> Why does Picard always have to specify temperature preference for his Earl Gray tea?
Completely OT, but, most likely, he doesn’t. Lots of people in the show direct with the replicators more fluidly; “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” seems like a Picard quirk, possibly developed with more primitive food/beverage units than the replicators on the Enterprise-D.
Most of Starfleet folks seem to not know how to use their replicators well anyway. For all the smarts they have, they use it like a mundane appliance they never bothered to read the manual for, miss 90% of its functionality, and then complain that replicated food tastes bad.
