If my windscreen starts to steam up mid-jourmey, the last thing I need is to take my attention off the road to change the climate settings in the UI where dials and buttons will do the job much faster without needing to take my attention off the road.
This is why ill never get rid of my 2009 Tacoma. Three knob AC controls are the pinnacle of UI engineering. One knob for fan speed, one for temp and the third for vent/airflow selection. The backlight on one of my knobs has burned out at this point, but i dont need it…Can adjust the AC without taking my eyes off the road.
When it was ubiquitous, this meant i could do this in any car. Borrowed my inlaws FORD F-150 once, had to pull over to figure out how to turn off the goddam heat. It had BOTH a touchscreen and series of dash buttons but there were so many it was hard to figure out what did each thing while driving. I also had to update their dang infotainment, it wouldnt work on some random USB device, i had to go get a USB-A 3.0 device to get it to work at all and even then it was idling in my driveway for an hour and a half. Even tried just doing it via WiFi…nope