[Lazare]

I'm working on a pretty major project with Knockout, and that's not really been my experience.

The "magic" is basically "it has two-way data binding". Which is magic, but no more so than the same feature in Angular, Ember.js, or the relevant Backbone plugins. Two-way data binding is pretty magical; if you need it that's probably good, if you don't really need it, it's bad.

Comparing vanilla Backbone to Knockout seems a bit odd; they have almost no overlap, and they don't really solve the same problems. Conversely, if you are using Backbone to solve a Knockout-style problem, it's either not really the sort of problem Knockout is designed for (ie, no need for two-way data binding) or you've added a bunch of magic onto Backbone (either through writing it yourself or using one of the many plugins for Backbone).

I just don't think you can use Backbone, solve the sort of problems that Knockout is good for, and have less magic. Two-way data binding is magic, and it's like...90% of what Knockout does. Either your stack includes that magic, or you can't compare yourself to Knockout.