I'd argue the opposite: in my experience, a uniform glass surface is a lot easier to clean (and avoid getting dirty in the first place) than some bumpy surface

I'd argue the opposite: in my experience, a uniform glass surface is a lot easier to clean (and avoid getting dirty in the first place) than some bumpy surface with crevices into which crumbs inevitably sneak in. Re: a single remote for everything, the term for that is "universal remote", and not once have I been satisfied with one due to the difficulty and fragility of programming it. Maybe in this day and age we can finally make that programming dead simple and robust; Logitech came close with its universal remote from years ago, but even that still wasn't quite easy enough to setup and use to fully replace all my remotes. That HDMI-CEC or whatever it's called also comes close, but it's restricted to HDMI, obviously leaving non-HDMI devices in the dust.