Dude, I know why I would want to try emacs. I've even installed it a couple of times to see if the interface got any less ugly, but I decided against it because TextMate is equally powerful for my purposes, but requires no learning curve and no lengthy hacking sessions.
I use TextMate rather than Emacs for the same reason I use Mac OS X rather than Linux. Emacs and Linux may be more powerful, but TextMate and Mac OS X enable me to get what I want done with less fuss, less time expenditure, and less random jaunts through strange configuration files to figure out why feature XYZ doesn't work. I use TM/OSX because they Just Work.
I'm well aware of the additional power that I could have with Emacs or Linux, but it's not worth the additional hassle.
Also, before comparing TextMate to a GUI editor or IDE, you might want to actually try it. Sounds like you haven't TextMate is a programmer's power editor on a similar standing to vi or Emacs. Maybe not quite as awesomely powerful as Emacs, but close enough to be suitable for most geeks.
I tried to like TextMate very hard. Coda is even better, like TextMate on PCP. Oh how I wanted to love Coda, but I just couldn't do it. It felt like having a one-night stand with the most beautiful 21 year old, all the right curves in all the right places, but you know she would make a terrible mother for your children. Emacs: the perfect mother.
Another analogy, this one for bike lovers out there: Emacs is like a Brooks saddle, because it's wildly uncomfortable to start with, but if you stick with it and work into it, it's the only saddle that conforms to your body. Once you break it in, you can never go back to another saddle for long rides, no matter how new and awesome it looks.
brianloveswords: Coda has to be the worst editor on the planet. It deserves no mention here. Seriously, it's the worst thing Panic has ever done. Ever. Sure it's pretty... but that's it. I'm seriously flabbergasted that people prefer Coda to Textmate.
Re: Textmate vs. Emacs: It's like comparing Apples and Oranges. An orange juice producer will farm oranges, and an apple juice producer willf farm apples.
To the man using Textmate on OS X, you probably code Javascript an CSS, and might dabble in Rails or vice versa. The guy using Emacs might be doing this as well, but there is a good chance he's a hardcore AI Lisp hacker.
I am a web designer. I write CSS, XHTML, and JS. I deal with Django templates all day long, a web browser, and the remaining time is in the terminal. I'm more terminal oriented than most/all designers I know, but for the most part I am playing around in a GUI wonderland. I use Textmate. Textmate really truly is a powerful editor, I will not disagree. Textmate is hands down the best editor I have ever used, for all of the reasons you have suggested. But I won't deny that Emacs is probably also one of the best editors in the world.
My CTO/Partner/best friend uses Emacs. He's a python hacker. He writes python all day long. He's got a Thinkpad running Ubuntu and quite a few terminal windows. He's doing a totally different kind of work, interfacing with the back-end mostly while I deal with the front end. He swears by Emacs. I tend to think of Emacs more like an OS actually... you can play games in it, browse the web, use your term, check your mail, and edit all kinds of crap. It's extremely powerful. The sumo package contains a TON of extra stuff.
Anyway, no one can really say X editor is better than Y editor. Similar to the way a programmer will ultimately take on a certain language as his own, the same thing occurs with an editor. At some point learning or playing with a new editor is like learning a whole new language. Might as well get dropped smack dab in the middle of Spain, or throw out all of your Python/Ruby/insert-lang-here for Objective-C. It's the same kind of pain.
But I do agree that bloatware crap like Xcode and Eclipse are simply... crap.
Anyway hope some of that made sense. I might have gone off track a bit :/
For the record I am a huge fan of Textmate and use it religuiously. export EDITOR="mate -w" :)
Everything else is vim though, haha, sorry Emacs lovers.
I read everything you wrote, and stand by my statements as written. You're not going to "get" emacs because you just don't understand yet. Use it for a month. Until then, reserve judgement. Or don't, I guess. You can write perfectly fine code in TextMate I'm sure.
I've spent over a year in textmate and now I use emacs. Emacs is a much bigger pain in the ass to get setup, but I use my editor for about 8 hours every single day. The effort is worth it in this case (imo). Plus I'm not tied to a mac with emacs.
I use TextMate rather than Emacs for the same reason I use Mac OS X rather than Linux. Emacs and Linux may be more powerful, but TextMate and Mac OS X enable me to get what I want done with less fuss, less time expenditure, and less random jaunts through strange configuration files to figure out why feature XYZ doesn't work. I use TM/OSX because they Just Work.
I'm well aware of the additional power that I could have with Emacs or Linux, but it's not worth the additional hassle.
Also, before comparing TextMate to a GUI editor or IDE, you might want to actually try it. Sounds like you haven't TextMate is a programmer's power editor on a similar standing to vi or Emacs. Maybe not quite as awesomely powerful as Emacs, but close enough to be suitable for most geeks.