With respect to the keyboard, at least in the reviews I've been seeing, a lot of people seem to be OK with it after an adjustment period.

In terms of battery life, I'm with you, I'd rather see Apple get as much life out of the maximum sized battery that the TSA will allow on a flight (100Wh), but I don't know that I would call it a big mistake, since it hasn't hurt the sales of the new MBPs. I think they could do that in a chassis the size of the 2012 and earlier 15" unibodies. They'd also have plenty of room for legacy ports too. Those 15" unibodies were the sweet spot for me in terms of size and user upgradability.