Microwave UIs suck so bad. I’ve yet to find an improvement on the classic two analog knobs system, where one controls power and the other sets time.
That actually sounds lit I didn’t know that existed
That is how the first ones (that I saw) worked. I was so happy when I saw that not only do they still exist, my local grocery store started selling them. I bought my second one a few days ago.
Mine has a button to cycle between 5 power levels, a knob for time, and the start button is also a 30 second button. It’s perfect
I’m not sure 160 is 2 minutes on my microwave.
What happens when you type “1-6-0” on the time?
It probably becomes 1m 60s. I’ve had microwaves do it both ways, either having it only be in seconds or having seconds for two digits.
Edit: I’m dumb and very tired from Holidays, I’m leaving this up anyways though.
I’ve absolutely done it before because I’m weird. Entering 1:90 (on my Kenmore microwave) ticks down 1:89… 1:88… etc. until it hits 1:00 at which point it will continue as normal to 0:59.
1:60 behaves similarly.
I have a feeling the “add 30 seconds” button will correct it to proper time format, but I’ll test it for science.
A trick I learned from my dad was to do a quick “9-9-start” to get about a minute and a half
“9 0 start” is the same number of buttons. Also +30 seconds 3 times gets exactly 90 seconds. Your dad was trolling
“9 0 start” is the same number of buttons.
Yeah but you gotta move your finger from the 9 to the 0, which is slower
Also +30 seconds 3 times gets exactly 90 seconds
It didn’t have that button then
What did he do with all of the time he saved?
If he’s anything like me, that time would be spent on ranting about microwave ovens.
Absolutely nothing. We both got the ADHD bad.
My microwave won’t start with just the add 30 seconds button. Others that I’ve used work that way, but not this one. So 9-9-start would work for me, while add 30 3 times would not.
On mine, you can only add 30 seconds, if you started it with that button. If you start the microwave any other way, the “+30 sec” button does nothing. It’s annoying.
So if I’m reheating something on power level 7 or 8 (or even cooking popcorn with the popcorn button), I can’t just add 30 seconds. I have to let it end and then start it up again.
You change the power?! In 44 years i have never changed the power.
Oh wow I find that so interesting - basically it’s up to the manufacturer to decide what “add 30 seconds” means and so everyone does something different, it would seem.
Tbh I think I would prefer your way, bc I far more often want to do merely 30, 60, or 90 seconds total (so just 1-3 presses of that button 🔘), whereas I virtually never want to change the timing of something after I’ve already started it. It probably depends heavily what task it’s being used for - rewarming a drink, 90s tiny popcorn bag, 30s quick warming of food after it cooled, etc., and more importantly how routinely the task is performed.
And for that reason it would be cool if they could be reprogrammed:-). Linux has spoiled us all far too much:-).
I dunno. I’ve never put in a time on my microwave - i just use the add button. Does it give you a minute and 60 seconds. Thats weird.
I have an analog microwave from 2007. It just has a mechanical timer
deleted by creator
Chalk it up to a Christmas food coma cause I didn’t catch that until you said it
There are moments when I miss the stupid useless awards from Reddit.
Here you go … it was given to me and now I’m giving it to you.
I am so saving this for later
Lemmy gold 🥇
You mean here on Lemmy? I think they disabled them on reddit anyway.
Clearly shows that hours and minutes are messy units. The French Revolution fixed a lot of stupid problems, but decimal time just didn’t stick for some reason.
Cannot say why decimal time didn’t stick, but a similarly-proposed semi-decimal calendar with 12 months of 3 weeks each of 10 days was abandoned in France solely because Napoleon didn’t like it.
It was also designed to frustrate Sunday church attendance because Sundays being every seven days would usually fall on a weekday on a workweek based on a ten-day week. While Revolutionary France experimented with state atheism and then deism, it eventually returned to Catholicism.
France spread its decimal measurements (the metre, gram, and litre) to the countries that Napoleon conquered or tried to conquer, but by that time, France was well beyond the “stamp out all semblance of religion” phase of its revolution, so a calendar designed with the intent to stifle religious attendance in mind was never going to stick very long once the French had left those territories. Besides, doing maths on length, volume, and mass is something that people do far more often than performing those calculations on dates. Sure, it would have made some things more convenient, but I’m guessing that for most people, the ten-day weeks just stuck out like a sore thumb.
In normal everyday life, you rarely need to involve time in your calculations. In science and engineering you do, and that’s when you run into problems.
