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Comment by forgetfreeman | Hacker News Reader

I literally did a double take reading this. The very possibility that an adult in the world has never interacted with analog controls on anything more complex than a toaster trips me out a bit. Like, how in the hell has software driven UI (with all of the problems that entails) managed to take over? Why must literally everything suck?

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Tempus fugit. I still get taken aback when someone reminds me 1990s weren't 10 years ago. There's a whole generation of adults now, who grew up with touchscreens. Original iPhone release date isn't perhaps the best milestone here, but arguably the most well known one, and it happened - I can't really believe what I'm writing - 16 years ago.

So yes, it's totally possible for someone doing tech today to have never interacted with complex analog interfaces since being a little kid. Still unlikely for the next couple years, but possible.

It's just vastly cheaper unfortunately. Manufacturing buttons requires investing in moulds, etc. and then iterating on a design is very expensive.

Is it really? Touchscreens and the tech stack to drive them aren't exactly simplistic. A handful of simple switches and a few rheostats seems like it'd be cheaper if for no other reason they don't invoke the avalanche of dumb shit that kicks off whenever software is brought into a project.

Labor also isn't getting cheaper, and someone has to assemble and test all those switches. You can automate... but LCD touchscreen is simpler.

I strongly doubt mass produced commodity components like switches are hand assembled or individually tested. It's typical for random samples, say one in a thousand, to be pulled from a batch for testing.

If you are asking which of these things is more likely:

A) The developer chose a touch screen to make the build easier and cheaper

B) The developer has never seen physical buttons

The answer is A)

You think it's faster to get a bunch of switches and rheostats, CAD components so that they fit together while looking like a Winamp skin that looks like a physical device, get them manufactured, test them, do the above five more times to get everything perfect, sand/paint the components to get the specific look, and wire them all up than to throw some CSS lines and HTML elements on a screen?

Honestly since I don't do UI, yes. I also think it's a little weird to think that is particularly difficult. It's really not.

I didn't say "difficult", I said "faster". I do both, and CSS is an order of magnitude faster, maybe more.

Ok but most of the things you listed don't need to be done. You don't need CAD or custom manufactured parts. Just some model paint. If you want to get nitty gritty about it you left out language support, accessibility, unit tests, version control, and documentation out of the UI portion.

How am I going to make the little buttons, the frame, the rails for the pots, etc? If I have to 3D print them, I need to model them.

Some metal and a drill and a tape measure. What ever did people do before 3d printers?

You can buy all of these things. None of that needs to be custom made.

For a one-off project probably not, for the larger ecosystem time's going to get spent on case design and debugging manufacturing regardless so any gains there are a rounding error. That said I've seen talented designers spend weeks chasing cross-browser bugs and I knew a guy who could lay out and solder an entire mixing board over a long weekend so I'm not convinced the time savings are real.

1) Economies of scale. One touchscreen factory replaces arbitrary number of switches and sliders and buttons of all shape and size.

2) Who says anything about touchscreens? Most touch interfaces your interact with aren't displays - they're capacitive buttons. Think your induction stove, or a powerbank, or any other random device you have to touch just right to turn on. Capacitive buttons are dumb pieces of solid-state electronics. Zero moving parts. Zero things to break (except maybe status LED that shines through them so you know where to touch). Cheap as dirt.

The future sucks because it wasn't created for improved quality or functionality - it was created because it was cheaper than the old-school way before it.

Because slapping a touchscreen or an OLED gets you out of the inconvenience of making stuff repairable. "Just chuck it out" because it's impossible to actually repair a touch screen is way more convenient and cheaper for the manufacturer to do than making their products repairable. Look at the modern disposable camera lenses. Even the most expensive ones have no manual controls, but are full of motors and displays making them way less future proof and actually unrepairable.

How is it not blindingly obvious yet? It's money. Everything sucks because you aren't an executive or a shareholder. Everything sucks because everything isn't for you, it's to extract money from you. And places like this are the Mos Eisley cantina where everyone talks about the best way to do that.

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