Yet one more item in an endless exhibit of how mankind is unable to standardize anything at all. Get TWO engineers together to agree on ONE standard plug and the assholes will come out with THREE separate plugs, completely non-compatible with each other, of course.
It’s almost like a miracle that we got the world to agree on certain things like time and timezones, a system of coordinates, the metric system.
All of them received initial pushback, and some to this day. Noisy, noisy fucking humans.Did you know that for a few decades, every town in the UK kept two different times on adjacent clocks? Back when their railway grid was expanding everywhere. Local time and London time.
timezones
I beg to differ on that one https://youtu.be/J1kOkoma_hM?si=f7bpphN7fGRk587B
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Funny enough, it’s not the engineers that are doing it. Left to their own devices without ridiculous constraints like “someone else is doing it this way so we need you to do something that sets us apart” or “you can’t look at what everyone else is doing”, engineers will do it the laziest way they can… By copying what others are doing and essentially making it standard.
Yeah usually when engineers take extra effort to do something non-standard, it’s at a specific request from a client or management
Have you ever been to an oil and air filter warehouse?
Some are more common than others, but there are hundreds of different types, and some of them vary by a millimeter in diameter from the more common ones.They couldn’t design the inlet to fit a pre-existing filter already in circulation, no sir, instead of any sort of compatibility they felt compelled to make up their own fucking specification and parameters that varied by a tenth of a percentage point.
That can only be the work of engineers, and from the looks of that oil filter warehouse, or from the different types of electrical sockets, the contrary bastards are everywhere, they REFUSE to meaningfully communicate with each other, and will NOT listen to reason.
More recently, look at crypto. For every well-meaning and thoughtful endeavor like Bitcoin or Ethereum, there are ten thousand shitcoins. Many are just greedy con jobs, but many are also due to stubborn and petty, noisy squabbles over minutiae. Suddenly the whole damn space was a hive of useless noise and confusion.
This tells me that you know very little about how in control of designs engineering teams are. 99/100 times it’s not up to the engineers on what the specifications or limitations are for any given design.
Typically, sales says they’ll have something that fits whatever crazy need no matter if a perfectly suitable design already exists if they consulted the engineers or shop, typically to get the sale. Engineering is then forced to adjust the design because nothing existing will fit.
Drove a Kia once and it was the same. Up went back a track, down went forwards. Opposite of my intuition.
Current Kia isn’t like this
Hyundai is the same, even on current models.
I have a Hyundai and this is not the case. Maybe it’s regional.
My 2023 sonata has up for back and down for forward, which I don’t hate. It also has a separate up/down switch for the volume though, not right and left like OP’s.
My pet peeve has always been when media controls (like volume) are on the right side of the steering wheel rather than the left.
To me it makes a lot less sense to put them on the right when my right hand is already 10 inches away from another set of media controls (left-hand drive vehicle).
My 2004 Mazda, 2018 Mazda, and 2011 Kia all had it figured out and pretty much used the same layout for media controls and accessories like cruise control. My Ford, however, seems like no thought was put into it.
On left hand drive I’m guessing?
Sounds like.
I wonder if left or right steering is more common, like if you were just going to give every car the same steering wheel.
This layout makes sense if you have used an old school mp3 player or similar.
Volume is left and right because it’s an analog of the volume bar on the screen.
Up and down is previous and next because play was controlled by a list UI so you were moving a cursor up and down between songs.
It’s not how I personally would prefer it, but it’s not as outlandish as it seems.
I still feel like this is sillt… I’ve owned a lot of mp3 players and none of them worked this way. Was this a zune thing or something?
Every mp3 player I owned in the 2000’s worked this way. Screen above, controls below, list UI for tracks, usually volume rocker or dial on top.
Sometimes the UI would be more complicated and would include a left/right button for navigating horizontal menus (like my all time favorite Zen Vision:M) but the basic playlist was still a vertical scrolling list UI.
Thank you for making this make more sense.
Probably also matches to a visible screen with track visibility, so up and down is literally moving between tracks
That makes a lot of sense. I still hate it, but i understand the justification for it now.
The up and down, in this case, also correspond with how the menus work on the HUD or Center control panel. Source, MINI owner since 2009.
Clearly you’re meant to have the car on its side before playing any media
True. On its left side.
Well it is a Japanese car, and they drive on the left side in Japan
British car
Still left side
This is actually exactly how my telly remote works. Left and right are volume down and up respectively, up and down are next channel and previous channel respectively.
I want to know why do many cars don’t have a play/pause button on the wheel, but do have a source button.
I change my source from my phone exactly never. I want to pause the audio all the time.
My Hundyai has a programmable star button on the steering wheel that can be tied to media on/off.
Kia also.
Fully remappable steering wheel buttons is a great idea.
My Tesla has one, but I haven’t yet figured out what best to do with it. The current leading contender is wipers - auto wipers are not sufficient. Also I hesitate to rely on and get used to primary co trol in custom places
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I change the source regularly between my phone and the radio, but I don’t use any of the wheel buttons, so I’m not even sure if my car has a source button on it.
I’ve been wishing for play pause since audio books and podcasts came into the world. It’s ridiculous that nobody has this button in 2024
My Jeep has it and it’s from 2018.
bro I swear whoever designs the interfaces in cars must be the CEO’s nephew
I would risk life and limb to crack that open and find a way to right this wrong.
Preach! When did you ever hear someone say “please turn the volume right” or “can you play the up track”? It drives (NPI) me crazy in my Toyotas!
Same in my 2017 Toyota. Bought it new and trained my brain to use it. Someone finally released a replacement that’s set up correctly, and now I’m relearning the control.
Yeah that was one of the many things that annoyed me in pre-2020 Toyotas, along with the insane baked-in audio delay and the hilariously ridiculous manually-stored images for songs and artists.
Rotate the
controlsthe whole car 90 degrees CCW.It’s on the steering wheel. He can just steer and that solves the problem.
Yep, steer perpetually to the left. Maybe play Beyonce in the background.
Return the car, it’s obviously built by morons.
So my question is, which is next: up or down?
I was confused first too when my car had the same kind of control for media. It’s completely logical when you take a look on the playlist on your phone.
I believe my Prius is up for next, as in go to the next highest index song.
Both make sense, so in a way neither do
Gen 2 Prius had both left and right, with the volume clearly labeled as up to the right
Down
My wife just reminded me that she was asked to take a survey about this car after she bought it.
She complained about these buttons being oriented stupidly, and the survey taker mentioned that this has been a common complaint for years. Nevertheless, BMW / Mini has stayed the course. Users be damned.
Begs the question - what exactly is the survey for, then?
probably crowd sourcing tests for more critical errors.
“did your car suddenly stop while going at 90 mph?”
“When was the last time your car spontaneously combusted? Please rate the level of inconvenience.”
“Mmmyes, quite, I was mildly peeved, rather. My Tom Ford blazer was singed on the lapel, it took the cleaners a week to remove the soot. A week! Also, I am just a tinge dead.”
I drove this make of car for a while; there’s an optional head up display where the up and down buttons here let you cycle through contacts/the song queue/radio stations. I’d imagine it’s the same interface without it, just displayed somewhere in the car where you’re not looking while driving.
Having it so that up/down moves you up/down through the list when there’s a visual display is way more intuitive than up/down being volume - frankly the volume bar on Windows, Mac, many TVs etc. goes from left (quiet) to right (loud) anyway
