A reason to stick so closely to the original model is that it has lasted 35 years. There are few other programs that have lasted as long without feeling an urgency to change with the times, and mostly by the base system being similarly stubborn about changing or by being incredibly simple.

The fact that it's, essentially, the same on every OS I use it on is another selling point. I bring my .emacs file and make minor tweaks for different OSes (due to where files/programs are if absolute paths or relative paths in the user home directory are different). It always works the same once I've made those small changes (and they are small, and once done my Windows .emacs is good on any Windows box). Again, there are few other programs like this. At a minimum, you often end up with subtly different keybindings (macOS using the command key, Windows using control, and Linux using control or alt) and subtly different layouts that break workflow and habit.