I wonder the percentage of consumer (and business - have you ever used a POS in a pub?!) electronics this applies to? It's gotta be high 90s. I've lost track of the number of times I've lamented "did anyone actually use this?"

We have a combination oven and microwave (yes...) that seems to have been designed with the primary purpose of enraging the owner.

The microwave can only be set in 15 second increments. But you can fine-tune it, in five-second increments, by spinning a dial. Except that you can't do that while the oven is on.

The microwave makes a noise while it's operating. When it's finished, it will beep unobtrusively and then continue to make the operating noise. You can stop it from making the operating noise by opening the door.

The microwave can't be replaced, because it's part of the oven.

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.

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’

The range of temperatures you use is about 200 degrees?

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.

Actually I guess they both shave off weight/cost and design for built-in model first (that are naturally more heat-constrained) and make standalone variant as an afterthought.

Perhaps the actual audible alert on yours should be louder.

I would happily invest in kitchen appliances that have a silent mode for apartments and shared living spaces.

My microwave beeps at the end, and then beeps again 10 minutes later once the food has been removed. My old toaster beeped 5 times when the toast popped, which is unnecessary when the popping action is loud on it's own.

Mine is similar, also a combi. You spin the dial and it will go up in 10 second increments to a point, then in minutes, then in 5 minutes, then ten minutes, etc. Fine, I get it, it's like floating point. But it starts doing 5 minutes at the 10 minute mark! So you can't do 11-14 minutes. Which is actually about right for some things in an oven.

You also can't add more than 10 minutes to a short time without stopping the oven (this, I assume, is intended to be a safety thing to avoid being able to accidentally add hours of cooking without positive user intent).

And I do wish it would just stop the fan once it stops cooking, but I suppose the electronics next to the hot oven don't suddenly need less cooling just because the hot metal box doesn't have food in it.

I do like it though because it's much more efficient for small things than a big oven and I don't have space for a toaster oven and a microwave. And it has a much better UI for setting a delay start than the 6-button interface of the big oven.

> I do like it though because it's much more efficient for small things than a big oven and I don't have space for a toaster oven and a microwave.

You may have gotten the wrong idea. This isn't a combination where the same box functions as an oven and a microwave. This is a microwave that is for no reason physically attached to a separate oven - it takes up all the space of a big oven plus a normally sized microwave. The only thing they share is the display panel. And yet that didn't stop anyone from disabling microwave functionality while the oven is on.

There is absolutely no advantage to this compared to having an oven and a separate microwave, and many, many, many disadvantages. It continually boggles my mind that anyone ever designed, manufactured, or purchased this thing.

Check out Chesterton's Fence.

So, it wouldn't be a good idea to just rip that part out of the design. Even if it may be annoying. Perhaps a better explanation is needed, like some models showing "cool" in the display. But it's per se not a design oversight.

Chesterton's Fence is about not changing things before understanding what led to the current state of affairs. I think the principle easily extends to complaining as well.

I could criticize cars with combustion engines for having one and being so noisy/stinky/... Then I could go on claiming that they should just turn them off, cause there are cars without combustion engines which are less noisy/stinky/... I'd be missing that there is more to it than just turning off the engine. I'd need to replace it with something else, like an EV. Maybe that did not exist yet when that car was build. So, claiming that this old Ford from 1970 having a combustion engine is stupid because "this is not a problem that other cars have" is missing the point. I could go rip the engine out because I don't like that it's noisy/stinky/... But I'm in for a surprise here. The vehicle won't move anymore. Something I'd have understood had I followed the principle put forward by Chesterton's Fence.

> Chesterton's Fence tells us that there is no cost to eliminating this ridiculously awful functionality

No. It tells you to first understand what you are doing. Blindly claiming something misses that part.

Are you me? Lol. Sometimes I use software where I wonder "am I the only one that bought this and tried to use it?" I think part of the issue is that requirements get written by people who have no experience. They've never done the job the software will be used to augment and they don't know anything about software development. Then the requirements are used to outsource the actual design and development.

Using POS as an example (in a country with tipping culture). Imagine if a requirements document for the payment system said "must include an option to tip", but the design and development was done in a country where tipping culture isn't a thing. You'd likely end up with the "tip" option hidden away in a hard to reach place while everyone who uses the software knows it should be prominent and easy to use and could immediately tell you the design is poor.

You might enjoy [1] about a microcontroller that's ~3 cents, in quantity 10.

Of course it's only one-time-programmable, and generally pretty basic. And that's a pre-supply-chain-crisis price - these days prices have risen to 9 cents [2]. Still very cheap though!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYhAGnsnO7w [2] https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MC...

An ATTiny10 or PIC16F is so much better documented, so much better supported, so much more featureful, and so much better in every way that the average small-volume product design house will never make up the 40-cent price difference per part. How many development hours or support hours can you bill before you're penny-wise and pound foolish?

Their compiler/macro-assembler also seems to be working just fine, once you get past the UI from early 2000s. The error messages that must have been auto-translated from Traditional Chinese, but you squint a little bit and get the idea.

I know, I know, the industry doesn't want me to keep my device working longer than the lifespan of a Li-ion cell.

