[HN Gopher] Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
Bring Back Our Knobs: Analog vs. Digital (2009)
Author : Kaibeezy
Score : 100 points
Date : 2021-11-19 12:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popularmechanics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popularmechanics.com)
| abakker wrote:
| I have to say, I'm optimistic about the controls in the Ineos
| Grenadier. I'm not sure I can afford one, but man, the dash
| design is good.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| It's a cycle. Car designers went a bit crazy with buttons about
| 10 years ago. This was when bluetooth/carkits was becoming the
| norm and touchscreens were nowhere near good (cheap) enough. Or
| expected. So slightly older dashboards will feature upwards of 40
| buttons while super modern ones will have none. In a few years
| they will go back to normal. As for smartphones, they are
| unfixable. Maybe tactile touchscreens will help in the iPhone 16
| (or possibly even the iPhone 15S?)
| [deleted]
| tuatoru wrote:
| > So what do product designers have against knobs? Several
| things. ...
|
| Then the piece omits the two overwhelmingly important reasons:
| cost and reliability.
|
| Knobs definitely are much better to use, but things with moving
| parts that stick out from the surface are not as reliable in
| population terms. Most people never have trouble, but that
| quintile that gives their stuff a hard time costs manufacturers a
| lot.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| 100+ years of knobs and the argument is "we still can't get it
| right"? I don't believe that.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| There is a shitton of very crappy rotary encoders out there
| that attest to that.
|
| For example, most microwaves I've seen that use knobs tend to
| wear them down pretty fast. Mine has a pretty much analog timer
| and just cannot be set for anything less than 1 min since it
| will randomly stop somewhere in the 0-60s interval due to wear.
|
| A relative's oven has a digital relative rotary encoder, but
| again due to wear it tends to skip some positions from time to
| time. Meaning you'll rotate 180 degs and some days that will
| mean 30min, some days it will mean 10min, and then some other
| days it means 2 seconds. It also uses the same knob to set the
| RTC, and with the knob in such state it is so much of a chore
| they have basically succumbed to the 12:00 phenomena.
|
| I am a big fan of "knobs" (specially compared to capacitive
| buttons) but these days they are no longer reliable at all.
| duped wrote:
| Automotive and aviation grade pots/encoders/switches are a
| different class of product and a good deal more expensive
| than the garbage they'll put on consumer electronics.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > but things with moving parts that stick out from the surface
| are not as reliable in population terms.
|
| I would be really delighted to know if auto manufacturers in
| particular really have data on this, and what they count as a
| failure.
|
| I've seen a _lot_ more electronics failures than I have
| mechanical failures in cars and appliances, and the trend seems
| to stick with displays and knobs. For example, the first thing
| to break on my car was a display, which I still haven 't fixed
| because it would be hundreds of dollars. I have an old truck
| with some broken knobs, but the posts they sat on still work,
| so they're still usable. If I did need to fix them I suspect
| it'd be a lot cheaper.
|
| Color me skeptical that increasingly fancy touchscreen displays
| are going to have any staying power. This has always kind of
| smelled like it was simply based on a logical axiom that "less
| moving parts is better and more reliable" rather than practical
| reality in the late 2010s-2020s.
| bluedino wrote:
| I'll take knobs over membrane buttons. Can't believe the entire
| appliance industry switched.
| at_compile_time wrote:
| Appliances used to be way more reliable too. I grew up in the
| 90s with appliances from the 70s and 80s that still worked
| when they were replaced a few years ago. The new oven has
| already shit the bed and needs a new board.
|
| Everything is more complicated than it used to be, more
| likely to break as a result, and requires specialized parts
| to fix. And if the manufacturer doesn't sell that part
| anymore, your stuck buying a new appliance. What a racket.
| monocasa wrote:
| Same. I bought a house recently, and the appliances are all
| from the early 90s except a couple from the late 50s. My
| parents asked when I'm going to replace them, and I
| reminded tgem that they've had to replace their oven twice
| in the past ten years because none of the new stuff works
| for any time period. Meanwhile my appliances are at their
| youngest old enough to be talking to their little appliance
| friends about their appliance 401k.
| Wistar wrote:
| High-end ovens, such as those above, say, $5k, almost always
| have knobs.
|
| I sure appreciate tuning knobs on car audio systems but
| almost no one besides Toyota and Lexus offer them any more.
