That book came out much later than what I am talking about, when many workarounds like turn tables (and indeed, specialized crockery) were made available. This thing [0] for example, did not even have a turn table, and yet was created in an "all in" form factor for the American home. It was in production for nine years.

Perhaps we can liken these auxiliary advances to agents and harnesses in the analogy. In the end, despite the unbridled optimism from certain backers, we never solved the fundamental issue with microwaves: that they use electromagnetic waves for cooking, and that electromagnetic waves have certain undesirable properties for this application.

[0] https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_10880...

But I think the argument that microwaves are basically for heating things up and for essentially steaming a lot of vegetables. (I'll do one ear of corn in the microwave with pepper and spices.) I do have a thick microwave cookbook from the 70s or 80s but I've mostly only ever used it for vegetable cooking times. And probably less since I started roasting vegetables in the oven a lot of the time. I have cooked some of the other recipes but not for a very long time.

Understand that a lot of people don't have a lot of choice but I use mine (actually have a 4 in 1 when I had to replace the old one after it burst into flames and that's somewhat useful as a second oven).

Hope never dies.