&gt; more familiar<p>To whom? There is still a <i>huge</i> number of incompatible text editor cultures. Mac bindings, Microsoft bindings, Wordstar, etc.<p>&gt;  better defaults.<p>There are dozens of &quot;better&quot; .emacs pre-cooked packages. Choose any. No need to stick to the out of the box defaults.<p>&gt; OS-standard<p>Which OS?<p>&gt; he result is that new users don’t have to learn anything to be productive<p>The &quot;new&quot; users had to learn all those &quot;OS default&quot; bindings and terminology first. Not that &quot;new&quot; in my book then.<p>&gt; it requires up-front investment<p>They simply forgot their up-front investment into learning the defaults of their chosen OS. I understand that - I still cannot use Microsoft Office, can&#x27;t be bothered to learn it.<p>So, the only advantage is familiarity to those who already invested a lot of time into learning something else. Nothing of a value for the <i>new</i> users.