When comparing two pumps, you run into issues like this. Which one is bigger: 29 m^3/h or 410 l/min. Doing calculations like that once or twice is recreational mathematics, but in a professional setting, these conversions are speed bumps standing in the way of getting stuff done.
Don’t they have conversation lookup tables for stuff like that? Been years since I was in school so maybe those aren’t really used anymore? At least to convert the numerator to different units.
Pump manufacturers are like: “We’re selling this professional grade stuff to people who know what they’re doing. They know how to math their way through this mess.”
They do, his take is nonsense and sounds like RP, don’t take it too seriously. Any trained engineer can tell you the historical reasons why we use base 60 for circles. This is actually a well known computer science issue, but not an engineering or math one.
Because 2:00 = 1:60
Or are we going to implement metric time?
The French tried to, briefly.
I get the 2:00, but shouldn’t it be 120? Or am I dumber than I thought? 60+60 still = 120, right?
1:60 = one minute and 60 seconds, or two minutes.
120 would be parsed as one minute and 20 seconds, or 80 seconds.
Took me a bit to get too.
You can also punch in 90 to get 1:30. I may have been extra lazy a few times to learn that.
It’s not really lazy until you’re putting in “88” to save a keystroke and extra finger movement.
It’s not 160 (seconds) it’s 1 (minutes) **:**60 (seconds). My microwave always keeps the : when I input time.
my microwave has a wheel
And if my grandma had wheels she’d have been a bicycle
Everyone would get a ride
My grandma had wheels. She had both a car, AND a walker.
They all do, you put the food on it and it spins while its cooking.
Mine has special patterns on the walls to distribute the waves so there’s no need for a turntable. It’s nice because there’s extra space inside, plus no mechanism so it’s super easy to clean.
For like a full year after getting it, my brain would perceive a phantom rotation of whatever was in there, just because it had never seen a microwave without it.
I used to have one like that as well, most baffling design decision I’ve ever seen
Edit: Clarification:
I’m not down with all this fancy technology.
My microwave has a dial and some cogs and that’s about as far as I’m prepared to go. An added bonus is that I don’t get blinded whenever walking into the kitchen in the middle of the night
what??? I have NEvER and I mean NEVER!!! seen a microwave with buttons EVER!!! in real life.
Your microwave does math funny
Sub-Thought: I wonder how many people punch in “1:00” instead of “60”?
Answer: not enough. Sub-sub-thought: of those people, how many open the door at 0:01 to avoid the bell?
If they do that, they’d better fucking clear the timer.
I shoot for opening between 0-1. So it clears the timer and doesn’t beep. It was either get good at that, or check the manual for how to turn off the beep noise, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to learn how to read.
I don’t clear the timer because my +30 sec button will only work to start the microwave if there’s time left on the timer. If there’s no time left on the timer, the +30 button is useless until I punch something in.
I’ll only buy a microwave if it stops beeping when I open the door. So if I open it right as the timer finishes then it only does like half of one beep.
Side note, the microwave also needs to go straight to time entry once I start pressing numbers. I’ve seen some stupid microwaves that you need to press a Time Cook button before the numbers or it will assume you are using its preset cook settings like “pizza” or “soup”.
I’ve put a note on my microwave to mute all beeps. I’ve made it very clear to my wife, in the event of my untimely death, she is to show her next husband how to turn off the beeping after a power outage.
Wait you can turn off the beeping???
Not on all of them. Ask me how I know.
Since we’re talking about the fine polish UX of microwaves, one feature I highly value that not all have is that it should end cooking at exactly the same angle I put it in. It should complete a whole number of rotations while running.
I know, for example, that my microwave completes one full rotation every 10 seconds. If I want to heat something for 45 seconds, it’ll end up backwards. But that’s on me for not using a multiple of 10 seconds.
For my microwave its 20 second intervals. But also, let’s say I open the door mid-run, if the tray is rotating clockwise, when I restart it it will rotate counterclockwise. Every time you open it it reverses it’s rotation.
I don’t know if all microwaves do this, or just mine. I never really had cause to notice until I started making desserts and candies, where you often nuke for 10 seconds, stir, 10 seconds, stir to melt chocolate. Easiest to just set for 40 seconds and open/close than it is to reset each time. This is the only microwave I’ve done that with, though, so idk if it’s common
I thought modern microwaves didn’t rotate at all. My Neff one doesn’t and it’s a few years old.
+30s button, twice
I do
To save time on things that need to be microwaved for 1:30, I just hit 90 then start. Saves 1 button click.
