[quacked]

Capacitive touch buttons are #1 on my hate list for "inventions". They have all the downsides of touchscreens with none of the upsides, and they're imitating a control device so perfect that it basically hasn't been changed since its invention (the button).

[nrclark]

Agreed - I hate captouch buttons, and would rather have physical controls every time. But in case you're curious why they're so common:

  1. They're cheaper than mechanical buttons.
  2. They're more space-efficient inside of the product.
  3. They are easy to waterproof.
  4. They have no wear-out mechanism.

[quacked]

Thanks, I intuited (1) and (2) but I hadn't thought about (3) or (4). I think waterproof mechanisms are about the only time I've encountered them where I haven't immediately despised them for total lack of haptic feedback and lag time between button input and device function--although that probably has more to do with poor system design rather than the limits of the captouch button technology.

My guess is that I associate them with lag because any control interface that cut corners on buttons probably cut corners on everything else, too.