I dislike the Tele look. This attitude delayed my intro to a Tele until earlier this year when I bought a SDOTD G&L ASAT Classic Tribute. Alnico pickups instead of MFD, so pretty darn close to being a normal Swamp Ash Tele.
I can take or leave the neck pickup. It's not BAD... just kind of meh. I now understand why people put humbuckers in the neck and keep the bridge as a single coil.
The big takeaway is this: I wish I'd have gone with a Tele as my first guitar. That or what ended up becoming the Squier/Fender '51 (which wasn't around when I started).
They're easy to use (no tremolo related tuning issues to worry about), and they're versatile enough to hang in any context where an electric guitar is necessary.
The amount of time I wasted as a kid trying to figure out why my guitar kept going out of tune before realizing that the bridge was lifting, then having to figure out how a vibrato really works so that I could balance the tension... all of that.
Then you read the laundry list of albums, solos, etc that were recorded with a Tele. Even if they weren't really using it live, the Tele was foundational to the Led Zeppelin (as already mentioned) and Superunknown/Down on the Upside sounds.
Played a gig last month using that G&L. In the context of playing with a group, the great thing is that the guitar really cut, and the versatility of tones between the two pickups, tone and volume, etc... kind of mindblowing for such a simple instrument.
Again, not a big fan of the look, but I might make a Warmoth Tele that would be more my style. A gut cut would be nice also...