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 longVisited 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)