Neat device. Unfortunately with modern interior design cues and trends, there are fewer and fewer vehicles that offer the traditional double din.

 

First look: Audi's Android-powered Smart Display
Android Central
By Richard Devine | Jan 10 2014 | 7:08 pm

 

my prediction is that the pendulum will swing back to touchscreen displays in about 5 years.

 

I don't think so, because it's an inherently unsafe technology.

As much as people like to pile hate on Audi's & BMW's *****, once you are familiar with them, the system is completely intuitive to use, and muscle memory always knows exactly where to push without having to LOOK or THINK about it.

Touchscreens just never approach this ease of use because you're always having to LOOK and THINK what button you are pressing, because you need to know what screen you're on before you can select an option.

Also, touch screens are TERRIBLE for scrolling lists - every try to access the address book in a Lexus nav?

 

The greater distance from driver's eyes to the display screen with the remote setup is very helpful for those of us that wear reading glasses. I don't wear them to drive and some written words are tough to read quickly on a touch screen. It also helps when the screen is pushed farther back under the dash to minimize sun glare.

 

It seems to me that there has to be a happy medium.

I do think that the sophistication in cars makes straight touch screens difficult to manage. That's a big part (but not all) of the mass hate of MyFordTouch -- too much stuff jammed onto the touch screen.

BUT--when the screen is put to audio or climate in my Lexus, and the large "buttons" on the screen function like station presets, or A/C control buttons, I think the touchscreen works better than an iDrive controller.

 

Well remote touch is gone anyway starting with the RC F….

The dual touch screens on the Q50 and new Acura RLX and MDX have gotten bashed by reviewers and owners have tons of complaints. They are slow with redundant controls and just a mess. It is obvious why the luxury leaders went away from touch screens.

Who are you going to follow, Benz, BMW, Audi, Lexus or Infinit, Acura?

 

a poor, messy UI is a poor messy UI. don't blame touch screen technology for that. touch screens are great IMO but they are not a panacea when the underlying UI is garbage.

 

Touch screens allow intuitive GUI's to work quickly - when the car is at rest (when you should be using them). If you've tried to poke at a touch screen on a rough road - or worse, on a gently rolling highway, you've discovered a serious problem . . . accuracy. Waving your index finger around at arm's length, you're lucky to hit the screen at all. It's not the system, but you.

Back when touch screens were only about 5-6 inches, you could hang a finger on a convenient ledge for stability and poke away with another. But larger screens have made that technique difficult. Even with my near octave-and-a-half keyboard hands, it's a stretch. I can imagine people with smaller hands have even more difficulty on roads that are anything but billiard-table smooth. As most of the civilized world is familiar with the operation of a mouse, I would think that the interface would be second-nature. However with the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, maybe we're losing that eye-hand connection.

 

It's a bigger issue than that. These combo systems, with both a **** AND a touch screen, are a mess because you're designing a UI than will work with both types of inputs, so it's not optimized for either.

We have such a system in our JX. It's terrible. I have 8 or 10 buttons for different top level screens, and I never know which one to hit because I only drive it a few times a week. Some screens I'll need to use the **** for scrolling, some I must reach to touch the screen. All the buttons also clutter up the dash. Thankfully in a CUV you have quite a bit of dash room, but I can imagine in a car this sort of system would take up the entirety of the dash.

Systems with hard buttons can be operated more quickly, even if the screen itself has delays. You don't have to wait for the screen to update before pressing a button. A well designed system will recognize the input even before the OS has loaded, or finished displaying the screen change animation. Touch screens force implementing hard delays will we wait on them to finish whatever they are doing.

 

This is what iOS for cars looks like
Updated design could come with iOS 7.1
By Jacob Kastrenakes on January 28, 2014 10:21 am

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/28/53...mulation-video

 

Volvo announces new 'human machine interface' and it looks a lot like a tablet (video)

http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/26/v...creen-console/

 

and they say texting is distracting?

oh i just have to watch this important webinar for work while driving there.

 

At that point autonomous cars make sense

 

I traded my 2013 RX for a 2014 GX because it was so difficult to input an address, tune the radio, or make a phone call with the remote touch.
I'm hoping voice recognition improves enough to replace the remote touch cause I really miss my RX.