I wish interface designers would understand this, the value of physical buttons. There seems to be this universal push to make everything as much like a phone a

I wish interface designers would understand this, the value of physical buttons. There seems to be this universal push to make everything as much like a phone as possible - flat, smooth touch controls, and while that's dandy for a device that you're already going to be looking at, it's an absolute hindrance in other contexts. Because now that device that you could have operated in your pocket, or while keeping an eye on something else, that device now demands your attention. Cognitive load is incurred where it need not be. You get the same problem sometimes even with physical buttons, when some bright spark decides it would be clever for some control range to "wrap around". Where once you could just hold the button for a second to get to the end of the range, and know where the device is w/o looking, and then tap N times to get what you want, now you have to stop whatever else you were trying to do, look at the device's display, and adjust the thing under full attention. Not everything needs to be a touch screen, or present 'smart' controls.