this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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anyone who needs to use a timer or a calculator on a regular basis in an environment they control (home, desk) and uses their phone instead of the correct device is a fool
my boomer take is that I miss when things had nice tactile buttons and dials
love a touchscreen and the versatility it allows, but holy fuck we never should have let things get to the point of touchscreens taking over for buttons and dials in cars, dumbest shit imaginable
I'm not a boomer but I could write you a big long post about "touch" interfaces as a general thing and what a problem they are. (This isn't it.)
People want to control their lights from an app on their phone. WHAT. That is the worse possible way to control your lights. Dial, knob, button, switch... all are better.
Do not get me started on clock radio interface designs.
In summary:
Right:
Wrong:
You think it's bad driving a car, imagine being in battle with the borg and you are using this freaking touch screen.
Oh and for calculators, this is another answer to the original question. At a thrift store you can get a calculator with a printer for $5. Nobody wants these things. You can get a really nice one. They are amazing if you find yourself recalculating the same things, or needing a number later but you didn't write it down. Or wondering if you did the math properly so you have to re do it. You can feed the same strip of paper through repeatedly. I'm still working on the roll that came with mine. It just occurred to me you could probably re use those 1 foot long receipts some chain stores give out and never have to buy paper for it.
I just use 9 key/excel. Guess it's not as portable as a physical calculator.
If you are doing spreadsheet type stuff than of course excel... well.. excels.
But in case you are just using it as a way to type in arbitrary formulas, you should check out speedcrunch (GPL) for linux mac windows. You can just type in formulas and they stay in scroll back like a terminal. Instead of being constrained by mimicking a physical calculator, these people have actually thought about what would make a calculator functional on a PC. And since it has persistent history (unless you delete it) it does have some benefits of a printing calculator.