Yeah, I was going to comment, that the touch control defenders, definitely do not own cats.

The problem is give me a damned knob.

The highest quality touchscreen on earth that works perfectly not matter what is on my hands and never makes a mistake would still be shittier than a simple fucking knob.

I’ve seen really rough “analogue” and hybrid control designs. Like, an oven with knobs and touch buttons, so you can set temperature more easily with a knob, but some more specific settings are set through touch input. Overall idea sounds good, until you try do something with it - then it quickly becomes a convoluted mess, because rather than separately choosing which directions to heat or whether to turn on the fan, manufacturers decided to make a list of all possible combinations to scroll through. 🌝

Knobs are definitely better for a stove. Even the best capacitive touch sensor won't work if you've got an oven mitt on, or you need to make a quick adjustment without taking your eyes off the food

But I never want to try and find the right place to touch a flat surface when I’m in the middle of basting meat and my pot is boiling over.

Analog style dials (they’re digital now) are easy to reach without looking, which keeps your focus on the task. Muscle memory is super important for flow.

Do your parents have cats? Ours have turned the stove on during the night by walking across it. Now we have to “lock” the controls every night, and then “hold for 3 seconds” before we can unlock. The more sensitive the controls, the worse this all gets.

Knobs, dude. If you will it it is no dream.

No, touch screens are always shit compared to knobs. You might have even worse touch screens but that's just like even worse!

Some newer stoves now put the control panel separate, and you can e.g. build it into the edge of the countertop.

Easy to wipe true, but what if instead of a capacitor button we can have a magnetic control board with magnetic push keys?

It would be fully removable, attachment magnet snaps it into place and then it's essentially a button with a magnet physically travelling up and down.

The I really hate the capacitor buttons since if you get pasta that boils over it fucks with the buttons pretty fast and the "off button" is just not good for quickly turning it off when flooded. It's same for pan cooking sauce that splashes a bit, wiping the surface moist rag can have mixed results, paper towels become a requirement. There's just a lot to not like.

A standard knob, as long as it's not designed by an idiot, can be very simple by having a piece of heat resistant non corrosive material stuck out of the stove top and the button having a 1cm gap under it. Just make the pin chonky and you can drop a pan on it without anything happening. Lift the button off and it becomes still very easy to clean.

My wife once dropped a metal bottle cap on the capacitive controls for our oven.

I don't know anything about oven software, but so far as I could tell, it caused the entire thing to basically reboot.

Same. My only objection is somehow the timer is not independent: you can only use it on the oven