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372 points

Yeah I really hope other car makers follow because I fucking hate touch controls in cars with a burning passion. It’s idiotic and not safe at all.

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203 points

Same goes for kitchens. Give me real buttons and knobs and not these abhorrent touch panels that refuse to work every third time. A good quality kitchen appliance is identified by high quality knobs that last for decades.

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100 points
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I pumped gas at a brand new Shell station over the weekend. The controls for the pump was one GIANT touchscreen (I’m talking probably 12 inches wide by 36 inches tall). It was fucking PAINFUL to use. Every touch took 2-3 seconds for the action to happen. Da fuck is wrong with a regular pump and regular buttons that just work!?

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104 points

Because then they don’t have a display the size of a living room TV to shove ads in your face

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27 points
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It should be illegal to connect a touch screen to a computer that runs like a potato. Even computers in the 80s could respond to keystrokes and mouse clicks in real time.

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18 points

In Canada it really sucks having to take your gloves off half the year. I hope this gets taken into account when touchscreens on gas pumps are considered.

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3 points

Your experience remembers me those old touch screen we had at the library in the 90s. The screen was monochrome, but touch sensitive. It took several seconds for react.

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2 points

What do you need a touchscreen for? You just take an appropriate pump (E95, Diesel), fill the fuel and pay at the register.

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2 points

Also it probably was crustier than a toddler’s iPad. 🤢

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1 point

It was slow because all of the memory was allocated for the ads they show you.

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45 points

Biggest problem is that they cheap out on the tech parts. Nobody complains that an iPad has a touch screen, cause it works. But an appliance tends to have a crappy UI, running on a crappy touch screen, powered by a crappy CPU.

If they just used quality parts, it’d probably be fine, and the only issue would be expensive replacement for an entire assembly, instead of small, cheap parts that can be fixed.

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27 points

A smartphone or tablet screen has the function to have multiple buttons and responsive functions on one and the same place.

A kitchen appliance doesn’t have or need that. Absolutely no need for digital or so-called “smart” gimmicks.

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31 points
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In general high quality things tend to have physical buttons and knobs as opposed to touch screen devices.

Instead of turning into e-waste after 5 years or less they can last for the next 30 to 50 years.

How many smart thermostats have become obsolete because their service providers stopped providing cloud services for them?

I just tore apart a working thermostat that almost 80 years old now (to understand how it works) and in perfectly working condition. It uses the physical properties of the materials inside to measure temperature (a coil of metal expands and contracts causing a pendulum to move clockwise or counterclockwise). Suspended at the top of this pendulum is a small vial of mercury containing two electrodes. When the pendulum is far enough counterclockwise the Mercury slides in the vial and bridges the electrodes, turning the furnace on, when the pendulum is far enough clockwise the mercury slides to the right and no longer bridges the electrodes.

When you set the temperature on the thermostat you are changing the default position of this pendulum. Meaning that it has to move more or less distance for the bead of mercury to bridge the circuit.

It’s brilliantly simple and will continue to work essentially forever. The physical characteristics of the materials involved won’t change.

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15 points
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How many smart thermostats have become obsolete because their service providers stopped providing cloud services for them?

Same goes for pretty much every IoT device that people seem to be filling their homes with.

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5 points

But it can’t run DOOM.

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1 point

You should read Exhalation by Ted Chaing if you haven’t already. It’s a quick read

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24 points

Touch screens especially don’t make sense in the cooking context, where your hands are likely to be wet / damp.

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18 points

Touch controls for burners are very dangerous in my opinion. What if i spill oil on the stove and touch screen? Now the oil might stop me from turning off the heat and the situation could quickly turn into a fire.

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13 points
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Omg I feel that. The oven in my apartment has touch controls. When I’m baking stuff with lots of moisture inside, water evaporates and is expelled though a vent JUST BELOW the touch controls. The condensation makes them completely unresponsive. Smh

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1 point

You have to wonder if the engineer who designed that was a complete dumbass because it seems remarkably obvious that you’d want to keep moisture away from electronics.

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10 points

I was boiling pasta earlier and my fucking stove turned itself off and engaged the child lock because water splashed onto those controls. THREE TIMES!

I’ve had this piece of shit literally ruin dinner before. It’s amazing how it can be both really nice and really fucking useless at the same time.

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5 points

Agreed, it’s true for most devices. They’re often finicky, don’t offer anything in terms of feedback (Except maybe for a beep that is identical for all button presses) and they don’t last.

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3 points

I’m really on the fence when it comes to kitchens because a) you actually have time to look at what you’re doing – if you need to lower temperature suddenly the better option is to take your pan off the stove, anyway and b) touch controls are trivial to clean.

What I can’t stand though is scales manufactures being so cheap as to not even have capacitive buttons but re-use the front left/right feet as sensors for the interface. On the upside the thing was dirt cheap and actually comes with an USB-C port to charge its LIR2450 cell.

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2 points

Nah I just got new ovens and a hob and they are sleek and easy clean and work like a charm.

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1 point

I like touch panels but don’t mind physical buttons.

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35 points

It’s idiotic and not safe at all.

Not to mention completely useless in places where you need to wear gloves when driving.

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-8 points

Volvo car touchscreens work with gloves on.

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-31 points

wear gloves when driving

For example?
If it’s so cold that you wear gloves, then get your AC fixed because it should’ve been running by the time you drive off.

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30 points

Hmm, that’s a strange comment you left. I’m not the person you responded to but:

When I get off work it’s just before dawn (coldest part of the day) and it’s frequently 10 Fahrenheit or lower in the winter (below freezing). I wear gloves in my car in the winter because cars don’t warm up enough for the heat to come on right away. I don’t want to walk through the cold into a cold car and grab a literal freezing steering wheel and hold on to it for 10 mins until the heat kicks on. My drive is about 35 min in good conditions.

I’m assuming you live in a warm place or don’t drive a car, good for you. Wish I had public transportation.

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4 points

My car takes 15 minutes to warm up enough for the heat to work at all let alone get the interior to a comfortable temperature.

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4 points

I got a new car two years ago, and physical buttons were one of the determining factors.

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