In vim, if I enter and leave edit mode without doing anything, the caret ends up one character to the left. And if I enter and leave append mode, the caret moves forwards and then backwards.

Any way to configure vim to leave the caret alone in these cases?

Ideally I just want to always enter append mode, but without moving the caret when I enter or exit the mode.

_{(Currently I usually use insert mode because it doesn't mess up my caret position upon entry. That is, except when I need to append to the end of the line, in which case I swear at vim for behaving in such an archaic fashion, press Esc and enter append mode.)}