I always thought it was quite nice to have what's effectively an Elgato Stream Deck (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528895) built into my keyboard. It was certainly much better than fixed icons, which are in turn far more discoverable than numbered mystery keys.
Apple's only real mistake was not keeping ESC a fixed hard key.
> Apple's only real mistake was not keeping ESC a fixed hard key.
They’ve added that back for a few years now, but I agree. I used to own one of the 2016 MBPs with a Touch Bar and the lack of a physical escape key drove me insane. Even though I sold that laptop, I had actual while-asleep nightmares about the horrifically bad keyboard for a while too.
Even with a physical escape key, the touch bar is still a frequent source of frustration. I think it could only be made acceptable by integrating the haptic elements used in their trackpads, so that accidental light touching of an active region of the touchbar would no longer trigger unintended actions. Haptic feedback might have even made it possible to disambiguate which virtual button your finger landed on before applying enough force to trigger an action.
It was more than the ESC key imo, though that was my biggest complaint. It was far too easy to mistakenly hit the touch bar and trigger something unintended. I also found zero real use for it aside from looking nice.