| destitude wrote:
| Even though I have a "last gen" Subaru Outback I would
| never replace it with a new one because they put in a huge
| center console screen and removed the knobs for climate
| control. What is odd is the Subaru Ascent actually has
| knobs for all of this.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Old toaster oven took one action to change the temp - turn
| the knob. New toaster oven takes multiple actions to change
| the baking temperature. It's ridiculous.
| finnh wrote:
| Huh. When remodeling my kitchen in 2016 the highest priced
| ovens all had crappy touchscreens. I had to "downgrade"
| from Miele to Bosch to get knobs.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yep. All the expensive electric cooktops have touch
| controls and were obviously designed by people who have
| never cooked anything in their lives, not even once. I
| got so fed up with mine that I had my gas cooktop re-
| installed, even though it was totally contrary to my
| personal GHG emissions goals.
| bluGill wrote:
| I've been holding off replacing an old stove I hate for
| that reason. If someone wants my thousand dollars they
| will make a stove that is easy to control.
| markdown wrote:
| I have a 2019 Toyota Hilux (called Tacoma's in the US) and
| it doesn't have any knobs or buttons at all.
|
| However, the 2021 brought them back.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Qtfartc
| genewitch wrote:
| As ghastly as that is, your uri is qt fartc.
| bitbckt wrote:
| A Hilux and Tacoma are two different vehicles: different
| engine options, different chassis, and almost zero
| interchangeable parts.
|
| Try taking a Tacoma to a parts counter outside the US, or
| Hilux to one in the US, and you'll just get blank stares.
| markdown wrote:
| Thanks for that. I've always just assumed it was just a
| rebrand plus cosmetic (body+interior) changes.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| That seems like a claim without data support. Cost, sure.
| Reliability, I doubt there is a difference in reliability
| within product lifecycle. My anecdotal experience: every car I
| owned had a knob for music volume. It never broke. Other things
| broke, sometimes making car repair economically unviable. But
| the knob did not break.
| mojuba wrote:
| > Then the piece omits the two overwhelmingly important
| reasons: cost and reliability.
|
| Plus that not all industrial designers can create great
| designs. Often times when I look at e.g. my Bosch electric
| cooktop I can only imagine its awful touch panel was an
| afterthought in the design process. It's so bad, awkward and
| hard to use, it makes me feel sorry for those who created this
| thing. And for all its users just as well.
|
| Cost savings? I mean, you don't replace the car's steering
| wheel with a pair of buttons - like on the hilarious picture in
| the article - just to save on production costs.
| tuatoru wrote:
| No, you don't replace the steering wheel because that's
| safety critical and the superiority of the UI is
| overwhelmingly important. You don't get to sell the product
| at all with a defect like that, so the "cost to the
| manufacturer" is pretty big.
|
| The entertainment system, or a phone? Not safety critical, no
| need to provide real-time interaction. Cost dominates.
| MereInterest wrote:
| My car has a physical knob for the volume, which can also
| be pushed in to disable the entertainment system entirely.
| If I need to turn off the radio in order to give full
| concentration to driving, I don't need to navigate through
| menus in order to turn it off. I'd consider that safety
| critical.
| mojuba wrote:
| Both your car stereo and your phone contribute to
| (un)safety during driving.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I guess I don't have big-picture number. I have literally not
| had anybody replace a knob, ever. My car is 18yo and knobs are
| working fine.
|
| Whereas, number of people in my immediate friends & family who
| had to replace $2500 touchscreens... I mean, I'm astonished
| that given temperature variations and sun and elements,
| touchscreens survive AT ALL.
| rpmisms wrote:
| If it's an analog system, I want analog input. If it's a digital
| system, I want good digital input or excellent tactile input.
|
| Stereo: well-weighted analog knobs that are responsive.
|
| Computer: mechanical keyboard.
|
| Car: Manual Transmission.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| what do you drive?
| rpmisms wrote:
| Sold my manual for a Tesla. I drive my wife's manual Mazda
| when I want to enjoy the driving experience.
|
| Tesla does have good digital inputs, but very little about
| the car is analog, so I think I'm being consistent.
| rp1 wrote:
| I too want knobs, but this line exemplifies why they're not
| coming back:
|
| > I wonder if Apple iPhone will meet with the same success, as
| its touchscreen offers no tactile feedback. Will people get tired
| of having to look down every time they dial a number?
| romwell wrote:
| Bad example.
|
| Look at musical instruments, particularly synthesizers.
