[barrowclift]

Genuinely curious, why did so many developers ask for the return of the physical Escape key when you could easily re-map it to caps lock? Before this was an officially supported option, I always hated having to do big hand-shimmies every time I needed to press the escape key, which is quite often for programs like vim!

[schuke]

Can only speak for myself but here in China we need Caps Lock to switch between languages which is used very very often.

[barrowclift]

That's fascinating, I didn't realize that key serves multilingual support in some countries. Is that the standard configuration in China or a common setting for that key there?

[schuke]

It's been the macOS default for a few yeas. Before that, we usually assign Cmd+Space for this (in Windows it was Ctrl+Space for switching language and Shift for toggling between English and Chinese). Then Siri came so the combo stopped working. Possibly it was then when Caps Locks became the default.

[oddthink]

Because caps lock is already control. :-)

[pault]

Hold for control, tap for escape. You'll never go back. :)

[barrowclift]

That makes sense, I didn't even consider that some folks already have the key bound to something else.

[samatman]

I have caps lock mapped to backspace, and the delete key deletes forward.

I also have press-and-release option/alt for esc, but sometimes get lazy and try to hit the tiny touchbar icon for esc.

A physical escape key will be nice to have, and inverted T arrows will be really nice to have.

I wish they'd added haptic feedback to the rest of the touchbar, but I'll take it.

[jamroom]

For me it is 25 years of vi muscle memory.

[redsymbol]

Speaking for myself - I find hitting the normal escape key location natural and easy. Especially when I'm typing fast, I can hit it without accidentally hitting another key (e.g. tab).

This might be in part because I'm a tall man, with large hands and long fingers, and also Esc normally has more of a separation from adjacent keys than capslock does.

But another reason I don't want to remap caps lock is that when I am typing on a coworker's computer, odds are high they don't have things remapped the same way. Imagine looking like an idiot in front of your peers, because your muscle memory makes you not know how to type :)

(Also, I'm not sure if people who do that remapping swap caps lock with a different key? Personally, I fully utilize the caps lock key - it wouldn't be much of an improvement to put it in an unusual location, and getting rid of it is not something I'd consider.)

tl;dr - Different people have diverse habits, preferences and needs. Apple's challenge is to design a keyboard layout that works well for as many as possible.