> A knob provides a richer communication path between your brain and the device. With touchscreens, you can basically just poke and swipe, with some unintuitive

> A knob provides a richer communication path between your brain and the device. With touchscreens, you can basically just poke and swipe, with some unintuitive nuances like long press or multi-fingered gestures. With a knob, you're using separate muscles and so can associate muscle memory based on the size, texture, and granularity of "click" feedback as you turn. We also have the ability to finely modulate the rate of twisting something—compare that to tapping frantically on a touchscreen left/right icon to control a quantity. That gives me an idea, which I credit to you sfink. To make a product with knobs, buy knobs of slightly different makes with variations that feel slightly different, slightly different texture, different roughness, different give, despite being all of them supposedly the same jelly bean part. This helps muscle memory because despite appearing basically the same the muscles and spine know the difference right away, secretly. What that means is for a 6-knob device you need 6 suppliers. What that means is there's room in the market for many companies, and less economies of scale, despite being formally a commodity. What that then means is there's more diversity in the marketplace, and more companies that can each stay afloat, competition is less cutthroat. The other thing that then means is American and Chinese companies can coexist in what is otherwise a bitter-fought market. In fact, one good way of getting subtly different knob feels is in fact making them in different countries with different regulatory environments dictating how not to make the knob. And what that all means is we reduce the final stage of economies of scale--wars and empires.