|
| This world went from menu-diving and screens to a full-blown
| knobfest (for digitally-controlled equipment, mind you).
|
| Specifically, no gear has ever _not_ had the _volume_ knob
| /slider; but now, there's a knob for _everything else_.
|
| Also go figure, my $200 Sonicware digital synth made in 2021
| can have 15 _reliable_ , precise knobs that will last decades,
| as well as analog _and_ digital I /O on the front panel, but my
| $20,000 car can't have either because of cost
| savings/reliability? _Please_.
|
| And my Fostex 4-track recorder from 1995 has 24 knobs and 5
| sliders, perfectly functioning, and if you think that musicians
| are _gentle_ on their gear, you haven 't seen many musicians.
|
| Knobs and sliders on my Korg, Casio, and Yamaha digital synths
| from the mid-1980s work well too, never a problem with them.
|
| Let's not pretend that lack of knobs is anything but a
| UX/aesthetics choice -- and for _cars_ , a particularly awful
| one.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Presumably your car will be in places with more demanding
| climate conditions than your knob-filled synth. And areas of
| high humidity or with lots of dust/gunk are the places that
| break down knobs the most.
|
| But I agree that I think it's probably largely a
| UX/aesthetics choice. Low cost touch screens are usually
| pretty terrible at handling varying climate conditions,
| especially compared to some decent knobs/encoders. I'm hoping
| once the manufacturers are done broadcasting how "modern"
| their interfaces are, that they'll start adding knobs back in
| for the common operations (volume, climate control, etc)
|
| I also wonder if the fear stemmed from back when knobs and
| buttons required extra wiring instead of using buses like
| most cars do now.
| bjt wrote:
| Knobs have already come back in some contexts.
|
| I'm thinking of music keyboard workstations and stage
| keyboards. The products from Nord have swept the stage keyboard
| market because of their one-knob-per-function design, allowing
| for quick mid-song adjustments with no menu diving.
| troutmskreplica wrote:
| I was going to make the same point, more generally about
| electronic music gear.
|
| People greatly favor knob-per-function and minimal menu
| diving. Having some kind of screen and minimal menus for
| rarely used features is fine, too, but anything that's about
| playability and something you want to tweak in real time
| needs a knob or slider interface.
| stinos wrote:
| Were knobs ever gone in this context though?
| masklinn wrote:
| > Were knobs ever gone in this context though?
|
| Yeah, not all of them but compare a DX7 to a Montage 7.
|
| The DX has 2 sliders and 2 wheels, and a bunch of membrane
| buttons.
|
| The Montage has 2 wheels and something like 10 sliders and
| knobs, ignoring the general-purpose knob and selector wheel
| next to the display, plus a ton of specialised physical
| buttons.
| framecowbird wrote:
| I hate the keyboard on my phone. For dialing a number, it's
| awful. Give me an old phone any day!
|
| But the smartphone does so many other things, I put up with it.
|
| That doesn't mean to say i wouldn't greatly welcome a
| smartphone with a dial on the edge, or a touchscreen with
| tactile feedback. But due to lack of imagination of designers,
| technical impossibility, or economic cost (i don't know
| which...) there's no such thing on the market.
| yeetaccount2 wrote:
| I can accept the touchscreen for its broad utility, but poor
| UI is intolerable. Like how Android keeps covering up the
| dial pad button in the phone app with inane messages about
| duplicate contacts. When I want to dial a phone number,
| sometimes I need to do it "right now", and I don't care about
| duplicate contacts or whatever stupid thing it wants to nag
| me about. Put that shit in my notifications so I can deal
| with it in my own time, or just swipe it away.
|
| Don't get me started on text selection on iThings.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Yes, yes, and yes. The android phone app is a case study in
| ergonomics failure. It boggles the mind and clearly shows
| how smartphones are not phones anymore but pocket browsers.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| Datedness of that speculation aside, was dialing numbers
| without looking at the keypad something people did a lot? Busy
| Wall Street types maybe?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Texting while driving was safe! Kind of. You could sense what
| key you were touching and how many times you touched it. "ha"
| would be "442" - two presses to get to H, one press for A.
| "lol" was 555666555. Still safer than Swype and looking down
| to see the several autocorrect options it gives you, or
| wondering if your grip was proper for your usual thumb
| motion. Even if you don't like the reference to driving, this
| was still convenient. Go watch "The Departed" from 2006 and
| see how Leo's character types in his pocket.
