> They're perfectly happy with the speed at which they can edit text and that's fine.

I think they miss the point. Speed editing with vim is not about how many lines you may produce in the day.

It's about the lag between the moment you think about what you want to write and the moment when it's written. Your editor should not be in the way, and that's what vim, when mastered, is all about : you simply don't think about it anymore.

It's for the same reason that vim tries to reduce hand movements, so you won't feel your editor in those extra displacements.