> > On the other hand with classes like Apply or Bind you get access to lots of useful semigroup-like structures you can still reason about in general, not in particular, including things that can't be made Applicative/Monadic. (e.g. IntMap).
>
> One example is that Bind would occasionally be handy for EDSLs that
> don't permit lifting arbitrary values as a no-op. Incidentally,
> desugaring do notation does not actually use return at all, if memory
> serves me...

This strikes me as a very good reason for pointed.  Similar to how I'd like to see GArr included in ghc.

+1