Well, it bothers me, too. I just upgraded the stereo in my Tacoma to a new Jensen unit, and the touchscreen can be pretty annoying, for most of the reasons Irk mentions but especially when there’s glare on it. To their credit, they did keep the volume control knob. And I get a rear view camera with it. And Bluetooth. But there are still times when I’m tempted to pull it out and put the old factory unit with all its buttons and knobs back in.
/giphy knobs and buttons
@stolicat Yup. And it is getting harder to get a new vehicle without a moonroof. Oh, joy! Now we can have the sun shining on the touchscreens all day long! Of course, all of the buttons have been moved to the steering wheel where we (theoretically) don’t need to look at them. Now we can accidentally change radio stations and double the volume while driving and have to look down at the steering wheel to figure out how to correct whatever we did.
What I really want is a Geezer Vehicle: All of the safety features without about 90% of the whizzbang electronics made to entertain Millennials.
@rockblossom I’ve had sunroofs/moonroofs in almost every car I’ve owned and each one has a shade that closes below it, therefore blocking any sun from coming in. Do you have one without a shade???
I wanna know what kind of car Irk drives. My money says it’s a crappy old1977 Trans Am. And Irk imagines playing tag team with Cletus on that legendary run from Texarkana to Atlanta.
What’s even worse is it appears as though Google and Apple must have all the UX designers because car stereo user interfaces generally are terrible. Not only are the screens laggy, but the systems never get updated and look like they were designed on MS Paint with the monitor turned off. Android Auto/Apple CarPlay are the best things to happen to car head units since they went to screen-based ones. Also, when is Bluetooth going to work properly? It’s possible that a car has two people with different phones that might be driving the same car periodically and might want to use their phone with the stereo.
Wow. Looks like this MIBMMTIS tapped into some pent up feelings there.
@canuk THANK YOU! Irk really should have included your points. Why the hell does a brand new 2018 car have a touch screen that’s slower than my 1st gen roku? Why does the bluetooth always seem finicky at best? Why do we have to check phone compatibility with bluetooth before purchasing said $25k car? <— really did do this and it really was necessary.
I just bypass the whole damn thing and use my reliable phone with my reliable bluetooth stereo headset. Also, it’s cheaper than “upgrading” your car audio.
I swapped my factory 1.5 DIN unit for a touchscreen model. The only plus side is that this gives a decent size screen for backup camera and watching DVDs or videos on the USB/SD. Yes, it sucks that there is no tactile feedback to let you know when you’re pressing the right spot on the screen. Fortunately for me, I also installed a thing-a-bobber that lets me keep my steering wheel controls which handle the important jobs like volume control and switching stations. In other words, I can keep my hands on the wheel and still do most things stereo-related.
This happens with a lot of technologies that used to be really expensive, but is now super-cheap.
It gets locked into people’s heads that a certain technology is “luxury” and for rich people, so when it becomes cheap, everybody is desperate for it.
Once that’s in our brains, you can make an entire car seem high-tech and luxury just by slapping a cheap touch screen onto it.
Meanwhile the stuff that is actually for the rich just uses whatever technology is best suited for the task.
See also : Electronics that glow blue. This originally denoted VFD technology, which was expensive. Then, by coincidence, for a long time blue LEDs were the most expensive-to-make color of LEDs. Now you can get all the blue LEDs you want for pennies, but it’s too late. Entire generations have it locked into their brains that if something is glowing blue that means it’s “fancy”.
@apLundell Personally I’m perfectly okay with lots of blue LEDs. Even if they do technically sometimes come across as a cheap gimmick these days to make something look fancier than it actually is, they look better than red or green ones when there’s no color coordination. These days I always hope the power LED in the USB chargers I buy end up being blue. I really like blue. Bluuuuuuue. -stares into bug zapper-
@apLundell@Limewater@PooltoyWolf Blue LEDs disrupt sleep, so they should not be used on stuff like humidifiers and clocks that might be on at night. Amber lights should be used for those, as well as for night lights. I’m perfectly fine with blue lights in vehicles since I don’t sleep well while driving anyway.
