Further, most lay users are familiar with large web properties (amazon, google, apple), and most of those large properties redirect to www (due to aforementioned technical reasons). So if such a user even happens to notice, if anything, they may find it odd to not see a www prefix.

I think that this is exactly right. I have personally observed users become confused over a URL not starting with www. Occasionally I have even seen them add it, just because it was assumed that all addresses should have it at the beginning.

This might change eventually, but it will change slowly if so.

Aesthetics aside, one benefit of naked domains is that shorter URLs are better for sharing in chat programs. 'www.' takes up a nontrivial amount of space in certain environments (e.g., a gchat window within gmail).

I'm not sure I understand why this creates any real issues.

I personally dislike it. It's annoying. Links can be long as it already.

Hence the purpose of the redirect so links to the naked domain work just as well.

But most users will copy/paste whatever's in their URL bar, which will include www. if the site redirected them to it.

When computers was relatively new to me, I used to suspect naked domains of phishing. So there's that.

It could add to the overall experience, just like tiny details in a logo or a well-considered font choice could.