In-car touchscreens have become the norm for the way in which users interact with multitude of every day products – buttons are out, double-tapping, pinch-zooming and side scrolling are in. It’s not only the automotive industry that has been affected by this, dare I say it, questionable trend, but we shall focus on it, for obvious reasons.
AutoNews has posted a report that brings a bit more substance to the above claim, as it has plenty of arguments and examples to support it. They start with Ford, and their familiar MyTouch system, which looks great and sits nicely inside the cars that get it, but it doesn’t work as well as conventional knobs and buttons do – pretty much any review you’ll read that involves a new MyTouch-equipped Ford will give the car bad marks for its infotainment system.
Apparently, the committees that make these decisions for Ford thought it would be great to have all the car’s functions show up on the same touch-operated screen, thus limiting the amount of information displayed by the relatively small size of screens that they currently use. However, the move proved to be somewhat of a flop and they are now bringing back some of the really essential functions in the form of the physical buttons drivers want.
Quoting the report, “American Honda brags that its latest Acura MDX has just nine buttons on its “glass cockpit” center stack, down from 41 on the previous model,” while “The new Cadillac ATS and XTS sedans eschew traditional buttons entirely for a flat, glossy panel dotted with cutting-edge sliders and touch-sensitive areas that respond by vibrating gently.”
It isn’t really important, though, and whichever manufacturer you think of now offers some kind of touch-operated function, even budget-brand Dacia which actually gets one of the most responsive systems on the market, though its functions are rather limited.
Finally, we cannot conclude this article without talking about the seventeen-inch capacitive unit which is the Tesla Model S’ central stack. Those who have used it say it works like a treat (though, the Google Maps function seems to lag in some of the demonstrations) but in this case, the problem is different and has to do with your eyes getting tired on a long journey, done at night.
In the end, my personal view is one based on the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality, and one cannot seriously argue against the genuine usefulness and ease of use offered by classic buttons – I hope they stay for the basic function, while also hoping that automotive touchscreens get better. Granted, they have come a long way from the impossible to use unit fitted to the Fisker Karma, but they’re a long way off from being on par with the classic way of doing things.
By Andrei Nedelea
PHOTO GALLERY
