I just wish the Mazda software was similarly well-designed. They have so many on-screen popups, for everything from "Warning, screens can be distracting! Select okay to acknowledge." to "Your XM radio has lost connection" when I'm not listening to the XM radio. And they display their own popups over CarPlay while CarPlay is active, which I basically never want to see.
Who? Virtually all makes are moving to all-touch infotainment systems, even VW here. The VW change is that they were using weird touch-sensitive 'buttons' for volume and steering wheel control and you literally couldn't rest your fingers on the steering wheel. The only reason touch suckls on Mazda is that the display is placed too far away to be reached on purpose.
Well, that certainly makes it worse on Mazdas, but those touch screens are terrible on everything.
I prefer using the knob to touching the screen. It's much faster, primarily. You have some touch feedback so you don't really need to be looking at the screen for very long. You don't need to move your torso, so you can manipulate the wheel while you're driving normally with your left hand.
I can see it depending on what you're doing with the system. Personally I'm either using Spotify or Google Maps, both of which work quite nicely with the scroll wheel.
... because there's a dial, obviating the need for touch. Beyond that, without needing to use touch, the screen can be placed further up and forward - meaning there's less "travel" for your eyes between looking at the road and glancing at the centre display.
What year/model is this? I've never had a popup on top of CarPlay, except for the volume bar that appears along the bottom of the screen.
I got a Carlinkit wireless adapter so I don't even see the Mazda UI except for a couple of seconds while the adapter boots up, or if I want to put it on the clock screen because there's nothing on CarPlay that I need.
There’s the usual “screens are distracting” notice when the car turns on but after that it uses the speedometer screen to say things like “Service due” or “Safety and Driver Support Systems Temporarily Disabled. Front Radar Obscured. Drive Safely”
Honestly the head unit is one of the worst I've ever used, though the interface is at least moderately well designed. They clearly had at least one intern try using it while driving. It's just the rest of the entire operating system that's garbage
Every few years since then there has been an article like this that another brand "discovered" the same thing.
I've rented several other cars in the last couple of years that have been touchscreen only (or, at the very least, very heavily biased towards touchscreens), and the amount of extra time needed to orient where you're pressing is honestly kind of terrifying when you need to, say, demist a windscreen quickly.
^ Check it, dead last in the industry according to people who bought the car.
The system is coated in buttons...but most units do not allow you to use Carplay with touch. That's right. You need to navigate the UI as if you were using a keyboard to use windows. 'spin spin spin, highlighted?, select, spin spin spin highlighted?, select' The outcome is considerably more time spent looking at the screen no matter how proud they are about killing touch. Carplay and Android Auto are both noted by customers as the number 1 technology priority in new cars.
The system is virtually unchanged in UX since 2012 with only a UI refresh in 2019. They claim it as if it is an intentional design when they really are just selling 12 year old tech on $60K CX-90s.
This is no rebuttal to you, if you love it, that is great! But here and reddit both seem to think that Mazda's UX is amazing when customers truly hate it.
Seems like my 2016 CX-5 ignores touch inputs if the car is moving, and CarPlay can't override this.
Quite the opposite. The wheel has discrete clicks while rotating so muscle memory becomes a thing. I've got half a dozen "workflows" memorized so I don't even need to look at the screen to do things like love a song, add it to my favorites, switch between apps, report an accident, etc.
I had a BMW with a wheel and it was insanely annoying. But that was 10 years ago!
I also think that the whole interface is quite sluggish in general.
One of my favorite feature on Mazdas... never seen anything like it before
> Car enthusiasts were not smitten with iDrive; many found that the system had the opposite of its intended effect, requiring more, not less, visual attention. Automobile Week wrote that iDrive ''turned the 'experience' of driving the car into a computerized affair.'' And even experts who sympathize with the impulse behind iDrive note its shortcomings. ''I spent an hour experimenting in a simulator, and I got lost in the menus,'' says Don Norman, the author of ''The Design of Everyday Things.'' BMW countered by including a cheat sheet that can be affixed to the steering wheel for befuddled parking valets. Eventually, some initially skeptical reviewers have conceded that once accustomed to it, they find the iDrive indispensable; however, that acclimation has taken as long as three months.
Norman wrote more about it at https://jnd.org/design-as-communication/ .
> By logic, the iDrive was a superior device. Alas, people function through stories, not logic. Moreover, people are spatial, we remember where things are in space, whereas the iDrive destroyed spatiality. And finally, the stories we remember and the conceptual models we prefer have to do with how a particular device functions: heating and cooling the automobile, changing the station of the radio, checking what distance remains for our trip. Each activity requires a separate story, separate control, and a separate location for operation. Alas, the iDrive collapsed everything into one location.
However I doubt Google has done the work in the interim to keep the UX in Android Auto working well with dial controls. Esp if only Mazda is doing this.
Unfortunately BMW moved to eliminating a lot of hardware buttons in the latest version of the iDrive with a giant curved screen. They still have dial and buttons on the center console, plus few additional buttons under the main screen. But they have removed one of another great features - eight programmable buttons in the center. These are great and you can assign any function from the touch screen to them.
It's a shame, because I can see the usefulness of the input controls.
I only use the back-up camera. It's super cool that Mazda actually managed to retrofit this in all the other old models though. I don't think many car manufacturers would bother with that.
It'd be a bit expensive to replace the head unit with an Android-based aftermarket one, so I'm not sure it's worth doing. Depends on how long I'll keep the car.
Instead I went with a Mazda and stayed with them since. Just great all around cars: safe, reliable, low maintenance, freaking fun to drive, and always good tech (Love the heads up display!), upscale fit and finish. Not super expensive but expensive enough that you’re getting a good car.
I would easily choose my CX-30 over an A4 any day.
I find the newer Mazda red to be far sexier than Ferrari red. (Ferrari red is still best choice for Ferraris though)