Rant is the right way to describe this.
Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen? The joy of panning and zooming around, tapping to learn more about any particular point! I remember that first experience was a total rush and extremely stimulating.
Feeling like the digital map was connected to my fingertip as you pan with that point stuck under your finger — absolute magic.
There are some interfaces which are absolutely superior when provided as picture under multi-touch glass.
Denying a touchscreen entirely is to make huge compromises in the overall experience when configuring something as fully featured as a modern vehicle.
At CES a decade ago, I got to play with a touchscreen prototype that offered tactile feedback. Press a button and the screen would push back and/or buzz (it's been a while, hard to remember). What I do know is that it _felt_ like I was pushing on something, not just glass.
At the time, it required a big area around it. Think ATM sized. For an ATM, it'd be awesome. I'd hope Moore's law would get the tech down to phone size by now, but here we are with more apps and no tactile feedback.
What do you mean by "press"?
"Pressing" a button (ie. pressing down on it) requires a bit more force than just touching it, so this seems like bad UX to me.
Even if you only were to have the device buzz as you touch any interactive control, I feel like that would start to feel real gimmicky real fast. There's probably a reason that technology didn't make it past CES.
There are some interfaces which are absolutely superior when provided as picture under multi-touch glass.
Superior to what? I think you mean superior to mouse + keyboard, and superior to a physical map. The author agrees with you, as he clarified in a followup [1] to the rant:
> [Do I think the iPad is bad?] No! iPad good! For now!
Do you remember the first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen?
He goes on:
> In 1900, Eastman's new Kodak camera was good! The film was black-and-white, but everyone loved it anyway. It was genuinely revolutionary! But it was also obvious that something was missing, and research continued. Practical color film was released thirty years later, and gradually took over.
> [...]
> Today, iPad good. It's flat and glassy and everyone loves it anyway. It's genuinely revolutionary. But if all we have in twenty years is an iPad with a few haptic gimmicks, that'll be bad.
The first time you used a map on a smooth multi-touch screen, it was genuinely revolutionary—hopefully, you'll be similarly impressed the first time you use a map with purpose-built physical controls (not mouse + keyboard), but that is also dynamic (like a computer/tablet/smartphone). Maybe it'll be something like this: https://rsnous.com/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/
[1]: http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...
Superior to everything else that ever came before and that currently exists.
It is the ultimate user interface to ever be developed? Surely I hope not.
But I love the iPad because it’s flat and glassy, not despite it.
Really? Your kitchen counter and car windshield are also both flat and glassy. Are you sure you don't love the iPad because it's a huge touchscreen controlled by software with virtually limitless capabilities, rather than because it's flat and glassy?
Superior to everything else that ever came before and that currently exists.
That's my point about you misunderstanding—the rant is explicitly about the future, as mentioned in the title and throughout the introduction.
Black-and-white film photography was superior to everything else that ever came before and that existed at the time. But it wasn't the grayscale that made it revolutionary. It's not the lack of tactile feedback that made the touchscreen revolutionary.
Similarly, my Xbox 360 controller and modern games produce astonishing graphics and realism that feel really immediate; my eyes tell me I'm in the plane, and when I'm coming in too low and too fast I want to will the plane upwards. But I can't feel it. Pulling the stick back on my ancient force-feedback joystick with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 (wow, the graphics on that feel dated now) gave a tangible control surface load. The buzz of 'haptic feedback' just isn't the same.
You don’t want the navigation interface in your car to be immersive, or particularly precise. You want it to be super responsive, and to spend as little mental and physical energy manipulating it as possible.
1) The target area is massive — nearly the entire screen. You just need to leave space to move your finger in the direction you want the screen to go.
2) Perfectly intuitive. Versus moving a cursor on the screen where you actually press the left arrow to move the cursor left until it goes off screen so that the screen will pan right
3) Instantaneous access to any point on the screen. Tap a POI anywhere and it’s info can be displayed. Go ahead and try to select POIs in an arbitrary map location with a scroll wheel. I’ll wait. It’s “haptic”, but are you doing that without looking? Something which took milliseconds now takes a full minute of frustration.
4) Instant access to menu items. Similar to #3 - a touch interface can present multiple choices and requires only a single user input to select. One touch and you’re off. A haptic interface requires scrolling through menus to highlight an item before you can select it, which most people will glance at while they do it, and requires more mental focus than a single tap. Or worse, an array of buttons next to the screen which you’re supposed to choose from to make a selection on the screen.
Haptic feedback in a touch interface is not always a feature. And the lack of haptic feedback does not, ipso facto, make an interface numb or non-immersive. Some older touch screens would vibrate in response to every touch as you typed — it made typing less accurate.
I take issue with the overly zealous defense of a haptic interface to the point where the overall experience is degraded in order to provide haptics.
Four arrow keys (or worse, a wheel-like joystick) are indeed haptic, but they are not a better way to pan a map, which is not generally done without looking anyway.
But it's scientifically proven that the response time from touch to brain is significantly faster than eye to brain. So, let's not discount that.
