[gary_0]

Yes! I don't want a car with an "innovative" way of steering. I don't want a huge amount of creativity to go into how my light switches work. I don't want shoes that "reinvent" walking for me (whatever the marketing tagline might say).

Some stuff has been solved. A massive number of annoyances in my daily life are due to people un-solving problems with more or less standardized solutions due to perverse economic incentives.

[grvbck]

> I don't want a car with an "innovative" way of steering.

99.5 % agree, because I would love to try SAAB:s drive-by-wire concept from 1992: https://www.saabplanet.com/saab-9000-drive-by-wire-1992/

[KellyCriterion]

The thing why this was only a research project and never came into mass production was regulatory stuff, IIRC? (most EU countries require, still until today, a "physical connection between steering wheel and wheels" in their trafic regulation)

[sublinear]

I think there's a ton of innovation left to be done regarding steering and light switches.

You're right that it's not going to be better designs, but paradigm shifts.

We still don't know what it means to provide input to a mostly self-driving car. It hasn't been solved and people continue to complain about attention fatigue and anxiety. Is the driving position really optimal for that? Are accident fatalities reduced if the driver is sitting somewhere else? Even lane assist still sucks on traditionally designed cars. Is having to fight a motorized wheel to override steering really all that safe?

Light switches may be reliable and never go away, but we have many well-established everyday examples of automatic lights: door switches, motion sensing, proximity sensing, etc. You never think about it and that's the point.

[dijit]

> Yes! I don't want a car with an "innovative" way of steering.

You might, but you'll never really know.

I mean, steering wheels themselves were once novel inventions. Before those there was "tillers" (a rod with handle essentially)[0], and before those: reigns, to pull the front in the direction you want.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benz_Patent-Motorwagen

[gary_0]

I highly doubt there's a steering input device so superior to the current wheel shape that it's worth throwing out the existing standard. Yes, at one point how steering should work (or how you should navigate the Web) was uncertain, but eventually everyone settled on something that worked well enough that it was no longer worthwhile to mess with it.

Although, one thought I had is that there's nothing wrong with experimenting with non-standard interfaces as long as you still have the option to still just buy, say, a Toyota with a standard steering wheel instead of 3D Moebius Steering or whatever. The problem is when the biggest manufacturers keep forcing changes by top-down worldwide fiat, forcing customers to either grin and bear it or quit driving (or using the Web) entirely.

[bigfishrunning]

You need to be careful here, because we have a real tendency to get stuck in local maxima with technology. For instance, the QWERTY keyboard layout exists to prevent typewriter keys from jamming, but we're stuck with it because it's the "standardized solution" and you can't really buy a non-QWERTY keyboard without getting into the enthusiast market.

I do agree changing things for the sake of change isn't a good thing, but we should also be afraid of being stuck in a rut

[1dom]

I agree with you, but I'm completely aware that the point you're making is the same point that's causing the problem.

"Stuck in a rut" is a matter of perspective. A good marketer can make even the most established best practice be perceived as a "rut", that's the first step of selling someone something: convince them they have a problem.

It's easy to get a non-QWERTY keyboard. I'm typing on a split orthlinear one now. I'm sure we agree it would not be productive for society if 99% of regular QWERTY keyboards deviated a little in search of that new innovation that will turn their company into the next Xerox or Hoover or Google. People need some stability to learn how to make the most of new features.

Technology evolves in cycles, there's a boom of innovation and mass adoption which inevitably levels out with stabilisation and maturity. It's probably time for browser vendors to accept it's time to transition into stability and maturity. The cost of not doing that is things like adblockers, noscript, justthebrowser etc will gain popularity and remove any anti-consumer innovations they try. Maybe they'll get to a position where they realise their "innovative" features are being disable by so many users that it makes sense to shift dev spending to maintenance and improvement of existing features, instead of "innovation".

[jaapz]

> For instance, the QWERTY keyboard layout exists to prevent typewriter keys from jamming, but we're stuck with it because it's the "standardized solution" and you can't really buy a non-QWERTY keyboard without getting into the enthusiast market.

So, we are "stuck" with something that apparently seems to work fine for most people, and when it doesn't there is an option to also use something else?

Not sure if that's a great example

Sometimes good enough is just good enough

[matkoniecz]

> the QWERTY keyboard layout exists to prevent typewriter keys from jamming

even if it is true (is it a myth by any chance?), it does not mean that alternatives are better at say typing speed

[account42]

These days QWERTY keyboards are optimal because programs, programming languages and text formats are optimized for QWERTY keyboards.