It's so nice when a button, a switch, a knob is solidly made and enjoyable to manipulate. I think most people enjoy simple tactile pleasures like this, even if they don't consciously notice, but the past decade or so has been a tactile desert of touchscreens, dodgy laptop keyboards, and mushy unresponsive TV remote buttons.
How do we get a tactile renaissance going?
More constructively, who is doing a good job of this these days? Name a physical control in your daily life that's satisfying to operate.
@jplebreton my moped throttle after installing a Dellarto PHBG carburetor. I can feel the difference between it, the terrible knockoff i had on it before, and the ancient Bing carb that it came with
@jplebreton Have you ever handled an OP1 by Teenage Engineering? Tactile Perfection.
@foozmeat I haven't; haven't really jumped into the whole synthesizer world, but they seem incredible!
@jplebreton It feels like the only companies today that pride themselves in satisfying tactile feedback are mechanical keyboard makers. But game consoles also have nice-feeling buttons and knobs (even if they don’t make any satisfying sounds).
@jplebreton It's hard for me to think of an example that doesn't involve gaming peripherals, which feel like cheating.
Indicator stalks are generally pretty satisfying, though.
@jplebreton Mechanical keyboards are a modern example of good tactility.
Mice provide an excellent sense of mastery but they're not like...satisfying in a tactile way.
@jplebreton I think tactile stuff is a big reason why manual transmissions make for that much better experiences in driving. I'm glad I have to deal with them.
It's really too bad that the All Consuming Consumerist Need for Convenience destroyed the market for those in North America. I loathe the search for another MT car if my current one ever breaks before I can be free of personal vehicles.
@jplebreton Lastly...I enjoy snipping/trimming parts off of sprues and carving the larger remaining parts of the sprue off of the model bits, but I don't know if carving is an example of what you're looking for.
@jplebreton I like my drum machine and I used to like the G2 Android phone with a keyboard. I dislike the mushy pads of the time clock at work.
@jplebreton the knobs on my cooker have a very satisfying resistance and step click to them. Shame about the mushy timer buttons on it though...
@jplebreton I don't like tassimo coffee makers, but they have a satisfying clicky button with a three colour LED for feedback I liked
@jplebreton i got a mechanical keyboard for xmas this year and i am feeling this hard. it's incredible and i kind of hate going to work now because it means going back to the cheap keyboards i used to use everywhere
the tactile thing i probably miss the most though is physical keys on phones. i kept my physical keys as long as i could with one of these bad boys but eventually got pulled into the smartphone world and lost that keyboard as well as my ability to flawlessly text under any circumstances/influences https://witches.town/media/mXdK7GipMLUSc4M_GDE
@jplebreton @pixelpaperyarn The really strange thing is we do have deliberately satisfying tactile objects — but they're fidget cubes and the like, they don't actually DO anything. I can't think of much that's both.
@jplebreton just blind about 50% of the western world and suddenly a lot more people will care about tactility.
@jplebreton I legit miss the satisfaction of dialing a zero on a rotary phone enough that I actually stop and think about it sometimes.