I was recently in the market for a newer SUV and the thing that struck me about every single touchscreen jammed into them was how obsolete they would seem in the near future. Even now, they're clunky and unappealing visually.

My microwave has a MyPlate.gov button on it. May have seemed like a good idea when our home's previous owner renovated back in 2011, but it's silly now.

My "smart" TV has an app called WebVideos on it, which does nothing but apologize for being shut down.

This trend of timely design rather than timeless design in appliances is not great for the consumer. It reminds me of bundling crapware OS-extensions onto budget PC laptops. Design that respects the orthogonal-nature of connectedness to a device's primary purpose should be praised.

One counterexample that comes to mind is my Nest thermometer. It's super convenient, works great. And if Nest ever goes under and turns out the lights on their API, or if wifi becomes an irrelevant network connection technology, it reverts to being a thermostat with a really nice UI.

Last winter I walked into a Subaru dealership, ready to plunk down for a brand new Impreza. I live in Minnesota. I wanted AWD and I know how hard it is to find used Subarus, especially when you insist on a stick shift. So I figured I'd just give in and buy new.

They didn't have any of the 2015 models at the time, so we test drove a 2014 model. Except for the inadequate number of pedals, it seemed fine. I was ready to place an order. Then the dealer, who was riding with us, said "and the new 2015s will all have the new infotainment stuff!" "Oh," I said, knowing he meant a shitty touch screen. "Can you show me?"

We get back to the dealership and he walks me over to some other, larger model with the new infotainment system. He sits down, turns the key, and what do I see on the infotainment system?

A loading bar.

I walked out and bought a 2011 Mazda3.

buying a mazda for not liking the infotainment when living in MN is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.. or something.. You could have bought an older version of Subie ...

Nah, it's not that bad. Pop some snow tires on there and it's fine. The vast majority of vehicles on the road are FWD. I would've preferred AWD, but there were none for sale with my requirements (stick shift, physical HVAC/radio controls, non-garbage HVAC/radio experience).

So why was the 2014 you were test driving no longer an option?

It was out of production at that point and there were no used manuals in the neighboring-state-area.

Wait, what happened to the 2014?

It'd be great if more startups entered the car-board computing field. Mounting an Android tablet, rasberry pi or arduino in the dash isn't very complex, and simpler to update. I wouldn't mind seeing a brief boot screen if it was linux and the stereo was a separate unit with aux input.

The thing I want most when driving a vehicle is the joy of having to look over at a touchpad to remember exactly where the controls are, and if they've moved significantly since my last software update.

I don't care how fancy your software is, I require PHYSICAL KNOBS AND BUTTONS. No exceptions.

> My "smart" TV has an app called WebVideos on it, which does nothing but apologize for being shut down.

I wonder if the app was prepared for that or if some poor fellows are maintaining servers whose sole purpose is responding to you with this apology.

Forget 5-10 years, the choice of ARM SoC will be a bad idea in 3 years.

You know this Moore Law thing, about software getting twice slower every two years to compensate for increasing transistor density... except that already deployed hardware doesn't grow these extra transistors in the meantime.

That already deployed hardware is now slow with the latest shiny firmware...time to buy more hardware like a good little consumer.

Agreed. So far, the best feature is a convenient dock for a tablet or phone. Same goes for cars.

Also agreed - I found the best solution for me was a cheap Amazon Fire tablet and three large strips of velcro. It stays firmly attached to the side of the fridge with the cable running straight down beneath the cupboard routed over to the plug. It looks a lot better than expected and handles calendar/metric<->imperial conversions with ease.

Anybody who has ever had a TV/VCR combo knows to avoid multi-function appliances.

I have a 13 inch color TV with VCR combo for sale. The VCR can no longer play VCR tapes - only rewind. Great for rewinding tapes before you return them to the rental store! Msg me for details.

I have one of those, works OK, but it has a Y2K bug that makes it hard to program to record shows. I don't use it very often though.

This is why I love my Chromecast so much. In the past I had a bulky media PC or a game console. I'd dig around for remotes, turn on the box, make sure everything was charged, etc. Now I just fire up whatever I want to watch on my phone, press cast, and off I go.

I think centralizing smartdevices on your phone makes a lot of sense. I don't need yet another remote or config to worry about. If IoT happens correctly, it'll be mostly headless. The head end will be your phone or smartwatch.

As a side note, the Amazon reviews for this thing are pretty terrible in regards to loud buzzing, ice maker issues, etc. We bought a new place three years ago and I was really tempted by the shiny Samsung fridges (LED lighting, little smart display, etc), but ended up going with a more conservative and pricier GE which has been rock-solid. Feels like I dodged a bullet here.

