induction itself is pretty cool. thanks to the power of magnets, you can go from cold to like having a pot of boiling water in like a minute. the pot or pan becomes the heating element, and you get like close to 100% energy efficiency in cooking.

but my personal blog isn't about magnets.

the trouble is, every single induction stovetop or hob or cooktop or whatever you call it has the absolute nastiest touch controls, driven by the cheapest crappiest microcontroller, in the worst designed piece of equipment you can imagine. the problems are numerous:

• if the stovetop gets wet, for instance because you had to clean up some splashing, it may trigger the anti-splash safeties (that it only needs because it has touch controls) and shut off your cooking. this happens constantly to me.
• the safeties aren't a guarantee, liquid can splash from a pot, land on the touch controls, and change the temperature.
• the controls are slow and unresponsive. you have to first select the burner you want to adjust the temperature of, then slowly hold your finger on the +/- printings until it's on the setting you want. something you could do in a fraction of a second if the cooker had knobs now takes several seconds.
• due to the lack of physical feedback, the geniuses at the induction stove factory decided that the way to go about indicating any change is to make the thing beep like a tamagotchi. it gets really annoying. even r2d2 would be annoyed.
• on the plus side, you at least get a built in timer. the downside: the touch controls and the stuff displayed on the seven segment displays are incomprehensible, so you'd never want to use it. any extra functionality requires reading the manual to know what obscure voodoo ritual triggers the functionality.
• in fact, the first time i used an induction stove normally i had to read the manual. using a stove should be like second nature, but they've actually made using them require a degree from nasa.

"but i've seen induction stoves that had knob controls"

yeah, and they use the same shitty touch-controlled stovetop units. there has to be like a single factory in china that makes these, as something that someone like bosch or electrolux integrates into their own product. i've inferred this after walking from shop to shop, trying to find an induction cooker that doesn't have this misery, but every single one just looked the exact same. even the brushed steel ones for snobs have the same arrangement as the cheap and mid-range ones.

i did eventually find and buy one that has knobs:

• i can adjust the temperature using knobs. wow, progress!
• ... but not too fast, or the shitty microcontroller gets very upset and loses track of the change.
• the touch controls are still there, because the factory making these things assumes they may be integrated into a product without physical controls. thus, all the problems with the shitty microcontroller and such remain.
• i don't have children, but i still need the child lock enabled to prevent my cats from turning the stove on. i've actually woken up to the sound of the fucking thing beeping because my cats were jumping on top of it. yet another problem caused by having touch controls.
• after bypassing the child lock, you still have to rotate the knobs back and forth, as it forgets what position they're set to and will shut itself off after a short while. if that happens, you have to spend several seconds bypassing it again.

so basically, even the least crappy induction stove i've ever used requires constant babysitting. i've been cooking for like well over 20 years, and imo the only stoves that should be harder to use than turning a knob are those that require you to go outside and chop wood.

if you have the patience to wait like 10 minutes for water to boil, i suggest you stay away from induction.