I politely beg to differ on one point: “Now, arguably, you could do the same with a fader.”

Despite the apparent similarity, a stribe is very different from a fader. A fader is a handle stuck in a groove, whereas a stribe is a touch-sensitive strip that is essentially “random access”. With a fader, the handle can only slide between two points, touching all intervening points along the way. With a stribe, you can “drum” your fingers along the strip and get an instantaneous response from each touch, such as the cursor jumping to discrete locations each time, regardless of linear order. This produces some very unique effects that could never be achieved with a fader. One example would be to map the strip to a scale of 8 notes, and turn it horizontally. Now you can play the strip like a little 8 note (mono) keyboard. With a fader similarly configured you could only play the notes in ascending or descending order.