This quote from 1981 stresses that taking away a responsive cursor is the most arrogant and disrespectful bug.

The audacity of developers to restart the discussion whether the mouse should follow user input induces rage on so many levels.

Yeah, the cursor is your most direct embodiment in the computer. Messing with it is like somebody pushing your arm when you're trying to cut tomatoes. It's a major determinant in how good it feels to use a computer (and whether you cut your fingers).

But there were a lot of things we learned in the 80s and 90s that we have largely forgotten today, like "make clickable things look clickable" and "don't use Yes and No as button labels" and "active windows should look different from inactive windows."