Woodworking is very refined.  Practices and methods have been refined over millennia.  New methods tend to increase the amount of wood that can be used from the tree so consider these as conservation measures.

Let me elaborate a bit.  Traditional woodworking generally does not use branch wood (the exception being some boatbuilding uses heavy branches conveniently shaped to the needs of the bow).  The reason is that this wood supports a great deal of weight in a non-vertical position.  When you cut it (remove the weight) the tension in the wood continues to release over time causing it wo warp unpredictably.  Now if you take that same branch and chop it into small bits and then glue those bits together you now have a very flat and straight particle board.  Glue a thin piece of veneer (taken from the main trunk of the tree) to that particle core and you have a wood product used in a lot of everyday modern furniture.

Fine furniture making still relies on traditional woodworking and understanding of how wood moves.  Heirloom pieces will continue to be made using these methods.

Tool use varies among craftsmen.  Most use a combination of traditional tools and modern power tools.  The goals are speed, accuracy, and appeal and durability of the finished product.  Some of these considerations are volume-based.  For example, if you want to dovetail a single drawer an experienced woodworker can likely finish using hand-sawn dovetails quicker than fine-tuning a setup to begin using power tools.  But if you are making hundreds of drawers in a manufacturing process then the setup remains static and everything centers on volume.

Are there new tools for the industry?  Yes.  There are computer controlled routers that can cut elaborate shapes.  These can be useful for some pieces.  But wood is not metal (predictable and has strength in all directions) so there is still a need for examination of pieces during construction to determine if some might be useful for a leg versus a panel (it’s all about the wood grain and what has the strength/looks for a given purpose).  These judgements rely on the millennia of acquired knowledge that goes into the craft.