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Comment by cabinguy | Hacker News Reader

I remember when microwaves had one dial and no buttons, no digital touchscreens. You set the dial to the desired cook time in minutes/seconds, and it automatically started (as long as the door was closed).

Same with an oven. Turn the dial to 350 and the oven was on and set to 350. It took a fraction of a second vs a touch screen.

These new interfaces are often a terrible use of "technology" and are actually a step (or more) backward.

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I remember those days - I liked our microwave with just a time knob and a start knob.

But it had its drawbacks. My young children couldn't set the time to heat their oatmeal. "Turn it to 1 minute". They'd twist the knob and say "Is that enough?" Without knowing enough about time they couldn't (yet) figure out to turn right or left to get to the right number.

With a digital one, they'd just poke 1,0,0 and hit start.

By the time I had kids, the dial interface was long gone...but if I could teach my kids to push 1,0,0, start, I'd bet I could teach them what 1:00 looked like on the dial pretty quickly.

Not really. They have to be able to understand math, not just memorize digits.

Young children behavior is interesting, I remember a friend whose 3 year old boy can’t read but fully capable of using his parents phone to watch Youtube. The boy constantly use Voice Recognition instead of keyboard input in such a fluid manner. After the search shows up, the boy simply pick the cartoon he liked.

Tap and swipe is first nature to him. What fascinates me is, this boy cant figure out how to turn on the tv because he keeps tapping amd swiping the remote control. I once saw him trying to swipe on the light switch as well.

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