g3000-/prod66916.html https://buy.garmin.com/en-GB/GB/aviation/flight-decks/g3000-... [1]https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garmin-pilot/id340917615?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/garmin-pilot/id340917615?mt=...

nhangen 13y ago

How is this the top comment? 'greedy old white men' should justify dead on its own, but it also completely misses the point.

romanovcode 13y ago
because patriarchy
nackerhews 13y ago
Because 1) he typed a lot and 2) cited some sources 3) early on when the link was submitted. That's instant upvote criteria.
jisaacks 13y ago
Because it is the only comment.

jsz0 13y ago

> Yay, more touch screen in cars. It's odd though that the number of auto accidents in the US has not increased with the increased use of in-dash touch screens and SmartPhones. Deaths from auto accidents have also been on the decline. It seems like people are doing a pretty good job adapting. 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 13.4 12.5 18.3 11.8 10.9 10.7 10.4 10.6 10.2 10.8

jljljl 13y ago
Population adjusted vehicle miles driven has also decreased during that time period: http://www.businessinsider.com/vehicle-miles-driven-2013-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/vehicle-miles-driven-2013-2 There's a lot of factors that go into reducing auto accidents, so that correlation doesn't really tell us anything about the danger of driving with touch screens in the car.
- amalcon 13y ago
  It tells us something, just not something anyone seriously wondered about. We can be pretty sure that vehicles with touchscreens don't get into (for example) 10,000x as many accidents as vehicles with manual controls, as that should be visible in the statistics. What it doesn't tell us is whether or not touchscreens pose any significant additional danger.
jarek 13y ago
> It seems like people are doing a pretty good job adapting. Or something else is making it safer

chaz 13y ago

It depends on each manufacturer's implementation. The ever-growing complexity needs to be managed, both in learning curve as well as overall placement and design of features. For one, BMW does this right. The large screen is controlled by the iDrive knob in the middle, which rotates with haptic detents, is pushable, and has 4-directions on it. All of the major controls are still present with physical controls: radio volume, presets, dual temp control, fan speed, vents, cruise control, phone, etc. The only time you would regularly use the iDrive is for navigation, which is always going to be kludgy because of the complexity of putting in addresses. I welcome voice and touch here. http://www.moibibiki.com/images/bmw-4-series-interior-12.jpg http://www.moibibiki.com/images/bmw-4-series-interior-12.jpg

foobarqux 13y ago
iDrive is terrible and distracting. Never has changing a radio station been so dangerous.
- chaz 13y ago
  Yes, which is why they give you hard buttons for presets and up/down scan.
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    Only after 2012 as far as I can tell. I don't know if that finally makes the system sane but it certainly wasn't previously.
chiph 13y ago
Try the Lexus car-mouse. It's far better than the "knob" systems (Mercedes, BMW, Audi). You still get haptic feedback (magnets, how do they work?) and the motion of the controller corresponds directly with the screen display.
- MBCook 13y ago
  I remember seeing that at the local auto show last year. I couldn't help but think that if you see a mouse in the car they did something wrong.

deveac 13y ago

>Yay, more touch screen in cars. More ways to distract, frustrate and confuse users who are operating a big box of steel weighing 3 tons and going at speeds the human brain has never evolved to appropriately deal with. This reduces distraction. You have to remember to take into account human behavior. In the real world, people get into their vehicle and use their phone's map application, as well as text, phone, and music applications. Not only do they do this, they do it in overwhelming numbers. This product takes common behavior that people engage in (and will continue to), and makes it safer and less confusing to engage in while driving. Vehicles have knobs and touch-screens now. This tech doesn't change that dynamic, -it works with the UI elements already present in order to reduce fumbling around with your phone and tiny touch-targets on your mobile device. >2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point. That's besides the point. They aren't here yet, and they won't be in the immediate future. Making driving safer in the meantime isn't fluff. > there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men. What a terrible, low-value comment to make in this forum.

shas3 13y ago
A good compromise on distractions and 'more inputs' is voice-based UI. Honestly, car companies and OEMs must be focusing on better voice-based UIs for cars rather than distracting touch screens. The Sync system in Ford cars is a well-intentioned example that doesn't work that well.
- woobar 13y ago
  My pet peeve with Sync is they disable navigation input via touch screen when car is moving. Even when a passenger tries to enter it. Instead they force the driver to use their clunky voice-recognition to do this. Which is much more distracting. But this is a minor quip compared to how MS implemented Sync Services. It's 2014 and they use a voice(!) line from a pre-registered cell phone to connect to their services.
- kolinko 13y ago
  That's a very American way of thinking about things. I assume you're American (or British), because voice-based systems are nearly useless for non-native english speakers. I'm a fluent english speaker, but due to my non-american accent, and the fact that my language is not one of the top 10 used in the world I still cannot operate Siri (or other voice systems) properly, and the dictation feature is nearly useless to me.

jjtheblunt 13y ago

"white men"? Why malign the minority in tech, people of European ancestry.

smspence 13y ago

I don't really understand the "greedy old white men" part of your comment... What do you mean specifically? By the way, touch screens in avionics are gaining a lot of traction in the commercial aviation market. See one such example here: http://www.rockwellcollins.com/prolinefusion/ http://www.rockwellcollins.com/prolinefusion/

csel 13y ago

One word. Siri.

joshmlewis 13y ago

I may be a dying bread, but I love driving. I love driving fast cars. I love racing (legitimate racing on legal tracks) and I love the thrill of being one with a powerful machine. Someone said recently that sports cars may well be the last drivable cars to exist, and I'm ok with that. If I'm not in the mood to drive and I just want to get from point a to point b then fine, a self-driving car is awesome, but I get a lot of joy, excitement, and pleasure from driving my car around. I'm not in a big city where it's an issue and there are lots of open roads to go down. I take great pride in how I drive and the example I represent when driving. I take it seriously and I wish that more people would. So no I don't think that every new innovation is bad and useless. There will always be auto racing and fast cars. There's nothing else like it.

mukundmr 13y ago

Touch screen in cars is debatable, but for the record, Apple's solution allows the use of physical knobs and buttons in the car to hook into CarPlay.

pwthornton 13y ago

We already know how to make transportation exponentially safer; simply don't drive. It's the No. 1 thing you can do to lower your risk of near-term mortality. I'm not joking around here either. I firmly believe we need safer cars, and self-driving cars would be a great step towards that, but the real issue here is how car-dependent our society is. If more trips could be done on foot or via public transportation, the U.S. would be a much safer place. Our reliance on car driving makes other forms of transportation unsafe too. The risk of riding a bike is not that you'll fall or hit another bicyclist, but rather that a car will hit you (and probably not even be cited). The biggest risk to walking is that a car will hit you in a cross walk or on a sidewalk (will trying to avoid hitting another car), just because. And we're so cavalier about killing people with cars. We don't need have to wait (or hope) for technology to save us. We can build better places to live today. Places that are safer and healthier. And that largely starts by making towns and cities more walkable. When I walk and take the train to work, I can send texts, read news stories, listen to podcasts and check Twitter, all without endangering people's lives. And no futuristic technology is needed to accomplish this. If society we're a game, I'd be putting my resources to building walking neighborhoods and better public transportation. Even if you have self driving cars, cars are still bad for your health from the lack of exercise and the pollution.