I agree. I haven’t yet interviewed a user that views realtime collaboration as something desirable in itself. In my research, user mostly are forced to do this kind of collab because it’s still better than coordinating via side channels such as email or phone. It has lower friction but at a very high usability cost. In contrast it makes people undervalue the importance of a structured plan of execution for projects with a significant number of collaborators. There are practically no polished, in-between, git-like experience in mainstream tools. The outcome of real-time for users is always remembered as messy and frustrating. I don’t even agree with the premise of shared control as being an effective basis for creative or productive process at large, it is useful for brainstorming and exploration in some specific cases, or highly specialized and niche settings like pair programming. IMHO this is super valued by developers and marketers because it’s challenging, cool and it makes for a good pitch. Not rare to see people who conflate digital collaboration with shared control, thinking they’re synonymous – such is the influence of these modern workflows. We can never know how good other collaboration strategies can be if alternative experiences are under-developed and people default to shared control.