I agree, I think the GUI is important for the kinds of users who feel lost without Docker Desktop. There have been plenty of other ways for technical users to run their containers all along (really, you could just run your own VM with vagrant if nothing else) but the people who want a "point and click" turnkey experience will appreciate the GUI.

Another kind of nice thing about Rancher Desktop is it's cross platform, so even Linux users can use it. That could be nice if you have a mix of Linux and Mac devs and want to use the same tooling here. It also makes sure you don't "mess up" your real Linux system or run into any distro-specific version incompatibilities (since it's all in a disposable VM controlled by Rancher Desktop).

I've tinkered with Rancher Desktop periodically and I think it's a promising tool. For now I keep going back to running Docker directly, only because it's my existing workflow (I'm a Linux user so the Docker Desktop changes don't apply to me).