They do have a good point. Not sure what's to be done about it though. People love the touchscreen.
But, for me, all I need is 3 pedals, a steering wheel, and a stick shift.... Is there any more to life?
GJ said 1 day later
Turn signals? Lights? HVAC? Those are all things I like to modify while driving without looking at them.
Before long, though, you'll just be able to tell your car to do it. However, which is faster--saying it and waiting to see if the car responds correctly, or just doing it with a manual knob via muscle memory?
This is definitely a case of manufacturers too busy going "ooooh, shiny!" than thinking "how does this serve the DRIVING experience?"
GJ said 1 day later
Which by no means only affects automotive manufactures. They're just the latest to go down this well-worn path.
Marc said 1 day later
Being young and a nerd, I think this stuff could be better, in time. I could imagine saying something like "set the temperature to 72 degrees" and either the car would response instantly with voice confirmation, or a small notification would fly up at the bottom of my windshield saying the new temperature is set to 72 degrees. This would let me keep my eyes on the road with only the most minor notification in my peripheral vision. I would agree that right now having to confirm it on a distracting touch screen in the car is arguably worse than a manual knob, but only because it's new to us.
Consider this: When you rent a car you've never driven before, how distracted are you trying to figure out where the stupid controls are? Most cars aren't standardized across brands, so it feels very foreign with manual knobs too. I suspect as you get used to the touch screen or whatever interface it is, it will soon be very natural. As odd as it sounds, I've (slowly) developed some muscle memory to type on my iPhone. Not sure if that's cool or pathetic. :)
Geoff said 1 day later
I would agree with what Marc said. You would essentially figure out the touch screen without needing knobs. Kids these days are growing up on touch screens so future generations will come to expect it. Voice commands are even better though they still suck by today's standards; yes, even you Siri. I could only imagine what responses a car might give to someone asking it to do something with today's technology.
I wasn't impressed with Ford's Sync technology, and though I don't own the new iPhone and people swear by Siri, every demonstration I've been shown has been problematic. Pretty sure with my track record, I could get Siri to digitally commit suicide.
GJ said 2 days later
It's not about figuring things out. It's about finding them and using them *without* having to look at them. Remember, most of the time you're in the car (well, where I live anyway), the car is in motion and you really shouldn't be gazing at a touch screen. As the article mentioned, there is no tactile feedback form a touch screen, so you HAVE to look at them to use them.
In terms of voice commands, Geoff, WTF does Siri have to do with anything? Siri is an interpretative AI, which tries to interpolate meaning behind what you say. Voice commands, on the other hand, are simple statements like "Temperature Up." You need next to no programming to interpret that and take action, compared to asking Siri "what does my morning schedule look like?"
Marc said 2 days later
I think it comes down to the fact that the technology isn't there yet to be able to give you the control you need without distracting you. Manual knobs give you enough tactile benefit to guess a better than a touch screen, but in the end, the technology will get there and will almost certainly be better AND safer. We're just going to go through a pretty awful transition period, I suspect. :)
The big question is whether we can come up with something that lets you keep your eyes on the road and give you more benefit. Certainly the main point of putting these touch screens in the cars is simply to make them cooler, but they need to be adding a lot of benefit.
Siri isn't quite the same, but there's a good point to bringing it up. Siri is, by far, the best dictation implementation on the market. Ask Drew, he uses and spends a lot of money on dictation software (like Dragon Dictation, etc.) and he's quite impressed with how well Siri is at understanding THE WORDS you are saying and even what they mean most of the time. Siri doesn't always know what to give you as a response though. Just a year ago, voice recognition still struggled to simply understand what words you were saying.
The main takeaway is that voice recognition software is finally ready for primetime, we just need to incorporate it where it belongs and cars are a great place for it. Now just get me a translucent monitoring system in my windshield and we've got a whole new way to make driving more dangerous. :)
Geoff said 2 days later
Siri may be interpretive, but it still takes commands. Call Marc...is a command. And as I said before, I haven't really used it much, but demos of it have been...well hit or miss. Probably not something I want in a car to perform some necessary actions like, Play Tom Sawyer by Rush.
GJ said 2 days later
I hate to rain on the Siri parade (no, wait, I LOVE to do that), but my first generation droid does a pretty good job of recognizing what I say to it. There's a handful of words it gets wrong time and again, but by and by it picks up about 99.5% of my words.
Steve said 4 days later
There's what makes sense, and then there's what makes money. Pretty shiny things might not make sense, but if they make money, industry will provide it for customers. Can you blame them? A manual transmission is a perfect example. Want the best control you can have? You need a manual. Automatics don't do things that you can always predict, or do what you want them to do at all times, as you're not in control of it.
Things are changing fast, just wait for it.
GJ said 4 days later
Yeah, I know--customers are all about the "ooh! shiny!" thing. Just look at the Ford Explorer commercial playing now: "My car talks to me!!!"
