Good Tools Are Invisible

I think this is more dependent on the user than on the tool. Surely, different tools will attract different users and we can probably measure strong correlation.

I also think this position lacks balance. Your tool is never perfect, sometimes you realize you could improve it, and you should balance implementing the change with the effect it'd have on your habits. Sure, the longer you use your tool, the smaller those changes are, but your usage evolves throughout your life, and it's only natural that your tools do so to.

Unfortunately there is still a thing to balance against, which is forcing people to do the right thing.

There always will be bunch of people who nag about being impeded by doing something correctly, because they feel it is waste of time.

The same goes for tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I prefer Markdown for creating presentations and documents, and I even use Vim keybindings in VSCode and JetBrains IDEs (because I am lazy and you can use them nearly everywhere). My "TV/Steam" runs a tiling window manager (Sway) and is controlled by a keyboard instead of a remote (and you guest it, you can use Vim keybindings with sway). At one point, I used the right-hand for mouse at work and the left-hand at home. And, of course, there is the classic switch from a native-language keyboard to an English one for programming. What I'm trying to say is, you can adapt if you're motivated. And sometimes you don't.

I'm also a huge friend of trackpoints instead of touchpads. And I avoid to use the mouse and keyboard at the same time. Usually, mouse while planning, reviewing and presenting and keyboard when creating. And I learn keybindings for software that I use daily because of that.

Less GUI, means more Content / Information on the screen. And sometimes you benefit from that.

My takeaway? Do whatever makes you happy. Rewiring your brain from time to time keeps it flexible and sharp; like learning a new language or playing a musical instrument. It's a workout for your mind.

And Productivity isn't just about speed; it's also about quality. Sometimes, slowing down (by using a mouse) to focus on the craft of your work leads to better results than rushing to get things done as quickly as possible.

The best apps there acknowledge that they’re just one of a wide variety of tools the users reaches for regularly and avoid the hubris that comes with use of UI as brand identity. They don’t try to hog the user’s attention, vie for mindshare, or unnecessarily force the user to learn new or foreign UI patterns. They try their best to avoid saddling the user with any kind of unpleasant surprise (even if that’s just ensuring that common interactions work as expected) and they just sit quietly in the background until needed, serve the user’s purpose, and recede again.

EDIT: a lot of it comes down to small things which compound. For example, native tree views on macOS (NSOutlineView) expand/collapse entire subtrees when the user Option-clicks a disclosure arrow. This can save a ton of time and I die inside a little every time foreign toolkit apps don’t implement it.