Companies have no obligation to give the consumer the biggest and best, if they know the consumer will be satisfied with par. For instance, if a business has no/weak competition, then even if the company has a next-level product ready for distribution, it would make more sense to keep the lesser product on the shelf and only increment features when competition arrives.
For Apple, they know their customers are loyal and getting them riled up about some things here and there will only heighten the excitement when the truly epic product is released. I'm not sure if that's what's happening here, but I don't see Apple struggling.
In my personal case I have grown more and more frustrated with Apple's products.
It boggles my mind that my 5 years old MBP is more pleasant to use than the one I got at work 1 year ago
(to be 100% fair, the new model has one nicety : the fingerprint reader, even though I am not 100% satisfied/convinced, it is nicer than entering a password).
I am more than ready to jump ship to any other product at this point.
Even an OS that I feel is inferior for my personal needs won't be too much of an issue if it does everything else better than my current laptop.
Which one exactly? I had tried the 2016(7?) MBP one it felt awful, but recently purchased the 2018 MacBook Air and I quite like it when I'm not using my mechanical keyboard (Filco).
I was considering picking up a new Air, as i actually quite like the feel of the keyboard in it too - however even the demonstration laptop I tested typing on in an Apple store was suffering from the keyboard issues others have described (double spaces, missing letters etc).
Yes this computer is likely an extreme case - on account of the environment it sits and the volume of people that will touch and use the thing daily. But it doesn't say to me that this is of even satisfactory quality, nevermind good quality.
People complained when the Touch Toolbar replaced the Function keys row. Now it looks like Apple plans to replace the whole keyboard.
Haptic feedback sounds nice, but the invisible "buttons" and bumps will always remain at the same positions.
Reprogramming these keys and their backgrounds might be useful in some applications, but the hardware layout wouldn't be very configurable.
The next iteration of this design would be to mechanically even out the keyboard layout bumps, whenever the keyboard or a specific key isn't in use.