AFAIK, they didn't reproduce that model. Surprised Apple didn't take note.
But instead, they may have made it worse, if that's possible, because the escape key is indented, just to make the Touch Bar's graphical layout even on both sides. Definitely the worst case of form over function I've encountered with an Apple product.
The Lenovo crowd on the other hand are old-timers that want real keys that click and thats why the Lenovo touchbar was so hated.
The Touch Bar is going to be great for those folks. And the new screen is better as well, displaying a wider gamut of colors than previous Macs.
Because Macs have gotten so popular with developers, it is easy to fool ourselves into thinking that developers are what saved Apple. But it was actually creative professionals who were one of the customer "pillars" that Jobs built off of when he came back. Developers flocking to the Mac is a fairly recent development.
- I work extensively in video/cgi software, it's not just devs annoyed by this device.
Your definition of "pro" is not universal. It is not absolute. Anyone who says "the new MacBook Pro is not a pro device!" needs to get over themselves. You're not the arbiter of what can and cannot be considered "pro".
Getting a Pro meant you wanted some kind of 'performance'---perhaps for games because of the separate video card, or a better CPU to run some taxing application.
What I have heard is that if you're a person who lived and breathed Excel, or you're a developer, then you'll likely use the function keys.
Personally? I've never used the function row keys for anything anything raising and lowering the volume of my machine.
But the only time I can remember that Apple canned such a major feature in their hardware was the iPod Shuffle going voice only back to buttons.
Feel this release is way too high profile so we're going to be stuck with this mess.