But then you might tap the button and think it's broken, because it does nothing. The light means "this button works", not "your desired action has registered".

I guess you might want to fade it from red to green (red being "this works" and green being "it'll do what I want"), but I don't mind the holding-down behaviour. The only problem is that you can never know how long you need to hold it down for unless you stop holding it.