|
| It's the same justification for keeping radio and climate
| controls, as well as needed safety buttons like hazard
| lights, as physically actuated. It is much easier and safer
| than having to look at an ever-changing panel.
|
| Imagine if your climate control knobs moved around your
| center console by several inches every time you used them.
| Was that fan control, or temperature?
| krinchan wrote:
| I could T9 an SMS message while holding eye contact with a
| person. Right down to knowing certain words were "press
| buttons, down twice".
|
| I can _almost_ blind type on a touch screen with both thumbs,
| too. However, it's no where near as good as I was with hard
| buttons and Motorola's particular dialect of T9. Towards the
| end, Motorola tried to get clever and start reordering the
| words based on MRU and it played havoc with my muscle memory.
| sidlls wrote:
| Yes, touch typing is a thing, for many people who aren't
| "[b]usy Wall Street types".
|
| I can still dial on an analog button phone faster than I can
| look up and dial a person on my iPhone, and I haven't done
| the former in 20-some years. Muscle memory is quite powerful.
| EL_Loco wrote:
| 99.5% of the time I only call my wife, my parents, my
| sisters, and my four best friends. That's 9 people. With my
| so much missed flip-phone I could do this, check it out:
|
| Walk around the city with phone in pocket. Need to call one
| of them: pick phone from pocket (without looking), thumb-
| flick the screen open (without looking), thumb-press the
| person's speed dial number (without looking), done.
|
| or
|
| Walk around the city with phone in pocket. Phone vibrates.
| pick phone from pocket (without looking), glance at front
| screen for 1/3 sec to see who it was. If wanted to take the
| call, thumb-flick the screen open (without looking) while
| raising phone to ear (without looking), done. If not, toss
| phone back in pocket.
|
| There was also the cost-of-phone factor. The thing was so
| cheap, I treated it like there was an old crumpled piece of
| paper in my pocket, never worried if it would get scratched
| or if the screen would crack. The constant worry when my
| smarphone falls on the floor sucks. I never had a better
| phone experience than with my flip-phone. Sadly, recently
| Whatsapp became so ubiquitous here, that people stopped
| calling and only texted, and eventually I had to upgrade.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| it was something literally every teenager and adult did.
| anybody who'd been using a phone for more than a year.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Typing SMSes in school and college was easy with a classic
| keypad, and the error rates were very low... now even with
| watching the screen I make more mistakes than then.
| bnjms wrote:
| More than numbers. We would write text messages without
| looking at the keypad. This required a lot more key presses
| than a number.
|
| I could text while shifting but it wasn't till touchscreens
| that everyone decided laws needed to be passed.
|
| I miss k9. There were somehow fewer typos.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > I miss k9
|
| T9? Or was there a K9 as well?
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| On my BlackBerry, I could set the keys to dial individual
| phone numbers with a single long press. The FJ bumps made it
| easy to do without looking. I sure miss that.
| gostsamo wrote:
| I'm blind and I could call people whose numbers I know even
| on a dumb phone with no accessibility. At the moment, some
| strange failure of the phone screen reader, accidental switch
| off of volume or whatever and it is game over. Try to restart
| by the hardware keys and pray that you are not left with a
| thousand dollar brick in the middle of a trans-continental
| trip. Real story with my first touch phone with the only
| difference that at the time I didn't know the hardware keys
| to restart the brick.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Yeah. You could basically rest your fingers on a keypad like
| home keys and dial blind.
|
| Actually very useful when looking at a phone number, and a
| great deal faster
| redactyl wrote:
| I could text and drive without ever taking my eyes off the
| road. Probably still not the safest, but I constantly see
| people staring down into their lap while driving now.
| [deleted]
| guessbest wrote:
| I could do it while driving. It was much easier to do than
| you would imagine. The keypad only had 9 keys and if you
| would put the base of your thumb lightly on the 2 key you
| could reach the whole keypad without issue. Just about
| everyone learned to do this without trying. People who had
| predictive text like T9 had to work at it a little, but it
| was like riding a bicycle.
| guessbest wrote:
| Sorry I meant the tip of the thumb on the 2 key. Telephone
| keypads are inverted. Also the sometimes keys would have a
| raised bump in the middle key like the 5 key so you type
| blind.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| I don't see why not. Typing on Android has been an unceasing
| exercise in frustration ever since the real Swype and HTC
| keyboards went defunct. I made 5 typing errors while writing
| this message alone.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Really? I can type exceptionally quickly and actually using
| the android swipe typing. At least as good as the original
| Swype. Sure it's not as fast as a physical keyboard, but I'm
| not writing a novel on this device. (3 typos made writing
| this)
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Is that "actually" supposed to be "accurately"? Kind of
| undermines your point, doesn't it?
