When we moved into our current house, it had a microwave like that. When we replaced it, my primary requirements were 1. multiple fan speeds, and 2. a nice, simple touch pad for entering the time; preferably one where you didn't need to press a button before starting to enter the cooking time.
The dial thing is... infuriating. It never once found a situation where it made using the device better, and in most situations it made it worse.
Digital dials can be nice in some cases.
My parents had an oven with a dial for the temperature. Spin it either way to increase or decrease the temperature by extra 5 degrees. I loved it. It was so much better than the touchpad design. The range of actual temperatures in an oven is pretty small and I found this much more friendly than punching in the temperature, getting it wrong, cancelling, and punching it in again. It was a “finger tip” dial so it was quick to spin. Probably horrible for people with bad arthritis or other hand mobility issues, though.
I wouldn’t mind a microwave with a similar dial for time. Again, the actual range of times in typical use (for me) is not that high. The design described with a two tier system for adjusting time seems moronic though.
The range of temperatures you use is about 200 degrees?
For the microwave time, it was a horrible experience pretty much every time I interacted with the device. A keypad is simple, intuitive, and easy to use.
“Okay, I want to cook for 3 minutes.”
‘300’
”Ok, the numbers don’t work until I press something else. Hmmm”
‘Time Cook’ ‘400’
“Shit. I hit the 4. Where’s the cancel?
‘Cancel’ ‘Time Cook’ ‘300’
“Where’s the start?”
‘Start’
It's a bit limited, in the sense that you can't set the time to e.g. 17:27. But who needs that?
When my old mechanical kitchen timer died on me, I bought a digital one with a dial, in the hope that it work the same way as the one on my microwave oven. Boy was I wrong. It kinda increases the interval when you spin it faster, but in a completely unpredictable and impractical way.
So I guess it's easy to make impractical dials, but it certainly is possible to make very well functioning dials as well.