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Comment by FearNotDaniel | Hacker News Reader

> Something that has been lost in all glass cockpits is the tactile feel of pressing buttons and knowing you got a response – I found you could enter Lat/Longs by feel whilst looking out the window. This is something you definitely can’t do ‘on the glass’ on current jets.

I also really miss this from the dumbphone era. I used to be able to type SMS texts by feel using a T9 keypad while walking down the street, and only occasionally have to check the screen to see what I wrote. Smartphone QWERTY makes this impossible.

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Same for cars interfaces. My 17-years old BMW has 0 big touchscreens, for everything there is a manual knob/button. I've found out I don't need more. I tweak most of stuff I need like AC and radio while driving without losing contact with the road even for a split of second.

I know from my experience that I took my sight off the road, there could be an atomic blast in front of me and I would hardly notice it. Somebody slamming brakes in front of me might be peripherally noticed but without context could cause a stupid and dangerous reaction.

When Tesla started basically putting tablets instead of knobs some folks cheered. I couldn't be more sad for this trend. Clearly worse direction for those like me.

Or even worse: little touchscreens that resemble a physical knob/button, even with haptic feedback!

All physical buttons/switches in my 20 year old Mitsubishi still work. I have a feeling the newfangled, fancy LCD-switches don't last that long, and will be very expensive to fix when they break.

> Smartphone QWERTY makes this impossible

I can absolutely type in my iPhone without looking at it. I just typed this comment with zero visual contact with my phone and no edits.

(EDIT: this is a weirdly divisive comment.)

Good for you! That’s an awesome skill. The point is, tactile feedback is essential for doing that to most of us, not that 0 people can do it.

> not that 0 people can do it

Everyone in my (much) younger sister’s age group can do this. They grew up on touch devices. You and I didn’t.

Just a note that one group’s personal experiences shouldn’t be generalised to the point of describing others’ as “impossible.”

I agree that we should be careful with personal anecdotes, that's why I did not comment earlier.

But I can say that personally I was also able to do it without looking to some extent (perhaps a whole sentence with very low issues to correct), and I'm slowly losing that ability (which was accentuated with a change of hardware, but I was also feeling the loss of accuracy beforehand).

Now, this gets weird. I used to be able to do this on my iPhone 7. Now on the iPhone X I am making typos constantly...

Same. I think those of us who learned to touch type on post-T9 devices find the smaller phones’ keyboards more familiar. Contrast that with twentysomethings I know, and the disparity disappears.

M testing this out now, let’s see if I can dk it

Edit: the answer is no

I would agree with you from a personal perspective but my partner frequently does this on her Android. I personally find it creepy of her looking at me while obviously doing something else.

I think I will never really get the hang of the mobile keyboard(though I tend to use touch swiping), because I just consider it inferior to any physical normal sized keyboard.

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