This is like being on Android and having an IPhone just for some iOS-only app. It's brutal and flies in the face of all that is good and pure.

That's a pretty good analogy. Firing up Emacs for just one thing is a pretty large side dependency. Also, Emacs's keybindings are jarring when bouncing back and forth between apps custom built for a particular OS. They're not bad in any way, just very different.

It's like using an external tool for something if it's better than the internal implementation of the editor for the same thing.