More ideas: "online account required for use", "collects location data", "phone call required to cancel subscription", "memory use: 350 MB" (just like calorie counts!), and so many others...

If we require labels, without the necessary strictly defined definitions, today's non-removable battery becomes tomorrow's "removable" battery. Because, hey, it is possible to remove it. Good luck getting everything back together if you aren't an engineer or extremely careful in how you disassembled things.

E-waste is a huge but so far mostly overlooked problem. Built-in obsolescence is great for exploitative businesses and bad for basically everyone and everything else. Unnecessarily restricting hardware repair or replacement might be the largest contributory factor in this problem.

Time to regulate.

For something long-lived and expensive, I will pay extra and accept a less sleek design for standardized removable batteries. I research most purchases of durable goods. Of course, I may not be the most profitable customer since I don't plan to buy a new widget every six months.

When I use something at my home, I usually have a constant stream of minor annoyances that could easily be fixed by the manufacturer. However, when I'm shopping for a new product, I dont remember any of them.

I'd sooner have a 18650-family (e.g. 14240 or 14500) become standard than a bunch of AAAs.

Not in my experience: our main TV is connected to a 2008 computer running Linux Mint that we use for netflix and amz prime. I've been using it in this way since 2016. The remote is an off-the-shelf wireless pointer thingy with a few buttons on it (works like a Wii controller) that takes 2x AAA batteries.

I've been recharging those 2x AAA batteries since 1996, and it still works fine enough that I don't feel compelled to replace them.

Not compared to alkalines, not since about 2005. Voltage regulation (i.e. a boost converter) plays well with NiMH rechargeables too, though not with alkalines.

That's assuming one of them is an appropriate size and voltage for the application. If more than one starts to seem like a good idea, consider a larger cell, higher voltage chemistry, or both.

Getting a bunch of consumers used to buying spare Li-ion cells and using external chargers might be a non-starter, but it's possible to have both onboard charging and removable cells so the upgrade path is there for those who want it.

There is probably room for standardization of a compact, rectangular, rechargeable battery of roughly those dimensions. Is someone pushing for it?

[1] https://www.apotelyt.com/camera-power/canon-g7-x-mark-iii-ba...

It seems to me the size of the G7X could have been designed around a 14500 cell instead.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

And even if google translate can help, there are of course other problems

20x might be the actual cheaper option

Yeah, I do software and Ive found the same thing: if I’m building it, then I’m actually the first user of the software, and I have all sorts of feedback for the designers. Luckily I’ve worked with some great designers who were usually more than happy to adjust the designs though.

If you don't mind me asking .. if it's that bad, why do you still work there? Is there a shortage in suitable jobs? (Honest question..)

So many red flags here.

Does that come from clients?

I used the same 3-in-1 latch circuit for power on/off, pairing, and software power off for 12 years.

A good enhancement mode NMOS FET can be as good as a physical switch at low voltages.

If you really need nano-amp level leakage current AND very low drop, you can consider turning to beefy depletion mode devices, which gate the user will discharge with the button press. A nice benefit is that you can directly sense the button press with an MCU.

I once even did a bluetooth mouse with this "hardware" switch, and a graceful shutdown: we sense voltage on the buck capacitor, and detect when the battery disconnect triggers.

The few microfarads in the capacitor are enough to send the last update with the 0% battery level, and a disconnect command.

Both! There aren't many of those out there, so I probably just outed myself. Oh well. Keep it quiet please?

> A good enhancement mode NMOS FET can be as good as a physical switch at low voltages.

Yes, it can work very well. You are correct that it need not be a physical switch. But it still does nothing if it is never brought out to the device's interface. And physical switches are still preferable if the software is broken, as it often happens to be during development.

> you can consider turning to beefy depletion mode devices

Depletion mode devices are not cost effective. If you think they are, point me to one cheaper than the LND150. (And, yes, I do know how to use them. Many designers do not.)

> I am pretty sure the market disagrees with you.

Not applicable - efficient market hypothesis requires a host of conditions to be true, and all of the following are unmet: information symmetry, sufficient number of suppliers, lack of monopoly effects, and rational consumers.

I think people really don't want e-waste. They don't want oceans (and now bodies) full of plastic. The industries have just done a great job of convincing them nothing can be done about the problem.

I think it's a bit more complex than that; a lot of properties that distinguish a "solid product" from "e-waste" are not at all obvious when you buy it, and it's not illegal and it is cheaper, and people got to make rent too, so... yeah. I agree: in the abstract most people don't "want e-waste", but they also look at costs and other factors, and they do "want e-waste" once you factor that in.

It probably shouldn't be strictly illegal too, but now you have a situation where:

1. Consumers blame industry and say that government should do something.

2. Industry says they're just producing what consumers want and that it's not illegal.

3. Government says they want consumers and industry to have free choice and call for different consumer actions and "self-regulation".

So basically, everyone is pointing at everyone else, and nothing gets done. And the arguments from the various sides aren't necessarily bad or malicious either: regulation does come with a cost, and cheap stuff does have its use.

Personally I think factoring in external environmental costs in to the product price would be good, but it's not so easy as it will make things more expensive, and already enough people are struggling to make ends meet (as the current high inflation rates show) so it all ties in to a lot of other issues as well.