>I have no idea how to close an open file without Googling whereas in Sublime or Atom it's either click the "X" or use the standard Cmd-W shortcut.

You can just use the menu bar for that.

>I also have no idea how to open a project or search for a file, and don't really know where to start discovering those things, whereas in both Sublime and Atom you can browse through the menus, or hopefully quickly discover the Cmd-P command launcher which lets you type a command.

You can, as it tells you, use the fuzzy command search by typing M-x. Same as Atom, just a different command.

Honestly, and sorry for sounding rude, to me it just seems like you intentionally tried to not understand in order to prove a point; Just because in your mind you have this idea of emacs just having to be inferior in some way.

As it stands though, it's not.