imo, it's the standardization that a universal device offers. Perceived or actual. But it's one big variable in preparation removed. I wish everybody on the pl

imo, it's the standardization that a universal device offers. Perceived or actual. But it's one big variable in preparation removed. I wish everybody on the planet had the same couple of ovens too. Then your recipe for preparing cookies or whatever will have one big variable removed. But because we don't have that, we waste time and energy pre-heating the oven, just to be sure that we're all cooking at the same temperature. And even then, ovens will vary in how they control temperature and grrrrr. Same for soft/hard boiling eggs: the only error-proof way is to boil your water first and stick eggs in there for X minutes and then drench them in cold water. But that's a huge waste of the heat in the heating process. If we all used the same amount of water on top of the same heating source in the same place, we could use that pre-heating process as a part of cooking.