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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> The interaction affordances are abysmal compared to physical controls

I find scrolling a map is far more natural on a touch screen compared to physical controls.

Sliding your fingers on glass/plastic has roughly just one primitive analog in the real-world: dragging paper on a flat surface. Scrolling a virtual map or zoomed-in digital photo is a rare application of that. Everything else that touch screens can do are very poor analogies of real-world things we can do with our hands and fingers, like press buttons and turn knobs.

I wonder if I've ever in my life, pressed my pointer finger onto any piece of paper (map or otherwise) which was sitting on a table in order to drag the paper around. Certainly to point, but never to drag.

The physical dial knob on BMW's is pretty awesome for this.

And yet I very rarely need to do that while driving. If I really needed to I would just use my phone.

Do you often need to scroll a map on your car's screen?

Yes. To see where I'm going to be going or find something. Do you not?

No? I just enter my destination and let it actually navigate

I often look around on the route to see if it's suitable, what I'm going to past, where I might stop, things like that. Just entering the destination and going without looking first is a recipe for being one of those idiots trying to drive down an unsuitable country lane, in my experience.

In years of using Waze for thousands of trips I've had that happen exactly zero times.

It also has functionality built in to find things like restaurants and gas stations near your active route.

How do you handle being rerouted? Also, how do you handle routes for 12 hour drives?

Wow, the world has all kinds of people. This attitude is bizarre to me. It seems similar to something I've heard before, "Why would I look in the rearview mirror? All that stuff is behind me so I don't care about it!"

No, it's really not at all the same. I'm using a tool for the job it was designed to do (and does very well). That doesn't mean I don't pay attention.

I'm just not arrogant enough to think I'm better.

a) "The tool" does afford the ability to scroll around and change zoom levels; that probably required some "design" to do that.

b) Is it "arrogant" to think that I understand my own goals and preferences better than a mapping app? Yikes.

I don't drive a car. Whenever I watch someone using navigation while driving, the map follows the route,so there is no need for that.

> the map follows the route,so there is no need for that

This is how you end up driving on an unsuitable route, by not looking ahead about where it’s going.

And sometimes you want to see what else is around you and not just program a destination.

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