Piezo-based haptic trackpads coming to Windows PCs in 2022

[Ttaskmaster]

Or a nuclear power plant, where knowing you pressed a button doesn't matter /s

Knowing does matter, if only because you can confirm it to whoever is doing the subsequent investigation wherein it is found that if you'd also known what would happen when you pressed it, and had that information not been kept from you as a state secret, you'd not have pressed the bloody button and blown the bloody doors off!!

I would heavily argue that the people extensively testing are by and far way ahead on the needs of their system than the extreme vast majority of users.

That is possibly true up to the point where those users encounter extreme situations, however rare they may be, in which the switch, button or other control that has previously just been doing normal daily duties under average conditions, potentially over a couple of decades, must how be located and operated while the user is under the stress and duress of an emergency situation.
That is (one reason) why the makers of military grade hardware so often extend their expertise and technology into the normal, boring, hum-drum world of the majority. Another is that the extreme testing people are far more sensitised to discerning the nitpicky details that ultimately affect the end user experience, even if the end user themselves is not fully aware of such details.

If what you say is true then why is the vast consumer base ignoring that data and instead utilising something "inefficient".

Why?
For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them, like those in the West. For the same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. For the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient.....

It's cheaper!

Sorry, I seem to be on a Chernobyl kick.
But yeah, cost is a factor.... Conversely, cost also drives up the price, which is one reason why some other manufacturers either do, or at least claim, to use the "Military Grade" components so proudly advertised in their product marketing.

That and a quantifiably high amount of the time it's not the input method that is the most inefficient aspect and is instead the user interface that they're having to work with is the most inefficient aspect.

Method is just whether you press a button or flip a switch.... but how that control behaves is part of the interface... just the physical side of it, is all. There are whole websites dedicated to the 'hilarious' typing mistakes made in touchscreen phone messages, partly because touchscreen keyboards suck so badly. Every day I see people typing on their phone and it's clear when (not if) they stuff it up and there's a distinct tap-tap-tap movement everyone seems to make when stabbing the delete key as they correct their typos.

I'm not arguing whether this research does not affect how HID systems are developed, I'm arguing that the vast majority of general consumers would actually be negatively affected if a general HID was moved to a hyper efficient system.

It's not so much about the development, but more what sort of experience that development creates for the end user. All the little nitpicky details, like how curved a keyboard keycap face should be or how far apart buttons should be, how much resistance there is, how much movement there is, where it actuates, etc... all that comes from research like this and it's that sort of stuff that leads to increased efficiency.

You've seen the threads arguing over which mechanical keyboard switch is better, which lets you type faster, which reduces fatigue... and that debate still rages. It clearly matters.
Same for most drivers - Different people want different feels and responses from their car controls, which is a big part of why most people prefer one car over another.