It's much better now.  I can produce much faster on Pro Tools than I could cutting tape and dubbing.
It like comparing a convection oven to rubbing two sticks together to start a fire for cooking.

There's nothing quite like watching your stack of 16 carts tumble to the ground 7 seconds before the start of your newscast.   CBS was still using carts until about 2012.  We had a cluster of 6 machines in each studio and about 300 carts we'd been recycling since the 1980s.  The late Dave Barrett was a genius at mixing sound live on air.  Even harder than it sounds when you're also counting the seconds down to your hard out time.  Jim Cauchon was brilliant too.  He'd also roll a reel-to-reel during the talk shows at 640, then pull clips and produce a recap of the craziest moments heading into spots.  Who remembers sticking scraps of paper into the reel to mark what you wanna edit? 

I admit that I like the older school equipment, largely because it was specialized to radio, especially cart machines.  Now when it comes to board consoles, I'm not speaking of the classic 60's era rotary boards, or mono consoles.  I prefer the mid to late 80s boards, which provide modern engineering, but still within an analog realm.  However, I do like 70s and early 80s Allied Harris and McCurdy boards too.

I do miss half-track open reel, but only because I thought the raw fidelity of the 15 IPS speed, even without noise reduction was exemplary.  However, computer editing is so much easier.  I do miss Revox PR-99 decks though.  Otari decks seem to be raved about, but they leave me cold.

Now I know NAB carts get a bad rap, and I know we've all experience tape spill, dropout, high-end rolloff, and chewed carts, but really ... we've exaggerated over the years how bad we remember them being.  Carts, for a large amount of time were VERY reliable, had good sonic quality, and low noise.  Only one time during the 80s could I hear excessive hiss on cart playback over the air, and that was on WBUF in Buffalo, where they carted up "The Finer Things" by Steve Winwood.  It was during the soft passages at the beginning, and I'll bet they had old machines.  But that was rare.  I was listening recently to airchecks I have of CHUM-FM from the mid to late 80s.  Bay Bloor Radio spots sound pretty much as good off cart,, as they do on a PC.

Plus, I find that automated elements sound less tight than manually run elements used to.  We've become accustomed to more gaps between spots and after jingles, where before, elements ran much tighter.

But that's just me.