But there are plenty of applications where you only only need a few seconds (e.g. softening butter). I've seen a good application of this with a Panasonic microwave where it has a knob that starts by adding single seconds, and progressively increases the amount of time between notches on the dial as the time increases. That said, I hate the style, since punching in the numbers is quicker and requires less attention.
If you just need to cook a few seconds, stand next to it and open the door to stop it. It takes more time fiddling with the control to select just the right amount of seconds than it takes to actually cook for those amount of seconds, so your time is wasted anyways.
