The "touch" button thing was a big deal back then - Apple and others kept reminding devs that is was not a good idea to tell users to "hit" keys as sometimes this was taken a little too literally :-)
[1] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
tl;dr: It's marketing bullshit.
The UI on the 3B1 was definitely nothing to write home about . . .