Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, a manual transmission and an automatic transmission are completely different animals altogether. In my mind, his whole argument

Agreed. As far as I'm concerned, a manual transmission and an automatic transmission are completely different animals altogether. In my mind, his whole argument fell thru once the statement was made. It's like comparing a text-based shell with a GUI interface. There are trade-offs to be considered and neither of them are "better" than the other, they just have different strengths and weaknesses.