Programming Your Car

Remember the good old days when you bought a new car and you could just jump in it and drive? You didn’t have to spend hours reading the owner’s manual before you could drive it home from the showroom and you didn’t need a degree in computer science to set the dashboard clock.

Sadly those days are all but gone and here is a true story of one man – a technology analyst – who has spent 18 hours programming his new Infiniti G35 … and he still hasn’t finished.

Infiniti G35 dash
It might look simple but …

It seems that some car makers are realising that we’re all going to have problems as their products become more and more high-tech. Some believe that the solution involves voice recognition but frankly that scares me even more than 18 hours of programming.

You see I have a very minor speech impediment – it’s so minor that you wouldn’t notice it but anything that requires voice recognition seems to have great trouble recognising what I say. Our local electricity provider has this you-beaut voice recognition system that answers their phones and no matter what I say it can never understand me.

I’m not looking forward to the day when my car tells me that it can’t understand me either.

Programming Your Car

2 thoughts on “Programming Your Car

  1. There are some exciting technologies right now and on the way, but they need to make them user friendly if they are to appeal to those that are not confident in using them.

  2. They certainly do need to make them user-friendly Matt – the designers have got to remember that there are lots of people out in the real world who are challenged by the remote controls on our television sets 🙂

    Personally I still like to get into a car that takes some real concious effort to drive and doesn’t think for me.

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