evnow said:
There are simply no buttons to easily select an album among the thousands available. It is either touch screen or voice. Choose your poison.
This statement gets to the crux of the issue.
Selecting albums & songs from a library of thousands is what I would call "new functionality". It is a complex operation and provides a level of functionality that frankly would require too many specialized buttons, displays that would not be intuitive.
I can think of one other function that may be approaching vestigial status: the radio tuner dial. While an actual "dial" is certainly intuitive and simple enough that it can be implemented as a dial, it doesn't represent how we use the infotainment systems in our car these days. So you could make an argument for ditching that particular control (I know there are some hard core FM radio junkies that will disagree here).
But certain functions (adjusting temp up & down for example) are so simple that the most intuitive interface is a dial or a slider....and a real one, not a virtual one on a screen that you have to hunt & peck for or get into that "mode" on the screen and hit a relatively small target, or maybe remove your gloves to use.
And sure, maybe voice commands could work, but let's take the example of adjusting the volume of the music. Am I going to have to call out a specific number between 1 and 100? If I say "volume up" is it going to jump up by 1? 10? How do I do fine vs. coarse control? Do I need to hit a button to get into voice control mode in the first place, and does it mute the audio during voice commands so it can understand me? How do I do fine vs. coarse control? When I'm adjusting the volume in the car, the ability to fine tune it with touch without taking my eyes off the road is extremely important.
Now I realize that clearly audio volume is a prime candidate for steering wheel control for this purpose, but it illustrates the point I'm trying to make which is that sometimes complicated GUIs or voice commands are the answer, but for some basic functions, a good old fashioned dedicated knob or slider is really the best solution. And then I don't have to worry about whether the command is "anti-fog" as you called it or "defrost" as I call it!