The honest part: there is a learning curve. Setting up a flatbed machine, managing tension, loading the carriage correctly, troubleshooting dropped stitches. It is a different skill set entirely, less meditative than handwork and more mechanical. Entry-level circular machines are gentler to start with, but limit what you can make.
What a machine cannot do is replace the feel of yarn moving through your fingers, or the satisfaction of a stitch made by hand. What it can do is free you up. Machine knit the body. Hand knit the details. Some makers have decided that is not a compromise. It is just a workflow.
