MyFord Touch, along with the MyLincoln Touch pictured here, is a new system for controlling a vehicle's climate, entertainment, navigation and phone controls.
I don't like it and have written that on several occasions. And while I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness for quite a while, I've now been vindicated by Consumer Reports, which has reviewed MyFord Touch for its February 2011 issue. The magazine's editors found it to be "a complicated distraction while driving," and in addition, "first-time users might find it impossible to comprehend. The system did not always perform as promised."
That's basically what I've said since the first time I laid eyes on it. In fact, when judging vehicles for the Canadian Car of the Year award, I gave the Lincoln MKX low marks for ergonomics based on the faceplate you see here. Try driving and touching one of those tiny nubbins to turn the heat up. Sure, I could also have done it through a button on my steering wheel that would bring up a little LED picture in my instrument cluster, or I could have pushed another button and told the disembodied voice exactly what temperature I wanted. But why should such a simple request require so much technology?
Why, when I'm driving 100 km/h and my eyes are supposed to be on the road, should I have to do anything other than reach over and spin a big honkin' dial to turn the temperature up or down? Other than the fact that some design engineer thinks that this is what people want, why should any control on any vehicle be anything other than dead-nuts simple?