The fastest way to get one minute on a microwave is to press the “add 30 seconds” button twice
I didn’t realize I was so spoiled. On mine, the 1, 2, and 3 buttons add 1-3 minutes, respectively. And I don’t have to hit start either. I want a minute I press 1, done. 90 seconds would be 1 and +30, two button presses.
Rest of time savings can be achieved by practicing 30 minutes per day
More efficient to enter 99 seconds, to save time moving your finger from the 9 to the 0.
Jokes on you, my 6 button doesn’t work so 160 gets me 10 seconds
“9999” equals 1 hour, 40 mins, and 39 seconds
Meanwhile, to heat up some chicken gently for my mutt it’s
Power power power power power power power start one zero zero start.
(one minute at 500 watts)
I miss my Akai at home with its memory button.
Every microwave I’ve had, you hit the power button then the number corresponding to the power level you want.
Really? Every microwave I’ve had you hit a number and it’s cooks your food for that many minutes. No power option, but you can set it prior to heating your food.
They are saying that. Its a button on the microwave, you hit it before or after the time input, but its not usually a repeatedly hit button. On mine I would hit the time I wanted, then power, then the number for the percent power I want like 5 is 50%, then start.
I do have a potatoe button that works by pressing it over and over to select weight though.
I don’t think you can even input :60 except as in 2 presses of [+30 seconds]
Huh, all of mine since I was a kid have taken numbers up to 99 in seconds. Gotta admit I’ve never tried x60-x99
I regularly use 55 or 66 instead of just hitting start 2x which does the 30 second thing because it’s so ingrained.
And 44 seconds is known as an Obama, 33 a Truman, 22 a Cleveland, and 11 a Polk.
Pressing more than one number is sacrilege. and 45 is treasonous.
And 44 seconds is known as an Obama, 33 a Truman, 22 a Cleveland, and 11 a Polk.
Pressing more than one number is sacrilege. and 45 is treasonous.
This should be codified
Had a friend who got a microwave that instead of a numpad it had a dial like a volume knob. It was so irritating for some reason to twist it and then have to turn it the opposite way to correct it. Like you wanted 45 seconds and you’d twist and it’s be at 1:30, youd scroll back, 35… 50, fuck it good enough. I just would twist it to a number and then stop it 45 seconds in after I realized it was that way
Every microwave I’ve ever lived with has had a knob to input time. Maybe this is a regional thing?
My old one was completely analog and just had dials for time and power and a single button to open the door. Truly an efficient interface!
Older (and cheaper) ones have an analogue dial. More modern ones have a digital timer.
What? Of course you can… At least on every microwave I’ve ever had.
Isn’t 159 faster
+30s +30s +30s +30s
My microwave doesn’t have speed cook, so this is the fastest way to get 2m on the clock
You guys are getting buttons?
My Japanese microwave only has an imprecise knob to turn. It came free with the apartment, so I can’t complain too much.
I suppose it prevents people from accidentally doing something like hitting 20:00 instead of 2:00 and starting a fire.
I love knobs. You just turn them and the thing turns on. And no one needs an exact time measurement on a microwave anyways.
I need exact seconds and power settings for multiple things, including heating up small amounts of dog food a small amount.
People that thing microwaves suck to heat up food are just rawdogging the +30 seconds button.
Alright, did not expect that. To me, it’s just that the food I’m trying to heat often enough varies in terms of amount or how much water is in there, so that it just seems extremely futile to try to heat it precisely. But yeah, I can see dog food or such being consistent enough that this works.
Generally high is too high for most foods, where it overcooks the outsides and still cold in the middle. Regulating the power setting and time is like using the settings on a stove and taking stuff off when done.
Melting cheese, heating mashed potatoes, and a ton of other things are just better with some small tweaks to the time and power. Hitting the +30 seconds is like putting the stove on high and cooking in 30 second increments.
People that thing microwaves suck to heat up food are just rawdogging the +30 seconds button.
So I agree with this, however, microwaves are absolutely one of the worst ways to heat up food, in most situations (but they’re super fast, so…)
That said, there is a lot of finesse, particularly when it comes to reheating food, that it seems like so many people never figured out.
Always gotta reheat food on power level 8 (Sometimes I’ll blast it for 15-20 sec on high after that just to make sure nothing is lukewarm in the center).
2 + 0 + 0 + start for me on every microwave I’ve ever owned.
Sure, but that’s 4 presses on 3 buttons. I can press the same button 4 times much faster.
Over the course of a lifetime, we’re taking double, maybe TRIPLE DIGIT seconds saved!
Hyssst. Universes false vacuum state might collapse.
