Agreed, buttons are better.
When touch screen smart phones first appeared I held off from buying one for a very long time, because I hated the idea of not having tactile buttons to answer/reject calls. I was convinced I would accidentally reject calls I wanted to accept, and vice versa.
A decade or so later with various generations of iPhone my mind has not changed. I still encounter a brief moment of dread when the damn thing rings... will my wet, or gloved, or shaking (if cold) finger work? Will I be able to swipe in the right direction? Will I need to use two hands, thereby dropping something I am holding? Or letting go of a handrail in a perilous place, and falling over?
With the buttonless iPad, how do you know which way up you are holding it? That might matter for the sakes of cameras/microphones.