Much has been said about which is the more superior transmission in a car: manual or automatic. Just to confuse things, there has been an infusion of fence-sitting pretenders, like semi-automatic, Tiptronic, sequential manual and the weird CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission), which fall in the wide gap between fully manual and fully automatic power trains.
While it might seem difficult to place the call on which outranks the other, it is easier to break the argument into four separate sections from which judgment can be made: mode of operation, driveability/usability, performance and economy.