[Aurornis]

My experience with students (outside of engineering) is that the most common show stopper for MacBooks is price. They’re not nit picking about keyboard backlighting.

Most people have no problem using a keyboard in the dark or with light from the screen.

Backlit keyboards are a nice-to-have, not a showstopper.

[pbreit]

I would say the vast, vast majority of people are completely unable to use a non-lit keyboard in the dark.