In praise of pushbuttons (and other physical controls)

The touchscreen interface everywhere is just so bad ... with buttons I can build muscle memory for various things without taking my eyes off the road. Now I have to keep looking at the giant screen, use a touchpad (seiorusly? a touch pad in a car while driving), or tap on a screen by navigating a complex, deep menu, who thought this was safer or more comfortable?

Same with interfaces in other places too, my recent plane ride only had a back of the seat touch screen for everything, including the light, and call button. Guess what happened ... I tried to open an app and it hung, without any option to kill that app. There is no "Home" button, soft or physical. So for the rest of my flight I had no entertainment, no ability to call the attention of the attendants, no ability to control the light. I was told the reset panel was under and they have to reset the entire flight. I think this part was just the steward being lazy, because I have seen other similar planes where they can reset the systems individually in each seat.

Interestingly, after sometime, another passenger also experienced the same but his system afte sometime popped up a window saying the "server" is not responding and let them quit that app and go back to the home screen.

In a lot of markets, the institutional layer follows the critics. E.g. in the art market, museums buy what critics think is good. Not so in cars. Car guys are universally - I say universally - opposed to touchscreens and yet car companies add touchscreens all the same.

Basic controls typically accessed while the vehicle is moving should be buttons and knobs which don't need to be looked at after the learning curve. This should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.

Hardware is a useful abstraction.