If recent business jets are an indication, it's all touch based at the high end already. Also, Ipads are getting pretty popular for pilots. My understanding is that most pilots would bring one by default (two plus extra batteries typically) and that especially for GA, there is a lot of equipment and software that integrates with them. One odd thing is that some pilots use ipads to control equipment in the plane because of UI and UX issues. E.g. you can control a garmin 530 with an ipad and it seems like pilots prefer doing that because it is just easier.
I think both in cars and in the aviation industry there is the notion that the companies manufacturing UIs there are not necessarily that good at it because historically their focus was more hardware oriented. The UX of especially older equipment can be kind of clunky. E.g. many planes have an fms (flight management system) with a non qwerty keyboard that looks like it was designed in the nineteen sixties and just never updated. You still find the same design in relatively new planes like the A319.
I agree that it is nice to have physical controls for some thing. E.g. I love volume dials. But overall, touch is great when hardware designs result in very complex UX.
So, I suspect that Mazda getting rid of touchscreens is more their own inability to do good UI than any inherent problems with touch screens. The rest of the industry seems to be trying to catch up to Tesla. I recently sat in a very new Renault with Android Car and a big touch screen. It's a very nice upgrade from the previous generation which was very clunky to use and had lots of annoying bugs. Renault outsourcing the UI to a company that has a clue was a big improvement for them they were just hopelessly out of their depth.
I'm not a pilot, but my understanding is it is quite different to driving in terms of attention — a cruising pilot can easily look at a screen for 5 or 10 seconds (?) entirely safely, whereas a driver might struggle to even stay in lane looking at a screen for 10 seconds. So a touch screen is fine for a pilot but probably not good for a driver.
I am a pilot and you are exactly right. With an airplane autopilot coupled to a modern GPS, once you're cruising, you can pretty much crawl into the back seat and take a nap until it's time to land. (That's a little bit of an exaggeration but not much.)
If recent business jets are an indication, it's all touch based at the high end already. Also, Ipads are getting pretty popular for pilots. My understanding is that most pilots would bring one by default (two plus extra batteries typically) and that especially for GA, there is a lot of equipment and software that integrates with them. One odd thing is that some pilots use ipads to control equipment in the plane because of UI and UX issues. E.g. you can control a garmin 530 with an ipad and it seems like pilots prefer doing that because it is just easier.
I think both in cars and in the aviation industry there is the notion that the companies manufacturing UIs there are not necessarily that good at it because historically their focus was more hardware oriented. The UX of especially older equipment can be kind of clunky. E.g. many planes have an fms (flight management system) with a non qwerty keyboard that looks like it was designed in the nineteen sixties and just never updated. You still find the same design in relatively new planes like the A319.
I agree that it is nice to have physical controls for some thing. E.g. I love volume dials. But overall, touch is great when hardware designs result in very complex UX.
So, I suspect that Mazda getting rid of touchscreens is more their own inability to do good UI than any inherent problems with touch screens. The rest of the industry seems to be trying to catch up to Tesla. I recently sat in a very new Renault with Android Car and a big touch screen. It's a very nice upgrade from the previous generation which was very clunky to use and had lots of annoying bugs. Renault outsourcing the UI to a company that has a clue was a big improvement for them they were just hopelessly out of their depth.