My favorite example of this is the evolution of volume controls in cars. These days you have all sorts of fancy and inferior alternatives that leave you wishin

My favorite example of this is the evolution of volume controls in cars. These days you have all sorts of fancy and inferior alternatives that leave you wishing for a plain old-school volume knob. The worst are the purely virtual volume settings with up and down buttons on a touch screen. Or only a bit better, physical knobs that spin endlessly and just send up and down operations to a digital volume level. Reasons why the old school knob is better: * It maintains its position across power cycles. It can even be adjusted when the car is off. So you can lower the volume knob before you turn the car on and blast loud rock into your grandmother's ears. * It does not require you to look at a touch screen to find the volume buttons. Tactile feedback is enough. You can operate it while maintaining the other 99% of your attention on the road. * It physically stops at the lowest and highest possible volumes. Again, no need to look at some display. Even better would be a physical slider instead of a knob. That would let you feel out the exact position of the volume without looking. The downside would be the limited space on a car stereo dashboard. But please, a touch screen is the worst and most dangerous interface while driving. The same goes for radio presets. In a car with physical buttons for the presets, I can switch between my favorite stations without having to look. Try doing that with a touchscreen. How is this progress? Maybe it's just a symptom of an industry that's often more about selling status symbols than selling functional products.