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Comment by snake_plissken | Hacker News Reader

Not a designer or a manufacturing engineer so perhaps I don't understand the minutiae, but things we know that just work:

Switches Buttons Dials Knobs

and 3.5 mm jacks

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Touchscreens appeal to a lot of knuckleheads, but mainly the main reason they're so popular is because manufacturers can do the wiring once, then change the UI as much as they want without having to redo it. In other words, it's cheaper for them. One thing touchscreens don't do is perform better than physical buttons and knobs.

Soft keys/knobs have that exact same benefit, and people are quite familiar with the idea since it's ubiquitous in ATM interfaces. You get the software-defined functions and labels, without the touch screen. Quite popular with audio mixing consoles and tons of other professional gear, too.

Everyone always brings up this "it's cheaper" argument and I get it from an "only financial" standpoint.

But when was the last time and when is the next time you're going to change the behaviour of the "up" button on the steering weel to something like "switch to backwards gear" instead of "volume up" (the newest Volvo EX30 has touch buttons only on the steering wheel).

This argument is so dumb. This argument does not count for any replacement of knobs-to-touch-button, because there will (almost) never exist a use case for changing the behaviour of the button.

So IMHO manufacturers take something that worked and still works, replace it with something less error prone, simply to justify flexibility nobody asked for and noone will ever actually use.

Transferred to SWE, this is just overengineering.

As someone who's worked in auto manufacturing, moving buttons around happens all the time for all sorts of reasons. Different trims can have different buttons in the same place for example, or different cars using the same consoles.

It's not every button on every vehicle, but I have definitely had that conversation before when the hardware design is due to be finished before the product team is done changing things.

My people have a saying, "cheap shit"

> Knobs

And make the shape distinct enough that you can tell by feel!

Sorry - but 3.5 mm / 1/8“ jacks / plugs are crap. They are prone to kinds of contact issues / noise, are not sturdy enough to withstand lateral forces like their 6.3 mm / 1/4“ siblings. Their pull out force is either non existent or plug destroying. Unless they are of the rare threaded type I try to avoid them (just as barrel jacks). Better get a (mini-)XLR or Lemo connector…

Nobody has headphones with those connectors. Sounds like Bluetooth is for you.

I've got headphones with 1/4" connectors. I like the sets where the cord is detachable, each headphone has a jack, one is 1/4" one is 1/8", and the included cord has 1/4" on one end and 1/8" on the other. Then you can plug into whatever.

I'm not cool enough to have XLR on any of my devices.

There is no space to put big acoustic ports in the small gadgets, so they are replaced with usb-c instead. And I've had infinitely less number of problematic 3.5" ports than for example usb type-c ports across all gadgets I've ever owned. I.e. zero problematic 3.5" and so far two crapped out usb-c ports (I mean mechanically crapped, so they do function, but cables need to be shuffled around until contact is made and they are no longer held in place in the port).

Genuine Lemo connectors are about $40.

XLR connectors are huge.

But yeah, you're not wrong, just tilting at windmills. I look forward to the demise of barrel jacks in particular, but USB is what will replace them.

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