Your experience of physical buttons is limited. There are many sorts. To pick an apposite example: The "Pause" button on old tape players used to be press-an

Your experience of physical buttons is limited. There are many sorts. To pick an apposite example: The "Pause" button on old tape players used to be press-and-release to change state. Because it was a direct mechanical linkage and not motorized on some players/recorders, this made it possible to perform quite accurate editing with very basic kit: pressing and releasing pause to pause, pressing it again and keeping it held down, and releasing exactly when one desires to un-pause.