I think one thing a lot of people miss is that vi's key bindings are more ergonomic. You don't ever need to press more than one key with each hand at a time, and you don't have to take your fingers from the home row. Meanwhile a lot of emacs key combinations are like playing "twister" with your fingers, and the guy who wrote most of it (RMS) developed a crippling case of RSI.
emacs lisp is much nicer to write extensions in than vimscript, though. It's too bad vim didn't copy that part.
Indeed, although all this talk of high quality vi plugins for emacs has me considering an emacs review. I've been a vi user for over a decade now and I love it because when I am editing text I feel I am using a truly sharp knife to slice the data apart, and wonderful hand tools to piece it back together. Vim is to me as a woodworker's chest of honed block planes is to such a craftsman.
And it is mainly due to the ergonomic design. I can absolutely fly through code in vim without so much as a crick of the wrist.
emacs lisp is much nicer to write extensions in than vimscript, though. It's too bad vim didn't copy that part.