Those are all fair questions.
I can say that some of them don't have good answers and that others are also being discussed. But mainly the main complaint I hear is that they are just plain better than spell casters for the reasons listed before. Activate <incant> would address one of the reasons they are better.
I do not know how you can possibly say that being able to cast at twice the speed and half the margin for error, is not a fantastic advantage. Again this is not a my speed vs your speed. This is flat out, I can throw twice as much **** out of an item in any given time period than I can if I were casting the same stuff from memory.
In the time that it takes me to cast from memory and take down a spell shield and prison someone, I can use items instead and get two people. Thats not a huge advantage?
I can see your concern that putting a 'bandaid' on the problem will move it out of the limelight, and possibly delay a 'real' fix.
I do not see that change as being a 'bandaid' I see it as being part of an overall solution.
Regardless of who can carry or use an item, or how many they can have, or if its a 9th level spell or a 1st, the build spent on the actual skill should not be trumped by an item.
Even if you were to say you can only carry 5 items, and to use them you need to possess the skill, or that they can only contain 1st level spells. The item would still be better than spells in memory. All you are doing is forcing the items into specific hands.
Again not that those are bad ideas, but they do not address the problem that the proposed rule was trying to.
If you have 1 item or 100, it doesn't matter. Every single one is flat out better than having that spell in memory. That particular change would leave the usefulness, and lower the speed.
The main answer that I have gotten from people when I asked, if you think that it will have no real effect on the game then why do you care if it gets implemented? has been, well it would be annoying to have to say the whole incant. Why would it be annoying? Because it takes longer, and its harder to say.
Exactly.
So people don't like it because they want their items to stay quicker and easier to use than spells.
Not liking the rule because you don't think it fixes the whole problem, thats fair. But no one rule is going to 'fix' all the perceived problems there are in the game.
Skill store items do not have this problem because they do require the full incant to use. It is no faster for a Mage with an Eviscerate item to use it than for the fighter to use his, or whatever other skill store item we are talking about. (Those should require 'activate' too in my opinion)
If you have me fight myself (no really, its a good time), as a scholar and a fighter, each with the skills of the other in items. The fighter duel would be relatively even, and the Mage duel would go to the fighter every time.
If you honestly do not think that the speed of items is a problem, then we are going to have to agree to disagree on that fact.