Gadgetory

well hear it howdy land in Frankfort you'd expect to see lots of cars lots of people by the way but one of the things that caught my eye the most was actually about this big a display of some of their new ideas for mm I there in car control interface come take a tour with me okay first of all here's the present audi MMI if you're not familiar with it you've got a knob you can turn and click you've got four regions around at that map to menu choices on the screen corners you've got this multifunction panel with a knob for volume and on/off and over here the newest thing you've got this touchpad that could also do handwriting recognition so that's the state-of-the-art great but a little big they found in the little tiny city cars they're showing now there's not enough console a real estate so what do you do you do this take a look so here's a much more compact way of doing all the same stuff check it out the handwriting pad is now on top of the knob and those various buttons for radio media and nav there now and a set of compact little rocker switches right there and those buttons that took up room for track forward and track back those are now integrated in the volume knob kick right kick left look how small that is ok then there's this one this is a future thing not ready for market but it's killing me it's very cool this fabric pad here has Braille underneath it I mean not real Braille where you can read the letter with your finger but Braille like regions of pins that are sticking up to create little high spots so check it out right now you can't really see this on camera I feel a high spot for those icons if I click on one I now get a list and it totally changes the pad now I feel rose that map to those lines Isis you get what I'm telling you here now I go to the map you see all those point of interest icons those are raised on the pad it works a lot better than it tells believe me I'm not sure if it's intentional but there's like this little piece of black shimmery silk / little bumps kind of obscene isn't it gets attention three ways today next year in their small cars someday and all their cars that Audi's letting you control the technology that is really what cars are kind of all about these days