One concern at one time was that machines could not handle butted spokes because they would twist them during tightening. Whether this is true today I don't know. In any case I like straight spokes and have not had any trouble with them.

Another issue is whether the people with the machines are making wheels for the kind of riding we do. A good wheel is a good wheel, but then not everyone needs all that good a wheel. Or back in the days when wheel making was kinda mysterious, whether they knew how to make strong wheels at all.

Another issue is whether compromises in spoke type are made to make them easier to handle. A while back there was one brand of spokes that fell rapidly out of favour when they stopped having the fit builders expected. The whispers at the time were that they had been adapted to better serve the machine built wheel biz.

In the past, back in the good old days of MA2s, thin light rims, double eyelets, and high spoke tension and spoke counts. The theory was that each wheel needed to be build to it's failure point then backed off and trued up, then stress relieved, then trued up and, so on. Today we have heavy stiff rims, low spoke counts, and factory specs that are the same regardless of front or back wheel, and other individualized specs. This has been done to allow one to make good wheels on machines. So like a lot of things with bikes it was true at one point and the tech has changed a bit also.

Wheels that have all the components you want, and are machine built at a good price, can be tweaked by a good tech to give excellent service.

Worth keeping in mind that some of us are running our wheels at twice the weight they were designed for.