Electronics Fashions

Sep 28, 2026 Last reply: 1 week ago 26 Replies

Yes, perhaps that's something to do with the natural languages, where one is in pictures, and the other in text. The way we understand and express concepts. Translating one to the other must involve mental gymnastics, but they get better at it all the time.

This is a photo of the keyboard (UI) for the first (maybe second?) generation reading machine. Poor quality but, if you could look closer, you would note that none of the keys or controls are labeled. (you're blind, what value labels???)

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[Mike (shown) and I would play pinball together -- me being his eyes as he controlled the flippers]

Yet, you quickly learned where each button/control was located, even though you couldn't SEE to navigate the layout. Otherwise, use would be even more tedious than it already was!

This is the keypad from a later model of the machine:

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Note the keys now bear legends, there are fewer of them and someone has opted to label a few of them (nominator, stop, stat, punctuation) with clear, embossed braille overlays.

Yet, it still reflects the initial "engineering" approach to a UI problem that likely could have benefited from more user involvement.

What annoys me is gadgets with multiple, complex hidden internal states. That is often done to minimize the number of pushbuttons, but more often done by a kutzy programmer. A computer keyboard really only needs one key.

People can be bad programmers in any language.

I have a very nice power supply that's almost unusable.

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The control states were insufficiently stupid so they added a bunch of timeouts to make them worse.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

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It only really needs three buttons. Cook, stop, light on/off.

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

My new product line is all blue anodized with laser-blasted artwork.

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That works on big things too.

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(Sorry, one of my guys did that.)

John Larkin Highland Tech Glen Canyon Design Center Lunatic Fringe Electronics

I have a couple of 300V 1A supplies very similar to that one. They work, but I agree the user interface is horrible. The internal clearance between one of the output terminals and one of the USB connector pins is only about 1mm. John

There are pretty good except for the ghastly switching spikes. The kluge helps a lot.

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