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.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.