Quote:
Originally Posted by Rocket455
I get the economics side of migrating everything to a screen (as much as I absolutely *hate* it). However, the issue has always been one of usability and convenience for the end user: you shouldn't have to wade through a mess of menus to get to something you may need to adjust frequently enough during a trip; that includes HVAC and media access. One thing that I've seen that comes close to a compromise between the tactile and touchscreen world are touchscreen menus that appear in a fixed location within some part of the main screen. These are always available right there without the need to "bring them up" via a central menu....again, not my preference, but I'd be able to [begrudgingly] live with that.
|
To expand on your point I haven't seen the new waterfall screens but it looks large enought to configure 'widgets' if your familiar with Android where you have the option to break up the screen into sections and customize what you want on each section like HVAC, Media, etc so you don't have to dig through menus to get to things like this. I personally don't see a problem with this because eventually you get used to it and it could be very customizable like android or keep it structured and locked down like iOS.
With that being said I'm in a 2021 X7 so idrive7? First time back in a BMW since my '99 e38 and I think it's pretty intuitive but there's alot of things that could improve obvs. IMHO I dislike the physical buttons for the HVAC on the X7, everytime you want to sync it you have to touch the physical menu button and than select sync on the screen and it always gets overridden if the passenger side physical buttons are used.
I see some back and forth about the eventual cost saving of moving away from physical buttons and it trickling down to the customer and it'll reduce supply chain issues etc. Don't forget your new cellphone you buy every other year never gets cheaper. Better screens, faster chips, faster memory, etc. As soon as you go all digital it's an arms race every refresh on who has the most bleeding edge tech albiet phones get refreshed every year vs cars getting refreshed far less but there will always be a team working on software. Might as well make the damn screen modular and removable to upgrade and customize via tablet like hardware and function.