Same reason why GPS feature in a car is useless. I'm using google maps on my phone anyway due to the better interface and constant updates.

I use the Navigation on my 2015 Mazda 3 everyday. It's the most functional car GPS I've ever used and has way better directions for me as a new driver than Google Maps.

For example, a mile before a left turn it'll tell me to bear left instead of the way google suddenly springs it on me half a mile before a turn on a super busy road during a traffic jam.

Instead of having to glance at my phone every little bit it displays the directions on my heads up display along with the lanes that I should be on to make the turn. It also knows how to deal with music already playing on the car speakers by muting the driver side of the music while reading directions so my passengers can keep listening.

Along with all of this, even though it's quite fiddly to view it, if I connect my phone to the car and have internet on it can grab traffic data to overlay onto the map, so I get the best of both worlds. <3 Mazda

The concern isn't a current model-year vehicle, it's the replacement time of cars (and appliances in general) vs technology. Presumably, a 2015 car should be good for at least 10-15 years. How will your car's navigation system stack up in 2020 (just 5 years away)? Will it still be your go-to choice? I think the claim is that mobile technology improves much faster than the replacement/upgrade cycle for cars, so a car's internal navigation becomes amusingly obsolete much sooner than the car itself.

Maybe if the navigation system were designed to be replaceable, like the radio.

My wife uses her phone in cars with built in GPS because the mfgr assumes cars can only carry one person at a time, so for "safety" they lock out GPS access unless the car is in park, even if the operator is sitting in the passenger seat. So I drive and she navigates with her phone, or her phone talks to me, or whatever.

Another thing I've noticed is take anything fast, implement it in software, and latency becomes a killer. Software is so terrifyingly slow compared to hardware. Its hard to believe that people who write disgustingly slow UIs are in the same industry as people who write anti-lock brake code or real time fuel injection code.

    > I'm using google maps on my phone anyway due to the
    > better interface and constant updates.

And live traffic without paying a subscription (except for data)!

Though I generally use Waze for plotting a course to an unfamiliar destination, I still heavily use my car's GPS nav system.

Rather than relying on it for guidance, I use it as a reference for routing around small inconveniences (road work/construction, accidents, etc.) on familiar routes. I've found it quite useful in this regard, and the large screen size definitely comes in handy for at-a-glance usage.

What kind of navunit do you have? I wouldn't count on mine for anything helpful and it requires a sat radio subscription to get traffic updates.

Ford Sync. Whatever generation they were selling in 2013.

I don't really rely on it for traffic information or anything, just maps. If I'm driving on local 'main' roads and visually pick up on indicators that there's something inconvenient ahead, I'll use the nav unit to identify appropriate sidestreets to take instead.

I do appreciate my car GPS for when I'm outside of cell range though (which is frequently--mountains and radios don't work well together).

A mistake I'll make only once: driving to Montreal only to realize my phone was useless once I got to the city limits and needed to figure out how to get to my hotel.

If you start the navigation ahead of time it'll keep going even if you're offline. It caches the route and gps waypoints. Worked great on my trip from NYC to Quebec City.

Ah, that's good to know. I didn't do that since I know how to get to Montreal itself easily. From my front door: left, left, right, straight * 3 hours.

A one time mistake, for sure, though!

Which aren't much good for finding most POIs.

If you know the address or cross-streets it is very easy. You can also ask for directions. Believe it or not people managed to travel to and around unfamiliar cities just fine before the widespread use of GPS.

Believe it or not "I got lost when I realized my GPS was useless" does not imply "I starved to death in the cold Canadian woods after wandering aimlessly for 4 days."

I found the hotel just fine! It was just a bit of a "should've seen that coming" type of moment, is all.

OsmAnd (http://osmand.net/) downloads OpenStreetMap data to your phone for offline navigation on Android (there is also an iOS version that has maps but not driving directions yet). IMO the OsmAnd navigation UI is better than Google Maps, the search far worse.

If you're on Android, Nokia's Here application has fantastic offline navigation maps.

I believe those maps are what my car uses.

My car connects to Google for POI lookups over GPRS. However, it can't retrieve traffic data nor update it's maps. Android Auto is a nice alternative, but I'm an iOS user. ::Shakes Fist:: C'mon automakers.

There is Apple CarPlay as well: http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/

I love my built-in GPS in the car. For one, it displays directions in between the gauges, for another, it does a better job of unobtrusively providing audible directions without interfering with music.

> Any choice of touchscreen, OS or even network connection technology would probably be a "bad idea" in 5-10 years.

Ethernet via RJ45 has really good staying power; IEEE standard in 1990. A refrigerator at 10Mbps is probably sufficient, but if not, 10GBase-T is approaching affordability, and a standard for 40GBase-T is expected next year, although you may need to pull new wires.

