Ah, this brings back memories of the old "If Detroit designed cars like Microsoft designed software" jokes of the late 90s...
I once had the opportunity to chat with Woz. Somehow we got on the subject of cars and he told me that he had a Toyota and a Mercedes. He explained that the Toyota had all the latest and greatest technology. More features than you could shake a stick at, so to speak. But! To cram in all those features, the engineers had a monumental task. The end result was that you, as the driver, were forced to adapt to the car.
On the other hand, he told me, while the Mercedes had less features you could tell that the first thing the designers had drawn in, when sketching out the design, was the driver.
Right. The fundamental problem here is that the old school buttons and dials have a hidden logic to them: namely that you can distinguish and grasp them without taking your eyes from the road.
This seems like a general UI consideration for physical objects. If the object is being aimed at something or demands the use of vision, the affordances should be designed for sight-free operation. Examples: a gun's trigger, a camera's button, a car's gear shift, a microscope's stage adjustment.
That sounds weird. Toyota generally waits for a technology to become mainstream before using it. They also work with very few suppliers (mainly Denso). Mercedes on the other hand usually have the latest tech. They used a fully graphical instrument cluster years before anyone else. I think Woz' comment has more to do with the cultural differences of Japan and Germany, than technology.
I once had the opportunity to chat with Woz. Somehow we got on the subject of cars and he told me that he had a Toyota and a Mercedes. He explained that the Toyota had all the latest and greatest technology. More features than you could shake a stick at, so to speak. But! To cram in all those features, the engineers had a monumental task. The end result was that you, as the driver, were forced to adapt to the car.
On the other hand, he told me, while the Mercedes had less features you could tell that the first thing the designers had drawn in, when sketching out the design, was the driver.