Let me also balance my position by saying I won't deliberately choose an ugly tool over an attractive one if they both do the job equally well. I come from a family of woodworkers, so the Bridge City Tool Works catalog is a regular treat: http://www.bridgecitytools.com.
The aesthetics of tools is a delicate matter though. The H.O. Studley toolchest is a work of art:
as is an early 20th century Browne and Sharpe dial indicator:
They're functional works of art though. 80% of the design involves pieces that do well-defined jobs efficiently. 15% involves meeting the functional and efficiency requirements in an elegant way. The remaining 5% is ornamentation that enhances the beauty without getting in the way.
When you talk about radically redesigning a tool, you risk messing up the 95% that represents an enormous amount of design evolution and experience in the field. If you want a new design to be taken seriously, you need to show that you take the old design seriously enough to understand why it is the way it is. "Out with the old and in with the new" just means "let's go rediscover a few decades worth of design mistakes for ourselves".
Cool electronics tools
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