I'm not down on touchscreens, just when they're misapplied, as you've indicated. And maybe markets indeed don't always deliver what the user wants, at least not at first. I think we've reached some agreement here.
"It is fascinating just how poorly modern touch interfaces do compared to older vehicles" with a response of
"I can't figure out how to turn the HVAC system on in a newish car"
This proves that the market is demanding worse interfaces, otherwise why would people have to deal with them?. That's how your argument goes, and it's bunk. Remember the cries of pain over windows 8? That's because people liked pain. The market spoke, right?
> I don't have numbers, and neither do you.
Then again I only spoke for myself. Whereas you "...this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers" & "it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want" believe you can speak for others. Nope. Facts please.
> I can also bring out hard factual numbers for the sales numbers of dedicated MP3 players going down as smartphone proliferation increased, if you want, but you probably already know how those numbers look.
Irrelevant. I spoke about dedicated MP3 players, and if you'd bothered to read what I said, I actually said yours was a good point. Still, dedicated MP3 players have a market because they are still being sold - https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3... So a market for them still exists. It's not about smartphones vs dedicated MP3 players, this is about interfaces and choice.
I asked you to back this up with actual figures. Please do so. Now...
> Do you see dedicated single-purpose barebones MP3 players having a high demand?
I can't buy them. When I looked for a new one, there was none available I could find. I did ring the companies too. There's no choice so actual demand is difficult to ascertain.
Smartphones... OK, that's a good point.
> what answer do you expect to hear?
Irrelevant - give me figures, not asking what I expect to get. Facts please. And if you read the comments here, there's quite a few expressing preference for physical controls.
> But they [non-smartphone users] are in a tiny minority.
A minority or a tiny minority? Give me figures please. Don't just talk at me, throwing words around. Facts please. And BTW I'm one of these minorities. FYI.
> it looks like the market has clearly expressed what consumers want
This is a better post than its parent, and in some cases, sure I agree. I can't argue with someone who wants the new & shiny, if it works for them, great. But it's being pushed on us so such luddites as myself have no choice any more - it's all touchscreens now. It's become marketing driven. The choice is gone.
> this is not representative at all of what the majority prefers
I was very careful to not to project my desires on others in my original post, but you're telling me about what "majority prefers". So back this up. I don't think you can.
That is my opinion which is why I kept on saying "I". I see nothing wrong at all with 'old-school'. There are too many self proclaimed UI/UX "experts" who keep screwing things up for people (edit: I'll restate that: fucking over their users). I only want what works.
> The vast majority of customers do not want something that basic.
And you accuse me of 'opinion'. Well, provide evidence of this claim.
> The benchmarking shows nearly every company is moving to screens
You're confusing a benchmark with... something else. And I really dislike my new-ish MP3 player with it's damn screen that I have to keep looking at to operate, to do anything.
> And if your car doesn't have all the features
My MP3 player has a ton of features and I don't need 90% of them. I want it to do one job well - play my music and a few other basic controls, just like my old, physically-operated MP3 player did. I don't want awesome UX/UI bullshit to get in the way, I just want it to do its job.
I checked again and it's actually about 4GB. It has to be a browser fault. There's no reason for it. The images shouldn't lead to that, and probably don't.
As for the images, point for me is they actually told me nothing useful. It's just animated text, and there's little I can take from them. Perhaps a series of static images, annotated, would be more helpful. IMO
I tried to look at the web page but it has ~16MB in 3 images (please don't do that) and blew up my palemoon process by over 3GB (not MB). I have never seen that before. JS is disabled. There's something really nasty going on. Browser is palemoon, fairly recent.
Let's suppose: what you say is true and they're like sheep. A guy in a group panicking has the rest of them to, kind of, validate his emotion. He might be panicking but he knows where he stands.
By himself he doesn't even have that reassurance. He doesn't have anything to measure his emotions against. Does that make sense?