| Sunspark wrote:
| SwiftKey is good. It also has the nice feature in that it
| lets you raise the keyboard higher which is great for large
| devices so that you are not typing at the very bottom in an
| unbalanced manner.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I'll offer a contrary perspective that I haven't yet read here:
| Digital controls have the potential to be more accessible to
| people who can't turn a knob due to a mobility impairment.
|
| Edit: See also ndarilek's explanation of how his mobility-
| impaired girlfriend benefits from Alexa:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344613
| atoav wrote:
| Why not both?
| toss1 wrote:
| My 2019 Ford Ranger has all three, opting for at least
| throwback one -
|
| On the dash, a volume knob w/on-off button in the center and
| tuning knob
|
| On the steering wheel, digital control buttons (L/R=tuning
| Up/Dn=volume)
|
| On the Screen, touch controls
|
| But that is all - the climate controls are all the damn flat,
| blend-it-all-in mini buttons or the touchscreen, so if the
| windscreen suddenly fogs up it's a few hazardous seconds
| while you have to keep looking back&forth at the controls and
| through fogged windscreen to find the [defrost] button.
|
| And yes, I use the knobs probably over half the time. The
| steering wheel controls are also nice because they can also
| be used by touch without looking. Probably used the
| touchscreen controls a couple times while stopped, mostly as
| a novelty.
|
| Gawd I wish designers would prioritize actual use over how
| good they think it'll look in some glossy brochure. and,
| frankly, at this point, I'd rather toss them all and have an
| ugly knob in a good spot I can use by feel (HINT: I'm NOT
| looking at it!!), than any flattened wall of pretty backlit
| buttons. I'm not lounging in a living room, idly caressing
| your damn panel, I'm driving a two-ton machine at speed.
| dghughes wrote:
| The problem with that is digital controls are often made much
| smaller than its physical equivalent.
|
| Things like pill bottles have large diameter caps for people
| with dexterity problems. That same person may not be able to
| press a small flat "button" due to hand-eye co-ordination
| problems. Or they may not even be able to feel the surface with
| their fingertips.
|
| For myself I hate having to go tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap
| tap tap on a digital button when a quick twist of a knob does
| the same. At least have a slider digital control rather than
| discrete taps. Imagine instead of a doorknob to open a door you
| had to tap an electronic button 12 times.
| pomian wrote:
| and none of those tap tap tap buttons, work with gloves.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Things like pill bottles have large diameter caps for people
| with dexterity problems_
|
| On a related note, if you have problems opening prescription
| bottles, let your pharmacist know. If the cap is put on
| upside down, it's much easier to open. It's no longer child-
| resistant, but there's a wide gripping area, and the cap top
| is threaded to screw into the inside of the bottle.
|
| A lot of people don't know this.
|
| Also, if you take a liquid medicine, every pharmacy I've
| visited can add flavoring to it for free, right there in the
| store. Things like grape or lime or bubblegum. It's supposed
| to help children take their medicine, but there's no reason
| life has to be artificially hard for adults.
| markdown wrote:
| You don't make a UI worse (more dangerous) for 99.99999% of
| drivers in order to accommodate the .00001%. The radio isn't a
| necessity.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think Honda got this exactly right, at least in my 2018 car.
| There is a touchscreen that controls everything, but also
| physical knobs and buttons for the important stuff you'd want to
| control while keep your eyes on the road (radio volume, A/C,
| radio frequency, seat heaters, transmission gear, etc). If you
| want more detail and more options, you can go to the touchscreen,
| but if you just need the basics, you can do it without looking
| down.
| achenatx wrote:
| my 2015 honda odyssey is terrible.
|
| They have these huge knobs that dont control anything important
| on the radio. The giant knob only lets you scroll through
| presets.
|
| XM tuning is buried multiple screen taps in, then if you want
| to manually tune you have to tap up and down, through 100
| channels.
| masklinn wrote:
| Recently rented a small-ish Ford (a Puma) which had physical
| control for almost everything you'd want to adjust while
| driving, though the touchscreen was pretty crap (and didn't
| duplicate most of the physical controls, which I didn't mind).
|
| Also it had one of those infuriating pseudo-analog control
| wheels, where you can keep spinning and spinning the wheel with
| no effect once it reaches either end of its selection course
| (the ones where the selection wraps around is also bad,
| incidentally, probably worse really), thankfully it was for
| something of low importance (controlling the regime of the
| headlamps between off, DRL, standard, and automatic, which has
| an indicator on the dash).
