Modern ‘design’ is all about pushing physicality and tactility out of the way, in an attempt to focus as much of your attention into your display as possible. As a result, everything aside from your screen has been ‘pushed aside’.
I get it, I really do…but it’s all so depressingly sterile.
There's a great YouTube channel of this younger guy who teaches design and he makes very good videos that dissect a lot of the BS design trends. One of them is taking the old school "less is more" type of thinking into a stupid extreme. He explains that far too many designers are missing the deeper meaning in that design ethos which ends up making the user experience MORR complicated all so they could save adding an extra button to make navigating the device's interface infinitely easier.
Things run in cycles, so I'd like to think we'll get some sanity back in design, but designers work for companies, and companies like to make money, and no one makes more money than Apple. And Apple is downright obsessed with the bad version of "less is more". And of course the worst thing of all is that it is far easier to copy than to innovate, so these shit designs are here for a while.
I think it also often simply boils down to cost. A cheap touch screen or capacitive button is much cheaper than adding durable buttons with a satisfying click