@apLundell@PooltoyWolf You may have to clarify how you are defining “sensitive.”
The typical eye has far more color receptors sensitive to green wavelengths than any other. However, the green receptors also have a lot of overlap with the red receptors, while the blue receptors overlap relatively little with either.
Do most people consider blue to be a high-contrast, high-visibility color? I have sub-normal color vision myself, and I know it is a higher-contrast color for me, but I don’t have a reference for people with standard vision.
@apLundell@Limewater Blue is very much a high-contrast color when used in LED lighting. It is very vibrant and stands out amongst LEDs of other colors. It is not well-suited to text designed to be read at a distance or at a small size, because it is hard to read due to the eye’s sensitivity to the color.
It bothers you just as much as it should, IRK. Vehicle controls should be tactile, and operable without looking at them. We own a car with a touch screen, but it almost never gets touched. The car has a primary control on the center console, with uniquely shaped and positioned buttons and a selector knob. It is well-designed, and can be operated without ever looking at it.
The car also has built-in GPS, which we never use. The interface sucks, and the maps are always out-of-date. Factory GPS is one of the dumbest features ever. That’s one that maybe bothers me more than it should.
This is one of my all-time favourite episodes of MIBMMTIS!
Well, it bothers me, too. I just upgraded the stereo in my Tacoma to a new Jensen unit, and the touchscreen can be pretty annoying, for most of the reasons Irk mentions but especially when there’s glare on it. To their credit, they did keep the volume control knob. And I get a rear view camera with it. And Bluetooth. But there are still times when I’m tempted to pull it out and put the old factory unit with all its buttons and knobs back in.
/giphy knobs and buttons
@stolicat Yup. And it is getting harder to get a new vehicle without a moonroof. Oh, joy! Now we can have the sun shining on the touchscreens all day long! Of course, all of the buttons have been moved to the steering wheel where we (theoretically) don’t need to look at them. Now we can accidentally change radio stations and double the volume while driving and have to look down at the steering wheel to figure out how to correct whatever we did.
What I really want is a Geezer Vehicle: All of the safety features without about 90% of the whizzbang electronics made to entertain Millennials.
@rockblossom I’ve had sunroofs/moonroofs in almost every car I’ve owned and each one has a shade that closes below it, therefore blocking any sun from coming in. Do you have one without a shade???
@cinoclav @rockblossom
/image Panoramic moonroof
@medz They still have sun shades.
@cinoclav No. I have a vehicle with a roof roof. I don’t really see the point of a moonroof.
I wanna know what kind of car Irk drives. My money says it’s a crappy old1977 Trans Am. And Irk imagines playing tag team with Cletus on that legendary run from Texarkana to Atlanta.
Couldn’t agree more. There should be physical buttons for the things you might want to do when your eyes should be on the road.
What’s even worse is it appears as though Google and Apple must have all the UX designers because car stereo user interfaces generally are terrible. Not only are the screens laggy, but the systems never get updated and look like they were designed on MS Paint with the monitor turned off. Android Auto/Apple CarPlay are the best things to happen to car head units since they went to screen-based ones. Also, when is Bluetooth going to work properly? It’s possible that a car has two people with different phones that might be driving the same car periodically and might want to use their phone with the stereo.
Wow. Looks like this MIBMMTIS tapped into some pent up feelings there.
@canuk THANK YOU! Irk really should have included your points. Why the hell does a brand new 2018 car have a touch screen that’s slower than my 1st gen roku? Why does the bluetooth always seem finicky at best? Why do we have to check phone compatibility with bluetooth before purchasing said $25k car? <— really did do this and it really was necessary.
I just bypass the whole damn thing and use my reliable phone with my reliable bluetooth stereo headset. Also, it’s cheaper than “upgrading” your car audio.
I like my touchscreen. Don’t care for cleaning it tho. But it’s still easier than cleaning around all the knobs.
