With three things that can be switched on or off there are 7 state permutations (plus all off)
> It's awful.
The alternative being three separate toggle switches.
While this would be easier to scan and make a decision if you wanted granular decisions every time you cooked something, 90% of the time the oven will be set to the same setting; ALL ON. I think that having a single switch, rather than three is a more efficient UI for this.
Unless you know how to cook. Then the analog controls are a godsend because they let you control the rate at which heat is applied to your food to a great degree. The setting you might use to boil water is not the same one you'd use to cook an egg. Ditto for sautee versus cooking a steak.
The problem is that the people designing UIs for products don't actually know how to use the products. They don't have any concept of how a user uses the UI. So they just assume that less is better without stopping to consider why someone would want to control the temperature of their stove.
My oven has a clock that resets to 00:00 whenever there is even the briefest power fluctuation and the oven will not function unless the clock is adjusted with tiny buttons. The stove will work, though.
i have a new blue star range. the oven and burners each have a single knob, one switch for the convection fan, one switch for the light. there are no electronics visible on the unit. no clock, timer, buttons, nothing. the entire thing is made out of iron and steel.
you have to go out of your way to buy this kind of stuff, and it's more expensive, but it's still out there. the low end of the appliance market competes on features and price ("race to the bottom") while the mid and high end compete on component and build quality and reliability.
