> But will they still keep that awful touchbar where the Esc and F1-12 are supposed to be?
If you use the escape key often, it should be where caps-lock is. Mac OS X even has a built-in setting for this.
If you only use it once in a while, it doesn't really matter that it's a virtual touch key.
F1-12 has always been a horrible interface. They're too far away from home row. There's a reason why many hyper-optimized keyboads like Ergodox don't come with one. Letter-based keyboard shortcuts are always better, and are usually easier to remember because you can associate the letter they use with a word (Cmd+B for "Build").
The touch bar is objectively a better use of that space if you ask me, it just came with an unacceptable price jump. It's not that much better than the old key row
I realize this is a joke, but when typing e.g. "echo $ITERM_PROFILE", you have to press shift anyway to type the $ and any subsequent _'s, and I find it considerably easier to hold down the shift key, type the whole word, and release, instead of: press shift for $, release, press caps lock, release and press shift for _, release, type rest of word, and disable caps lock at the end.
Seriously, the only non-facetious use case (CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL) for caps lock that I've ever encountered is how EV Nova uses it as the 2x speed toggle. And even then, its open source successor Endless Sky emulates the same behavior even when I have caps lock still mapped to ctrl.
Does anyone have a real use case for caps lock? I'm even willing to accept a serious, no-kidding "YES I ACTUALLY TYPE IN ALL CAPS MOST OF THE TIME WHEN CHATTING WITH MY FRIENDS AND IT'S EASIER" as an answer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caps_Lock#History and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#Shift_key give some background. "However, because the shift key required more force to push (its mechanism was moving a much larger mass than other keys), and was operated by the little finger (normally the weakest finger on the hand), it was difficult to hold the shift down for more than two or three consecutive strokes. The "shift lock" key (the precursor to the modern caps lock) allowed the shift operation to be maintained indefinitely." This seems not very applicable to modern keyboards.
For non English keyboards, they let you toggle between different ‘alphabet’ sets. For Japanese keyboards, you can toggle them between hiragana and katakana, or full and half width characters.
There used to be an option for Chinese keyboards but I don’t remember what those were anymore.
If you use the escape key often, it should be where caps-lock is. Mac OS X even has a built-in setting for this.
If you only use it once in a while, it doesn't really matter that it's a virtual touch key.
F1-12 has always been a horrible interface. They're too far away from home row. There's a reason why many hyper-optimized keyboads like Ergodox don't come with one. Letter-based keyboard shortcuts are always better, and are usually easier to remember because you can associate the letter they use with a word (Cmd+B for "Build").
The touch bar is objectively a better use of that space if you ask me, it just came with an unacceptable price jump. It's not that much better than the old key row