User interfaces: why are microwave ovens all so difficult to use?

The first 'science oven', launched in 1967, was simple to use but then digital interfaces came along and made things worse. The real problem, however, is that microwave ovens live too long

Visited anyone recently and tried to use their microwave oven? Of all the familiar devices in a house, the microwave has long been the laggard in usability. The "science oven", as it is so wonderfully described in the 1970s-set film American Hustle, pre-dates the digital era (the first came out in 1967); and the advent of programmes and digital buttons hasn't helped much since. So when you buy one, or go to someone's house and use theirs, you will almost certainly be confronted by an unfamiliar interface. How powerful is it? Do I have to set the heat or time first? If I have to press digital buttons to set the heating time, will it interpret them as hours? If I need to set a heating time of more than an hour, do I enter the minutes, or is there an "hour" setting?

Meanwhile, since the "science oven" came along, we've got used to smartphones and tablets whose interfaces have undergone a flurry of interbreeding. Even in rival mobile interfaces, you expect to find apps offered as an array of icons; to have notifications about events in a sliding layer at the top; and get easy access to key functions such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth from any screen. If microwave interfaces had standardised to the same extent, we'd be able to operate almost any on sight. Instead, they still can't tell when you've put metal in them.