Many a mindless hour spent pressing arbitrary EDM 960 button combinations. 
The only devices which are worse are Siemens kitchen appliances. I have a Siemens microwave at home and not one single button has a symbol that the average human being can identify. It looks like an engineer on an LSD trip has designed the symbols. You need the manual for everything, such as switching on the timer….
Which also was true for the menu of Siemens mobile phones, back in the day.
I had a Motorola (first tri band) which after typing new contact info would force you to pick a numeric slot where to store it. Guess what, there was no way to see what’s slots were free, so you had to do trial and error until you didn’t get a “a contact already exists for this slot. Are you soure you want to override?” Madness!
What a lot of whinging muppets! I mean we’re PILOTS aren’t we? We’re supposed to be the crème de la crème of gadget junkies. We don’t need no f-f-fine manuals or Apple-style UIs designed for the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks sub-species which sits in traffic jams. 
Jacko wrote:
What a lot of whinging muppets! I mean we’re PILOTS aren’t we? We’re supposed to be the crème de la crème of gadget junkies. We don’t need no f-f-fine manuals or Apple-style UIs designed for the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks sub-species which sits in traffic jams.
Indeed. If just anyone can use these items what would be the point of the tens of thousands we all spent in training and currency? Try to think of the crap UI as a validation of your skillset.
Collins ProLine 21, anyone?
Now there’s a real user interface. If you can work it out, they give you the Type Rating there and then. No cheating, no writing all the ATPL QB answers on the back of the Jepp airway charts. This is the real stuff.
Peter wrote:
Now there’s a real user interface. If you can work it out, they give you the Type Rating there and then. No cheating, no writing all the ATPL QB answers on the back of the Jepp airway charts. This is the real stuff.
I actually disagree Peter. It is logically laid out, just a different logic from Garmin.
Well, now you come to mention it….
I fly two PA31s regularly. They are very similar in most respects…GTN, Glass, JPI, steam on the right, legacy autopilot etc…you would scarcely notice which one you were in.
Oh, except one thing. One of them has PTT under the forefinger and a/p disconnect under the thumb, and the other has a/p disconnect under the forefinger and PTT under the thumb.
I am sure that you can imagine the rest 
Timothy wrote:
Oh, except one thing. One of them has PTT under the forefinger and a/p disconnect under the thumb, and the other has a/p disconnect under the forefinger and PTT under the thumb.
I always find this one of the hardest UI changes to deal with as it is such a muscle memory thing.
It is so awful that I am going to have one of them changed.
I know it sounds like a joke, but hearing ATC asking you if you are still on frequency just as you are trying to deal with an autopilot disconnect is something that you can bored of hearing several times on a long flight
