Acura’s new 2025 ADX keeps dials and buttons alike
Posted on 10/01/2025 5:36:30 PM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
It seems that the world of technology—including the automotive industry—is undergoing a “re-buttoning” phase. While touchscreens remain a dominant feature in vehicle interiors, automakers are revisiting the value of physical controls as drivers rediscover their importance. Driving, after all, is one area where practicality and safety demand simplicity. But what’s driving this shift in design philosophy?”
Rachel Plotnick, an Associate Professor at Indiana University Bloomington and something of a “button guru,” has been studying this tactile resurgence for years. As the author of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing (2018), Plotnick has explored the psychology and cultural history of buttons and their enduring role in technology. Today, she’s helping companies refine their interfaces, balancing the digital with the tactile.
In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, Plotnick was asked about the factors driving the “re-buttoning of consumer devices,” a trend that is becoming increasingly apparent in car interiors. The expert responded:
“Maybe screen fatigue. We spend all our days and nights on these devices, scrolling or constantly flipping through pages and videos, and there’s something tiring about that. The button may be a way to almost de-technologize our everyday existence, to a certain extent. That’s not to say buttons don’t work with screens very nicely – they’re often partners. But in a way, it’s taking away the priority of vision as a sense, and recognizing that a screen isn’t always the best way to interact with something.”
In cars, this critique has teeth. Plotnick highlights that touchscreens can be unsafe in certain contexts, as they demand visual attention to operate—something drivers simply can’t spare. Physical controls, by contrast, offer the “simplicity of limiting our field of choices” and allow for intuitive operation without diverting focus from the road.
To their credit, many automakers are beginning to recognize the limitations of touchscreens—or, lets be honest, the pitfalls of cost-cutting measures that eliminated physical controls in favor of screens—all thanks to growing consumer backlash. Physical buttons, switches and knobs for essential functions, like climate control and volume adjustment, are making a gradual comeback.
Acura’s new 2025 ADX keeps dials and buttons alike
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
“a co-pilot to run the electronics” LOL — I hear you. Just a few days ago, I asked my co-pilot to adjust the fan speed for me! True story!
It’s that minuscule pin-head size switch way down low, hidden in the depths of dash/console darkness, invisible without a 100,000 candlepower search & rescue light.
I met the first toug-ch screen I had ever seen decades ago in my boss’s Buick It was a largish screen in front of the dash and included the radio, horn, blinkers,windows as nontactile little circles on that screen. I was agahast. A driver would have to be looking at that screen half the time while driving in town. I prefer radios with knobs and other controls to be switches and levers that can be felt. In my old truck I don’t have to look at a damned screen to see where to put a finger. I can reach over and feel the radio off/on button and the tuning dial or buttons while watching traffic, I can grab the blinker without having to put my finger tip prcisely on the right little circle. I don’t have to take my eye off of traffic. These touch screens cater to women who talk on their cell phones and text a lot while driving. I admit I am an old fogey about some elecronics. I have this PC and a radio at home but no cell and no TV.
I used to be almost 5-11 and had no trouble. These days, I’m finding I move the seat farther forward than I used to!
My last four company vehicles have been variations of the same model F-150.
Plus I bought one of them for myself. I have to order a new one soon and I’m not really looking forward to it.
It’s relatively traditional. The screen is only for the radio, clock etc.
Everything else is tactile.
My mother in law has a Ford Edge. She was told it’s a great vehicle for seasoned citizens. It socks for old people. The control panel is hitting but they’re all about 1/4” in size and you can’t read the dark gray print on a black background. Plus there’s about 20 buttons on a 5x7 panel.
Build a 2006 Buick Lucerne CXS and sell it at an inflation adjusted 2006 price and I will buy one tomorrow. But improve the seals on the stupid three piece block.
How about a Grand Marquis? One of the most refined designs ever. Like driving your living room at 80 mph and 27 mpg.
Simple, repairable, reliable vehicles.
I just want to press the button, hear a click and the machine to run.
The touch screen or the "buttons that are not actually buttons" are also difficult for people who are disabled to deal with. Finding appliances that work for someone who is blind is not easy any more.
And of course the "smart touchscreen" is going to be useless in less then a decade as the company that makes them is now out of business and it no longer connects to anything.
But I just bought a new car!
The privacy invasion associated with cars built over the past 15 years is unconscionable. Your conversations, locations, even habits while driving are no longer private.
What a shame.
They cite the cost of designing, engineering, sourcing, and wiring separate controls, switches, relays, etc., but can use separate digital controls instead electronic switches and mechanical levers, while leaving out the screen.
It's simple enough to use different shaped keys, dials, slides, blacklights, etc., they can even use ones that vibrate when adjusted.
I bought my wife a new Lexus RX-350 in 2018. It’s a great car but all alarms, displays, etc are enough to drive me crazy. The only time I ever drive it is on trips or when it’s time for service. I love my 04 F-150, other than a/c, cruise control and a stereo, it’s a basic truck that I can work on.
I love my new Tesla, but having to screw with the screen to adjust my air vents is maddening.
We have a newer car with touch buttons and screens, and a 2012 car with tactile knobs and buttons.
I prefer the old car because I’ve learned to do everything by touch without taking my eyes off the road. Despise the touchscreens!
Of course the old car doesn’t have backup camera or Bluetooth.
Subaru, for one, has learned its lesson. The current Outback is almost all screen and menu driven, with hardly any physical controls. The next generation, which will start with the 2026 model year, brings back a large number of knobs and push buttons. The vertical portrait mode infotainment screen was rotated 90 degrees to landscape orientation, which allows for the return of physical controls beneath it. If the Forester keeps the vertical screen for 2027 I’m going to give up and get an Outback.
There should be two categories of vehicles manufactured in the current automobile industry:
1. vehicles with digital technology
2. vehicles without digital technology
And if you lived up north then the salt from the bottom of your boots corroded the button leaving it constantly jammed in one position.
Hmmm, temperature and climate control... Let’s see...
Tibetan wilderness?
No...ah here is one...
Land of the Pharoes...
Look the pyramid is opening up.. which one, the one with the ever widening hole in it,!!! I know let’s stand him on his head...Now it’s morning!!!
Now that was from another time...
Mrsmaw bought a car with screens that constantly stop displaying what you have them set for to display some entirely unnecessary garbage while driving so that when you look the information is regularly not there and you have to cycle through the settings to get it back.
So you cant operate the vehicle properly because the information isnt there and you cant control the vehicle while attempting to operate because youre so busy looking at screens that your eyes arent on the road.
You betcha. I have a old style VW beetle convertible.
4 speed manual. Wing windows. Crank they all the way out and you get a hell of a blast of air. My dad used to call it 4/60 A/C. Open all 4 windows and hit 60 mph.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.