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They had modal menus back then, they just didn't display them. You had to memorize which obscure symbols to press, to change various settings. For example, in the 1970's, HP's calculator watch required pressing ⯅• to switch between 12 hr and 24 hr modes, or A⯅A to clear an alarm.

In the 80's and 90's, when sixteen-segment and dot-matrix displays made displaying text easier, calculators started displaying menu items, so you didn't have to memorize the sequence.

Since then, we've moved on to full-color high-resolution displays that can handle any text of any language, and the menus have more-or-less switched back to memorizing a sequence of which obscure symbols to press, I guess because some people think they look cool? Sometimes there's no menu at all, and you just have to memorize finger movements.

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> required pressing ⯅•

I don't know what clever jiggery-pokery you are trying to do, but whatever you typed, it's just turning to tofu on this Macbook, in both Chrome and Firefox.

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You can bury stuff like setting the time into a menu, people will accept it. They know that there will be a way to set the time. But if the 12/24 is hidden, whatever is picked as the default will drive away a noticeable fraction of those would-be buyers who prefer the other setting. For starters, pretty much everybody who does not get pulled into a sales person interaction that's sufficiently deep to touch the subject. And that sales person interaction won't be the best possibly, you don't want to bore them with nuisance settings, you want to show off The Stopwatch (or whatever was the flagship feature of the watch in question)
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There are menus on these watches, though. On the F91w the menu button flips through different setting modes which affect the function of the other buttons.
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To add to it, I always kept the manuals around, because remembering the key press sequences was akin to doing combos in arcade fighting games.

A few months without doing them, and it was hopeless trying to remember how to do them again.

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I always followed trial and error until I reached my target and I had the feeling that my results were much better than if I were randomly clicking buttons. That is, some memory always remained. Or the menu is well thought out and has some consistency.
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Casio watches all have the same.

The beauty of them is that I can pick up any casio model from any year and I know how it works.

That my friend is peak design.

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The button press sequences are still combo-style; when I set one of the alarms on my ABL-100WE, it always ends in trial and error. I mean, basically it's logical, but when the buttons change what they do (e.g. when the display says "SET", the light button becomes "up"), it throws me off.
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I have a 6.30AM alarm on my FW-91, and I'm too lazy to figure out how to switch it off.

15 beeps, btw, till it turns itself off for the day.

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> 15 beeps, btw, till it turns itself off for the day

One thing I miss that’s not on my Fitbit is an hourly warning. When you have ADHD, it’s a huge helper.

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> I'm too lazy to figure out how to switch it off.

Press MODE, then press ALARM ON/OFF.

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