I believe those studies were done with non-experts. Editors like vi and emacs are expert-systems: the upfront cost to learning how to use them is high, but once you pay that cost, you can be extremely efficient in them. I've used vi (well, vim, but just about anyone who uses "vi" is really using vim) as my primary editor for... eight years now. I feel far more comfortable in it than in editors that expect me to do mouse-and-keyboard inputs. I am, however, not a master. If you've ever seen vi or emacs masters write or edit code, it's clear they are faster than they could be if they were in a mouse-and-keyboard interface.
The key thing I noticed in the relative study is also that they said people experienced literal amnesia about the additional time required to choose a shortcut.
I'd be interested not only in a better study of the effect of expertise as well as looking at the effect of this "amnesia" on productivity. Even if it takes me longer to do a task in Emacs, that amnesia suggests that the interface is less distracting, which might be far more valuable than speed.
Absolutely agree. The comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek anyways. Also, not having to switch applications is a great time saver of course. By the way, there are also great apps like Bowtie or Coversutra that add global shortcuts to control iTunes
