Audi’s A8 is a declaration of war on buttons, but now the battle with fingerprints begins
July 11, 2017 | Uncategorized
If there’s one thing that truly signposts the distance in interface development between phones and cars, it’s the reliance on buttons: phones are almost completely devoid of them, whereas cars seem to be abiding by a minimum quota of physical widgets, toggles, and doodads. But not the new Audi A8. This luxury sedan exhibits a deliberate hostility to buttons, opting instead for smooth black surfaces that transform into multifunctional touchscreens with realistic haptic feedback when the car is turned on. It’s a laudable and overdue minimalism in car design, but having spent the past 40 minutes inside the A8’s cabin, I can say it’s only a step in the right direction — one that shows we’re still closer to the beginning than the end of car…
