zlacker

>>heshie+(OP)
I can only imagine Mazda's stake in this is that the OSS project is doing something that Mazda would like to monetize. Otherwise why limit a project that's making people fell better about their car purchase?

The worst thing to happen to home automation was companies trying to lock customers into their ecosystem without greater interoperability.

>>madrox+Wa
I can't even use the android auto touchscreen in my miata because you can't make it disabled enough at speed so they just disabled the entire thing. Even the android auto dongles that hack that kind of thing I haven't had success with.

I would bet this is some overzealous safety executive somewhere.

>>pwilli+nm
ND2 Miata owner here, exact same complaints. I believe there are several models in Mazda's range with the frankly staggeringly annoying behaviour of disabling the touch screen once the car is moving.

In lieu of the touchscreen while cars wheels are rolling, Mazda expect you to use this odd rotary controller in the center console, on the assumption it will be safer.

It's not safer at all though - you have to turn the rotary controller and watch CarPlay or android auto do the equivalent of a tab key in the browser until it highlights the correct field, then press it in to select. It genuinely takes my eyes off the road longer than just stabbing a touch screen with my finger, as you have to make sure you have got the rotary controller to highlight the right button etc - you can overshoot just like tab in a browser.

What's even funnier to me is that Mazda have no qualms about putting a switch to disable stability and traction control instantly right next to the steering wheel on a light weight rear wheel drive sports car; burnouts and oversteer are apparently perfectly acceptable usecases for a Miata, but selecting a song from the touch screen while moving? No way guys...

>>giobox+Fr
Disabling the distracting touchscreens is one of the things that Mazda does right. Pecking at the screen while driving is stupidly dangerous.

Pretty much everything you need can be done with at most a few steps of the commander interface which are easy to learn.

>>izacus+3x
I just rented a Mazda with one of those terrible rotary dials. Something as simple as finding the nearest gas station, which takes like 2 touches on a touch screen, takes several pushes and inaccurate turns of the dial. It turns a 3-second affair into a 30 second nightmare requiring constant distractions and squinting to see which button or field is currently highlighted. It's the worst car UX I've ever experienced, even worse than a Tesla. I'll never buy a car with a system like this. It's suicide.

>>solard+Ry
What are you talking about? It's like push down to select search box, select gas station icon (first in like, one rotation), press again.

If there's an active route, you rotate the dial twice quickly to select the search icon.

That's on Android Auto on my Mazda. It's very similar in the built-in nav system.

And in no case do you have to lean forward to peck for small touch boxes - the controls are naturally at your hand and each move has a tactile click.

Touchscreens are "souicide" as more and more distracted driving research shows.

>>izacus+U21
That entirely depends on what other interactions you've done recently. If you've moved the dial to any other control, you have to carefully scroll it back to the right place. The highlighting showing which control currently has focus isn't very obvious, especially once Android Auto starts showing two or three apps in split screen. If you want to mute the speech, change the compass heading, go to the Spotify section, etc, it all takes careful dialing.

The dial itself also sucks. It has both a rotary spinner that's too easy to turn and a 4-way joystick that's too easy to nudge. If you happen to drive across a tiny bump (especially with the stock shocks, which are really stiff), you can entirely lose your place and have to hunt for the highlighted control before you can resume. I have to lean forward because my eyesight isn't that great compared to before. It's not bad enough to stop driving, but not good enough to see Android Auto on that tiny screen, of which Maps is only like 2/3, and each button is tiny.

Touch screens don't really have that problem because there's not a control that has focus at any given time. You just poke whatever you want, regardless of current context.

Touch screens (like on Teslas) are worse than traditional buttons. But the Mazda spinner is even worse than touch screens. It is far far more distracting, IMO, and a life-threatening dealbreaker for me.

It's cool if you like them though... I just won't be buying a Mazda anymore, but that car (to my surprise) got pretty high reviews and nobody even mentioned the infotainment UX. Shrug. I'm just picky about these things.