As others have said, touchscreens suck in planes. Particularly in turbulence, they're very hard to use. The problem is twofold. First, when you're flying, yo

As others have said, touchscreens suck in planes. Particularly in turbulence, they're very hard to use. The problem is twofold. First, when you're flying, you're usually multitasking. It's very useful to be able to perform tasks with the electronic gadget without looking at it. If there are physical buttons, you can find the right control by feel. You can't do that with a touchscreen. If things are a little bumpy, the tactile feedback is also very useful because you can subconsciously tell when you are about to push a button or turn a click knob without actually doing it, based on the force feedback. Since the whole thing isn't touch sensitive, you can also brace your hand with your other three fingers against the panel so that it doesn't move during turbulence. I fly gliders a lot as well as small single engine planes, and I really like the LK8000 software for gliders. It has a "turbulence proof" interface. Even though it's a touchscreen, the interface mostly restricts itself to touch events like "top half or bottom half of screen" or "corner of screen." The UI then provides unique audio feedback. Between the two, it's possible to use the UI to get to a particular view of information without looking at the screen. UIs that require you to do things like precisely tap on the icon of one airport among many in the middle of the screen are almost unusable.