Apple CarPlay
Yay, more touch screen in cars. More ways to distract, frustrate and confuse users who are operating a big box of steel weighing 3 tons and going at speeds the human brain has never evolved to appropriately deal with.<p>1) Not only are touch screens a very poor interactor in the first place [0], but why do you think planes and other complex machinery have stuck with physical controls? For operating complex vehicles/apparatus, you just cannot do better than tangible controls. Knobs, switches, sliders can be operated without looking at them while giving rich tactile feedback, they have no modes = 0 risk for confusion, you know where they're going to be located on your dashboard regardless of what you're doing, etc.<p>2) Self-driving cars cannot come fast enough, and every single innovation in the car industry that does not go towards electric self driving cars is just useless fluff at this point.
Seriously- then you'll be able to fiddle all you want with your phone, drink, travel while sleepy, arguing your spouse, whatever you want- we'll be saving tens of thousands of lives every year [1], and the secondary social benefits will be fantastic (less cars produced since they don't have to sit on a parking lot 99% of the time, people won't have to spend a year's worth of wages just to buy a car (and then a significant chunk to maintain it), etc.). If society were a game of Civilization, I'd be putting all of my resource points towards the "Self driving cars" achievement.<p>Of course the insurance companies, car manufacturers, oil companies, etc. don't want that to happen- but seriously, fuck those guys. The benefits on human society at large here are so significant that there is no room for caring about the feelings of greedy old white men.<p>[0] <a href="http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...</a><p>(the views in this post are a bit on the extreme side- but that's how interesting conversations get started :-)