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Alphonse Chapanis rolls fitfully in his grave whenever a new
| touchscreen is installed on a car.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Chapanis
| juancb wrote:
| That's a trend in general aviation and it's maddening. It's all
| of the problems this thread has raised about touch screens in
| cars but with added turbulence as an extra hurdle and spatial
| disorientation a safety risk. You can't just pull over and deal
| with the finicky touch screen.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I'm no old fuddy duddy. I'm not even 30 yet. We have a
| touchscreen hob - for no good reason. Its terrible
| reaperducer wrote:
| My new apartment oven has a touch screen. My wife was cleaning
| it one day and managed to put the oven into Sabbath Mode. Which
| I didn't even know was a thing. And it turns out does the
| opposite of what I thought it would do.
| jedberg wrote:
| > And it turns out does the opposite of what I thought it
| would do.
|
| As a Jew, this amuses me greatly. :) That day you learned
| about one of our greatest loopholes. BTW fun fact, it doesn't
| count as work if you get a non-Jew to do it for you (or in
| this case, a computer).
| jedimastert wrote:
| Not a car, but my main gigging keyboard for as long as I've been
| gigging has been the Korg SV-1, and a big part of the reason is
| that there's no screens, only knobs. It's a pretty great
| interface, all in all. 90% of the time I use the presets I made
| for myself the first week I got it, but whenever I need something
| else I have no trouble doing it within seconds.
|
| It's fairly limited, in terms of features and sound bank, but
| it's amazing at what it does.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| I got the SV-1 specifically because of the limited interface.
|
| Not a big fan of the organs, but the other stuff all has worked
| great for me. It's paid for itself several times over. My usual
| live keyboard setup is the SV-1 under an ASM hydrasynth.
| ratww wrote:
| I'm very happy that even the new generation of affordable
| synths is mostly analog with single function knobs. Arturia
| MicroFreak/MiniFreak, Korg Monologue/Minilogue, lots of
| Behringer clones.
|
| You can get productive with them in minutes rather than in
| days.
|
| Previous generations required either lots of menu diving
| (everything in the 90s) or had the pesky multifunction knobs
| (Microkorg).
| Causality1 wrote:
| Digital vehicle temperature control is just infuriating. There
| are only two settings: blast the driver with freezing air until
| the rest of the car cools down, or roast the driver alive until
| the rest of the car warms up.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Seriously. Without a dedicated on/off/volume knob for the
| soundsystem, the driving experience is diminished drastically, no
| matter how nice the car.
|
| And of course touch is way better than eyesight when you are
| supposed to be paying attention to the road. As someone else
| said, rough motor skills are safer and more appropriate in a car
| then controls needing fine motor skills.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _touch is way better than eyesight when you are supposed to be
| paying attention to the road._
|
| Especially if you're one of the millions and millions of people
| who use different glasses for driving than you do for walking
| around.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I know this makes me a clueless annoying boring techie nerd :),
| but I still cannot properly fathom how this is a minority
| opinion.
|
| NOBODY in my non-techie group of friends or family cares.
| Not.even.remotely.
|
| I watch them struggle with their touch screens, I even listen
| to them rant, but when asked about it afterwards, it's fine.
| Just fine. Sexy. Sleek. Desirable. Why do I have to go and ruin
| everything?
|
| Honestly, even HVAC - I watch my family with "Auto HVAC"
| constantly fiddle with it, as they scroll to some meaningless
| numbers - 18C, 21C, 24C, back to 20C, etc all in the same
| drive. Whereas my ancient Subaru knob stays in the same
| position through the drive, without needing to ever look at it.
| If it's on the right, hot air will blow; if it's on the left,
| cold air will blow. Whereas with Auto, you literally never know
| what you're going to get. It's not on conscious level -
| everybody thinks their Auto A/C it's _awesome_. Until you watch
| their actual sub-conscious behaviour on a drive.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I agree with this, I've seen it repeatedly. There has got to
| be a term for people who aren't aware of how they are
| suffering yet still say everything is fine. The only term I
| can come up with is "complicit in their own oppression." :)
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