I mean, flipping back and forth between Mollweide and Equal-Earth (what they went with), I see only minor differences, with distortion seemingly favouring Equal-Earth. What's the rationale for having such a strong preference, especially as either is such an improvement over the current map (which has it's principle advantage being for sailing between continents, which isn't exactly the most common use-case)?

Earth is round so the map should also be round.