I swapped my factory 1.5 DIN unit for a touchscreen model. The only plus side is that this gives a decent size screen for backup camera and watching DVDs or videos on the USB/SD. Yes, it sucks that there is no tactile feedback to let you know when you’re pressing the right spot on the screen. Fortunately for me, I also installed a thing-a-bobber that lets me keep my steering wheel controls which handle the important jobs like volume control and switching stations. In other words, I can keep my hands on the wheel and still do most things stereo-related.
@medz where did you find a 1.5 size touchscreen? i can only ever seem to find 2 din sizes.
I hate the touchscreens in a car. With buttons and knobs I don’t need to look at the thing to make changes.
You know what I love, probably more than I should? These Irk videos.
@goldnectar Don’t we all.
This happens with a lot of technologies that used to be really expensive, but is now super-cheap.
It gets locked into people’s heads that a certain technology is “luxury” and for rich people, so when it becomes cheap, everybody is desperate for it.
Once that’s in our brains, you can make an entire car seem high-tech and luxury just by slapping a cheap touch screen onto it.
Meanwhile the stuff that is actually for the rich just uses whatever technology is best suited for the task.
See also : Electronics that glow blue. This originally denoted VFD technology, which was expensive. Then, by coincidence, for a long time blue LEDs were the most expensive-to-make color of LEDs. Now you can get all the blue LEDs you want for pennies, but it’s too late. Entire generations have it locked into their brains that if something is glowing blue that means it’s “fancy”.
@apLundell Personally I’m perfectly okay with lots of blue LEDs. Even if they do technically sometimes come across as a cheap gimmick these days to make something look fancier than it actually is, they look better than red or green ones when there’s no color coordination. These days I always hope the power LED in the USB chargers I buy end up being blue. I really like blue. Bluuuuuuue. -stares into bug zapper-
@apLundell @PooltoyWolf Blue is also a higher-visibility color than red or green for the most common forms of color-blindness.
@apLundell @Limewater @PooltoyWolf Blue LEDs disrupt sleep, so they should not be used on stuff like humidifiers and clocks that might be on at night. Amber lights should be used for those, as well as for night lights. I’m perfectly fine with blue lights in vehicles since I don’t sleep well while driving anyway.
@apLundell @Limewater @rockblossom This makes sense, yes.
@apLundell @Limewater The eye is also more sensitive to blue light, so it stands out amongst other colored indicators.
@apLundell @PooltoyWolf You may have to clarify how you are defining “sensitive.”
The typical eye has far more color receptors sensitive to green wavelengths than any other. However, the green receptors also have a lot of overlap with the red receptors, while the blue receptors overlap relatively little with either.
Do most people consider blue to be a high-contrast, high-visibility color? I have sub-normal color vision myself, and I know it is a higher-contrast color for me, but I don’t have a reference for people with standard vision.
@apLundell @Limewater Blue is very much a high-contrast color when used in LED lighting. It is very vibrant and stands out amongst LEDs of other colors. It is not well-suited to text designed to be read at a distance or at a small size, because it is hard to read due to the eye’s sensitivity to the color.
EDIT: This webpage may lend a hand:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-568819.html
This was a particularly accurate installment of MIBMMTIS. I agree with every one of Irk’s points!
Agree 110%, and one more thing that bothers me, Irk, LED blinding headlights. Rant over.
It bothers you just as much as it should, IRK. Vehicle controls should be tactile, and operable without looking at them. We own a car with a touch screen, but it almost never gets touched. The car has a primary control on the center console, with uniquely shaped and positioned buttons and a selector knob. It is well-designed, and can be operated without ever looking at it.
The car also has built-in GPS, which we never use. The interface sucks, and the maps are always out-of-date. Factory GPS is one of the dumbest features ever. That’s one that maybe bothers me more than it should.
I want to know what kind of shitty touchscreen Irk’s car has that he can’t read it in sunlight. My car does not have that problem, thankfully.
Man, Irk would hate my Tesla Model 3. A touchscreen is ALL it has. Well, kinda. But mostly.