Although I am fully able to drive a manual car (and do so quite regularly when I drive my daughters cars), I only chose autos now. Years ago, autos were slower than manuals and suffered quite a drop in mpg compared to their manual equivalent. Nowadays, good autos perform better than manuals in both performance and economy, as well as providing a much smoother and relaxing drive. For me, anything that the car can do for you is preferable over having to do it yourself. Nobody would want to go back to wind up manual windows when we now have electric operation. Same for gearboxes in my view.
Having driven at least 100 different autos from many different manufacturers, some are better than others but I have to say that I’ve never really noticed any particularly poor auto boxes, but I agree with the countless comments above that if I had to pick one that sits above the rest it is BMW.