I worded that poorly...
I was not trying to say that the microscope is useless. The point I was trying to make is that, especially for a newbie, you shouldn't rely on a microscope to tell you where you are at in your honing progression.

I fell into that trap early on, and would get frustrated when I had what I thought was a good edge that just wouldn't shave. I was reliant on the microscope to tell me about the status of my edge, and that hindered me from learning reliable methods of checking it for awhile. I have seen posts from other honing newbies that have done the same thing, "my bevel is set because it looks good under the microscope, but..."

More recently I was driving myself nuts about the scratch patterns left by my various finishers, and that they didn't look like the ones I've seen pictures of. I found out that it was a problem with my lighting.
I don't blame the microscope for any of this. The point is that until a newbie understands exactly what they are looking at in a microscope, the limitations of what they can see, and how to interpret that information, it can hurt their progress at learning to hone more than it helps.