802.11a/b (1999) are looking pretty good, too.

Everything I've ever seen with a 2GHz radio supports b, [0] and with a 5GHz radio supports a.

[0] Even though some AP admins deactivate 802.11b support for entirely valid throughput raisins. AIUI, 802.11a doesn't suffer from those issues.

Problem with 802.11 isn't the radio layer, it's the security. Early 802.11 didn't do security right at all, then we had WEP and that got broken, then WPA, then WPA2...

Example: I created wifi drivers for a handheld platform back in the 90's (Magic Cap), including support for the earliest 802.11 PC cards. Fans of the platform (both of them) encouraged me to update the drivers so they could continue using their handhelds over wireless, but it's simply not possible to get a 1999 wifi card on a modern wifi network in any half-secure fashion.

> Problem with 802.11 isn't the radio layer, it's the security.

True. It's a damn shame about WEP, and WPA2 didn't happen until 2004. But, 2004 is eleven years ago. Disgregarding the shitfest that is WPS-PIN, WPA2 with CCMP is looking rather good.

Are you aware of breaks in WPA2 with CCMP-only crypto and either a well-chosen passphrase, or WPA2-Enterprise with a proper client authorization scheme?

> ...it's simply not possible to get a 1999 wifi card on a modern wifi network in any half-secure fashion.

Not saying that there are any WiFi cards that behave in this manner, [0] but would a hypothetical WiFi card that only knows how to how to establish and pass around -er- frames(?) on a 802.11a/g link and relies on the client PC to use the frames passed back and forth to do link crypto & etc be

* Possible

* Reasonably sufficiently fast, given enough CPU power on the client

* Able to cope with any likely enhancements (such as the addition of WPA2 back in 2004) with a driver update, rather than a firmware update

?

[0] Even though I thought that pre 802.11ac Atheros cards had open firmware and open drivers, so one got pretty close to this.

> ... would probably be a "bad idea" in 5-10 years.

This is what I don't think people quite understand.

Same with (Android|Apple)Auto that's coming out. By the time you've paid it off, who is going to buy it?! You'll HAVE to trade it in at the dealership. That limits you in so many ways.

Android Auto and CarPlay don't completely replace the head-unit functionality. Most units have standard functions built in, with the additional option of Android Auto/CarPlay features.

In fact, the Android Auto/Carplay functionality is largely driven by the software on the phone, the headunit really just acts a dumb terminal when entering that mode.

If anything, this is a WAY more future proof design than the current in-car entertainment and navigation functions which rarely see updates. It is likely that Android/Apple will be around in a few years with regular updates you can take advantage of in your car, vs a navigation system that will never see a change, even a security update.

If the fridge for example, used "Android Fridge" or "Apple Chillplay" it is likely this problem wouldn't exist. An OTA on the phone which pushes the calendar to the fridge would solve this. This is how Android Auto and Apple Carplay work.

Both systems require somewhat dedicated connections to the phone. Android Auto uses remote display and doesn't really want you to interact with the device while running, for instance. For a fridge, a Chromecast style box that gets direct OTAs from Google would probably work best.

I thought that was the whole point of going with Android|Apple Auto vs the manufacturer's homebrew: at least you'd get updates for a few years.

Why?

My car has CarPlay/Android Auto/Mirrorlink.

First of all, it's in addition to the built-in systems which have AM, FM, SD card reader, HD radio, Sirius XM, navigation, Sirius NavTraffic, local gas prices, sports scores.

Secondly, why would nobody buy older tech?

Third, if the car was worthless because of outdated tech, why would a dealership buy it?

Fourth, even in this day and age, people still upgrade/replace the factory electronics.

I long for a world where my byo device (ipad,nexus tablet,whatever) can be slid into a cradle. We all agree that technology is bad when paired with long tail devices (tv's, fridges, even watches) So why not allow a universal cradle that fits the device dejour. After that an app and the appropriate hardware could be exposed via the cradle to cover all this and when the tablet is old hat, get a new one. Its not perfect but it is far better than the options we are getting now.

> fridges last years longer than any gadget

You are clearly holding^W using it wrong. You are supposed to buy new fridges way more often, duh...</sarcasm>

appliances and the like should have no more hardware that go gather and display information which is sent and received from one central point in the home. you should be able to ask about anything you want from anywhere and get the information you want where you are.

home, do I have milk? home, turn off the stove

or whatever control word is used to indicate you want to talk to your system.

Top Chef brothers? Or do you mean HGTV brothers?

The commercial featured the Voltaggio brothers, who were both on the 6th season of "Top Chef".