Serendipitously, my old pal Watts Martin posted his thoughts on everything in Emacs at about the same time that I did. Martin says that before he got into Emacs, he considered this “profoundly weird” but now he’s beginning to see the point.
His sticking point is one I understand and also had to overcome. He, like me, lives in the Apple ecosystem which means that Emacs is available only on his Macs not on his iPhone or iPad. Of course, that’s pretty much true of the Android ecosystem as well. Yes, I know about the Emacs port to Android but, really, do you want to use Emacs on your phone? What would be ideal was if Emacs were available on iPads and Android tablets. That’s theoretically possible on Android tablets but Apple has a firm “no interpreters” rule for iOS apps.
In any event, Emacs is pretty much restricted to our laptop or desktop computers. My main area of contention is my RSS feed, which is effectively restricted to Emacs. I don’t consider that a big problem—especially considering the excellent Elfeed app—but some might. Note taking is covered nicely by the wonderful Journelly but for messaging I’m still effectively restricted to Messages. Email is not a problem. I can read and write Email in Emacs but I can also use any of the Apple mail apps. They all deal with Apple email. As Old El Paso asked, why not both?
The big area is, of course, browsing. Yes, it’s theoretically possible to use Emacs for browsing but as Martin says, “the options for doing so range from bad to bad”. So for now, all but the most rabid Emacs users are consigned to using Emacs and the browser.
Martin, of course, is doomed. He’s already allowing that he may try moving email into Emacs. Once he even considers that, he’s already stepped into the quicksand and there’s no escape. Before long he’ll be wondering why the heck he can’t browse from within Emacs.