Well, my TV has a perfectly adequate set of controls for changing the channel, but I don't think anybody would seriously suggest that a remote control wasn't a good idea.
It's interesting that for all their compromises, one thing that the Elinchrom Quadras got right day 1 was the remote control system. It has some flaws but in rapidly changing light it's amazingly useful to be able to change light power from camera position. It also allows you to finesse the image and even change it totally by flipping lights on and off/up and down.
It's surprising that 3 or so years after their launch, some lights still can't compete with this ease of use of the quadras.
The original question was about weddings and portraits. Even with a trained assistant on each light I'd be happier being able to control light from camera position under these circumstances. Your priorities may differ.
I agree with you, different people have different priorities.
On a TV, I'm lost without a remote control, in fact I don't even know how to use the buttons on the set itself or where they actually are...
On a monoblock flash head, it's always far quicker and easier to make adjustments by pushing buttons or turning a knob on the head itself, provided that it can be reached easily. But if the flash head is stuck up high on a boom arm then remote control becomes a real benefit rather than a marketing feature, which is why Lencarta now has the UltraPro range of remote controlled flash heads. Elinchrom have had remotes in various forms for many years, I bought one of their first ones (hard wired) and gave up on it very quickly simply because I couldn't rely on it to do what it was supposed to do, although I'm sure that that particular shortcoming has been overcome now.
On a flash generator, I greatly prefer just to use the controls on the pack, right at my feet, it's easy, intuitive and very quick.
It isn't really about whether or not a manufacture
can add features so much as whether or not their customers want to pay the extra that they cost, or whether they prefer to get a simpler device that has less to go wrong and which costs them less. Maybe a good analogy is the electronic handbrakes fitted to some cars - a nice feature that costs money but which goes wrong, and when it does go wrong the car
doesn't go at all... The question really is whether marketing features trump real benefits.
And sometimes it can be difficult to define whether something is a real benefit or just a feature. For example, it can be a 'nice to have' feature to have really short flash durations for most people, but most people don't actually need that feature. For some people (though with studio lighting rather than location lighting) fast flash durations are a real benefit rather than a feature and people are prepared to pay higher cost, get much lower power and take the risk of having a bit of gear that is more highly stressed and which is likely to have a shorter life - horses for courses!
