11 mo. ago

Volkswagen Admits Failure, Will Bring Back Physical Buttons

afronomist.com /volkswagen-admits-touchscreen-experiment-failed-will-bring-back-physical-buttons/

There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.

21 comments

I have a 2021 Seat Leon, basically it is a Golf with a Spannish design, almost everything apart from actually driving the car uses touch controls, with one exception, media can be controlled by buttons and a roller on the steering wheel.

It is really annoying and countries need to regulate that the following can't be touch controls:

A/C Temp

A/C Fanspeed

Heated rear window

Heated wind screen

Heated seats

Exterior light controls

Media volume

Media play/pause

Media previous/next track

Engine mode (Electric/Hybrid/HybridCustom)
- This has been a gripe of mine for a looong time and not just in cars. For fuck sake, my fucking oven is touch screen and has wifi. why?
  
  Every time I wipe it off, it thinks I'm touching 37 buttons and it overwelms the CPU, and the system restarts
  
  Never again
  
  Same with fucking electric stove tops. Why am I to use touch controls on the same surface that heats my pots and pans? Idiocy.
- Yeah we have a 2018 Seat Leon and that was one of the reasons we chose the older car as opposed to getting the 2021 with the fancier screen.
  
  At first I didn't really like the interior of the 2018 Leon, but it's fine, I have really started liking the rear lights of the 2018 Leon, I like the lightbar on my Leon, but the earlier lights looks great!
- Aside from media related options, why wouldn't you want all of those to be automatically controlled?
  
  Have you ever driven a car before?
Volkswagen's return to physical buttons is long overdue. Imagine causing a car accident because you're distracted by a touchscreen, unsure if you pressed the right thing. Touchscreens became popular in cars because the market blindly follows the majority's whims. Present the touchscreen versus button issue to most people, and they'll choose touchscreens, misled by a lack of technical understanding. In their minds, old equals buttons, new equals touchscreen, and therefore, touchscreen must be better. They fail to see the bigger picture or care about this crucial design flaw, dismissing it as trivial.

This is just one of the many ways a market driven by majority preference results in mediocre solutions, never reaching the best possible option. And those who genuinely seek the optimal solution are left suffering the consequences, outnumbered by the masses who don't realize the impact of their uninformed choices.
Good! Touchscreens for basic functions are idiotic.

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