Those were something, weren’t they? I thought it was the coolest thing ever as a kid, just the absolute peak of technology.
And in hindsight… Yeah, it was a pretty comfortable way to play videos and music, wasn’t it? And the click wheel iPods even had a surprisingly decent selection of games.
While I’m here, whatever happened to those Kindle e-readers with the physical page turn buttons and keyboard? I kinda feel like they stopped selling those, but I feel like that was kind of preferable to a touch screen, too.
I guess just in general I don’t like touch screens and it’ll be a good day when they stop being integrated into things that don’t actually need them. I’m out here thinking that flip phones beat smartphones still
Mediocre touchscreens are far cheaper for manufacturers than good quality physical buttons these days. I much prefer physical Interfaces for most things, and touch screen controls with really good haptics like Apple’s touchpads or even the older iPod touch wheels can be great too and sometimes as good or better but but those still aren’t touch screens. In fact the only reason the touchpad works well is that it has force sensors under it so that it’s not just based on touch.
I dread ever buying another car since they all seem to be replacing the vehicles entire dash, status monitors, and UI with one cheap iPad knockoff.
Fortunately my car isn’t so modern that everything is touch controls. And the mediocre touch screen for media can be replaced since it still uses a regular DIN rail mounting system. I just have to hope that I can keep it running forever since clearly public transport isn’t happening in the US any time soon outside of cities. And I can’t afford living in a city even if I can get rid of my car.
I test drove a 2024 Prius and the amount of screen was not preferable. I especially didn’t like that the car reads speed limit signs, displays them on the dash, then turns red if you exceed that speed. I know I’m speeding, car, fuck off.
Bought a 2013 Mazda with dumb features (but with Bluetooth) and it’s just right