this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Microwave ovens were a tech ahead of their time. It's crazy how incredibly little these have evolved though decade after decade.
Yeah but how exactly would you improve upon them. They do tell you how to do it properly, people just never bother and press the +30s button until it hits a few minutes, then complain their food is badly heated and the plate is piping hot instead.
Almost as if, and hear me out here, that's not how you reheat food with a microwave!
It's like if you want to bake something with an oven, and all you do is set it to 250°C, Fan, and leave the door open, then complain it doesn't work. And those don't even offer automated programs you could be using instead!
(now don't get me wrong, on the cheaper end there's also a whole lot of shit microwaves, but I'm assuming we're talking at least a somewhat respectable model here)
I dunno. I'm not a microwave engineer but you point out that misuse is rampant. I almost never cook anything above power 50, but I didn't even figure that out until my late 20s. Maybe a quick photogrammetry scan to determine size of food stuff, a scale to determine mass could help with some basic settings. Maybe even just a cook (default, 50% duty cycle) and power cook (full on, boil water etc.) to direct users. What about multiple magnetrons? Would that help with dead spots? What about a magnatron on a servo that raster scanned your food? Test pauses during cooking where infrared thermometers sample progress and make adjustments? I know Amazon made a pretty decent little smart microwave but I haven't even seen basic smart features cooked into very many of them. I'm just spitballing here, but with proper use and a sometimes some repositioning microwaves can do a pretty decent job, but I'm surprised they have evolved pretty minimally.
Even cheap-ish microwaves have "defrost" and "reheat" functions that ought to do the job more or less correctly (defrost will pulsate the magnetron to allow ice to melt into a water layer that's easier to heat up, reheat uses a steam sensor to roughly gauge the amount of food).
Most people are just impatient monkeys who hit the "max power" setting 100% of the time and will not, under any circumstances, take five minutes to learn to use the reheat function or lower the power level.