Let's not leave out toggles and joysticks.

He's right, but the reason is money.

It's just cheaper to have a one screen that can be configured with a code change to do everything rather than physical buttons that need a full hardware change to do something else.

Though, why the hell everything has to get smaller, thinner, lighter. Like whats wrong with size and weight? Heavier and bigger things have more tactile feel to it. I can feel I'm actually using something rather than just pretending to be a mime.

Phone are getting bigger though, wish they were smaller again.

Exactly. It's the same reason they're being forced into new cars despite the fact that an awful lot of people don't like them

Likewise I hate haptic feedback or whatever they call it. If you’re gonna be a touchscreen button then own it and act like one.

If I want a vibrator I’ll just get one of those.

Screen is getting bigger, but not much heavier. Written from 500g rugged 1cm+ thick brick

Though yeah there should be different options for everyone, not the most basic popular stuff that looks exactly the same.

Written from 500g rugged 1cm+ thick brick

With a battery that lasts a week, horses for courses...

Somewhere along the line we lost the virtue of do one thing well. Do it right, move on, do something else right. If you need complexity plug some right things together.

Now is the time of jack of all trades, master of none, stuff it into a phone whether appropriate or not. Get the job done as cheap as possible with the same generic crap. Do you want your airplane pilot using only a touchscreen ? Why should it be different for a spaceship, a car, an audio engineer ?

A steering wheel, once learned, is a wonderfully flexible interface that meshes with human intuition, throw rock left, rock go left, we have brain circuits devoted to this stuff, it works. Tactile interfaces can and should speak to our evolutionary core. Let's take a step back, economic imperative be damned.

It’s just cheaper to have a one screen that can be configured with a code change to do everything rather than physical buttons that need a full hardware change to do something else.

....you can remap your buttons to do other things....

Touch style interfaces in sci-fi are a production cheat. Print/paint a sheet and stick it on a back-lit panel: instant set piece.

Problem is, they look cool, so once the technology arrived to make them real, everyone went overboard.

Now we get the shittiest physical UI's ever imagined.

this is solved by seatbelts.

Given the tech we have even nowadays, it's probably cameras/sensors tracking whether or not the operator is looking at the controls they're using.

Problem is, they look cool, so once the technology arrived to make them real, everyone went overboard.

Isn't the problem they're also cheaper in real life? Like in the car industry the only benefit is that it's saving time and money for the manufacturer.

Cheaper to ship.

I agree. I want heft.

Given how cheap and nasty every craptastic plastic control is in every 'cheap' car I've had: I doubt it.

Everything goes stupid when you're getting luxury or premium models. E.g. standard wheels are way cheaper than alloy wheels.

drives off cliff while trying to turn literally anything on

Yeah voice commands don’t work as a functional workaround either.

‘Can you repeat that’

the Andor tech was fucking amazing. wouldn't mind more of that in Trek

Every. Single. Game.

Why does that shit need to be on by default. It’s literal shit experience.

You just need one touch screen that does everything. Radio, climate control, navigation, car settings etc etc. even with cheap nobs you needed separate ones for everything, you needed the mounting for them and everything you can't see behind them. It might not be cheaper than replacing one thing, but once you combine everything into it it becomes cheaper.

All the knobs and cranks are busy in politics.

#heyoooo

“Haha! Yes, Johnny!”

In my headcanon the touch interfaces in Star Trek also provide tactile feedback, pressure sensitivity, etc. The flat panel look is only when they're idle.

Partially probably yes. However, there's also the issue of dealing with dynamic information. If you just need volume and AC controls, use physical buttons please. If you need GPS, media library controls, phone controls, texting, etc, which you don't need at the same time, they can all use one screen, and that screen can have dynamic controls. A touch screen makes a whole lot of sense for that.

I love physical controls. There are some things that should never be replaced by touch controls. There are places where touch controls make sense though. Anyone who doesn't realize this is choosing to be ignorant.

This is why Riker sits on then so often

I've been driving a lot of rental vehicles lately. The safety hazard of a big infotainment system is a real problem, some are worse than others. Also when it glitches it's a real pain in the ass because the only way to fix it some times is to restart the car, sometimes it will clear the settings too.

Touchscreens are a real hazard and impractical during an emergency because you need the muscle memory to be able to grab an anchored point for control.

one of the reasons i absolutely LOVE the TARDIS in Doctor Who, so many knobs, levers, buttons, ...

It's also easy for real life. They don't have to produce different parts or maintain them, or update them. All of that is just changing software and what it displays, that makes it easier for them to develop.

But as we're realizing it, it's harder to use and less safe.

I think it's because manufacturers value slick UI over usable UI.

LCARS is a great example. In universe, the buttons are likely programmed to the users specifications, macros and automations that have been developed over their career or even lifetime.

But when present day people tried to create LCARS for their own apps, it's a fucking nightmare. Too much wasted space and buttons that only look like Star Trek but don't actually do anything impressive.

Touchscreens in a car could work if they were user tested but they aren't. And not only that, but they are rent-seeking devices that companies use to lock out features like fucking heated seats!

What I'd love to see is a completely open-source infotainment system. Android could have been a great OS if they didn't fuck their users.

I mean it could hardly be more annoying than having to repack all the rocks into the consoles after they explode every Tuesday

Early days of Android haptic slowed things down so much the phone would lag when typing.

So I turned it off 15 years ago and haven't looked back.

Right? like guess what, I've got good news for you Tom. Also, stick your hands in this psychic jelly to help navigate

Remember Microsoft's surface dial?

Just make a touch screen and a bunch of those.

You can make your own interface outta touchscreen and attachable doodads.

As usual, thinking way short.

why not buttons that change color/labeling/shape.

why not dials that shrink and grow.

why not levers that pop up when needed.

make scifi scifi again.

So use a computer and buy a macro pad and mechanical keyboard ya goof.

It is not hard or prohibitively expensive to make your desktop feel enough like the past to feel like a satisfying version of the future.

Touchscreens in cars can't work properly for anything that needs to be operated while in motion. Everything the driver touches while in motion should be tactile.

The problem is never that it can't be done...

... it is that people find it easier to complain about the lack of a solution than to put in the work to create a solution for themselves.

Kids with their buttons, this is how we used to send ICQs back in the day:

(fun fact: You can tile this gif) e: ah I'll just do it in the comment

Counterpoint: if enough people die while adjusting their AC then humans will evolve to love touchscreens

I hear those German uboats are plum full of them

I want more brass levers with porcelain handles. I want my car to look like the Nautilus on the inside.

I've got a bunch of old midi equipment with knobs and buttons. None of them work any more, because the knobs and buttons failed.

The far-future panels from Discovery can totally do that. It's too bad they just don't do it.

A gentleperson of extraordinary taste I see.

you ever tried to clean red shirt grey matter out of a bunch of push button interfaces?

the reasoning for touch interfaces is obvious.

The alternate future in DS9's The Visitor implies through dialog that they have 3-D controls on newer starships.

When Tuvok is blinded in Voyager's Year of Hell, he explicitly activates the tactile interface for his console. So it's definitely something that LCARS supports.

Wait I want a wall-mounted hardware charcuterie board.