The spinning wheel also had some inertia, which was really neat. You could give it a good spin and it would slowly "roll out". I think they tried to emulate that with the round capacitive touch thingy ("click wheel"), but that wasn't quite as nice. I guess it was more dust/dirt/water resistant, though.

No, it was a common complaint at the time when the touch wheel was introduced. They became a lot more ubiquitous after the touch wheel introduction though, but I don't think that was directly related...