I think npub is cool just because it is stable and part of its characters can be memorized, and it's easy enough to get relays for a pubkey by using hardcoded indexers like relay.nos.social and purplepag.es in most cases, but note1 is completely unjustifiable.
I think npubs should be used in UIs when displaying a user pubkey, but in mentions nprofile is strictly better (apps can even display npubs in mentions after decoding the nprofile). But again, even npubs in mention is not that bad.
Agree, but it creates so much friction with users :(
It's hard to say "you can use nouns, but if you want to share the user, it must be an nprofile". Most people don't know the difference and maybe shouldn't know.
The client can replace it in place, but, again, just sharing the npub is not that bad.