Definitely the worst era of Mac laptop hardware that I lived through. I still have a work-provided 2019 MBP and the keyboard is shot (even though I never use it because it's docked to a monitor + keyboard 99.9% of the time), while the Touch Bar flickers with random white rectangles regularly while the machine is asleep. I personally kept using a 2015 MBP until last year for just this reason.

You're right about the hubris, but Caps Lock -> Esc is The Way regardless!

I am a vim user. I map caps lock to super for a dead simple app shortcut system. I prefer being able to switch applications perfectly over a more convenient escape key. macOS app switching is broken by default.

AeroSpace WM really made a lot of sense for me for better application switching.

Caps Lock as Esc (tap) and also Ctrl (hold) is the true way

Interesting, haven't tried that, but I will.

Wow I already forgot about the touch bar. And imagine being so stubborn to keep the touch bar but introduce a physical ESC key, they lost their minds during that time.

There was non-touch bar variant, right ? Personally i like how manufactures try out new thing, instead of staying inside their safe zone.

They lost their mind when Jobs died, he was the only mind worth mentioning in that cult.

If they just put the fancy bar ON TOP of the f-row, we'd still have it.

As a Vim user, I thought it would be a deal breaker, but it really wasn't that bad.

The rest of the laptop was though.

I just switched to ^C for Escape (which usually works) and ^[ for the rare time I needed actual escape mode.

The Touch Bar was awful - except I was able to get a great deal on my former employer’s Touch Bar era laptops they were decommissioning, since nobody wanted them. One of them (2018, fully loaded) is still in active use, although it mostly runs T2Linux now.

As a Vim user, and a 65% keyboard user with my ESC key mapped to `~`, I found out early on that using ESC in Vim is better relegated to CTRL+[ or `jk` (when in insert mode). Fortunately, that stupid touchbar didn't slow me down as much as others have mentioned. The volume control (that would get stuck) on the other hand...

In Vim, I've used ^[ instead of ESC since forever so the ESC thing didn't bother me either. Still, the Touch Bar is such a pain in the ass when I have to interact with it. It's also bad if I touch it by accident when carrying the laptop.

The early touch bar models were terrible. I still remember the day I traded that thing in for an M1.