Yes. For example I know in textiles especially, they were small enough to run under & between machines to get things without the factory having to them off. (Surprise surprise, guess how kids got maimed and/or killed…)

Yes, that was my first question: what about Photoshop as an image editor? What is a comparable replacement for that?

I don’t know how it stacks up price-wise, but I’d argue Bluebeam is a far superior PDF editing program. It even covers some word processing, Illustrator, and some PowerPoint adjacent things.

That being said, I can’t see it as practical for the average consumer.