Hi - just found this thread - a few thoughts for you all from a 17-year Insteon user with some early inside contact.
a) I believe that as "next year is the big year for home automation" became a trope, Insteon changed their focus to the smart commercial building market, with (I believe) a fair amount of success. So there's an installed base out there that's going to need expansion/replacement parts and is wary of change - hopefully that will jumpstart the hardware side of the business.
b) For those wanting a programmable touchpad - Powerhome offers the ability to create a webpage of buttons that trigger Insteon commands. I have a bunch of amazon Fire tablets around my house ($40 each on sale) with their browser selecting that webpage (sourced by PH running on a desktop PC). Thus a poor man's touch screen.
/j
