Someone who gets it! I'm doomed to stay with a 2010 vintage Lenovo T-series by the looks.
They moved to a chiclet style keyboard in the previous generation, removed the top row of keys, and have now inverted the function keys so they perform media functions first. In order to get an F4 you have to press Fn+F4. Ridiculous!
Also they have removed the physical buttons surrounding the trackpad. Previously, one of the nice things about the trackpoint was the ability to have your finger moving the trackpoint while your thumb took a rest on the middle button. Being able to feel the physical buttons you always knew exactly which button you were going to click. Now with the Apple style trackpad, you get no textual feedback at all.
Fn+Escape turns on Function Lock, and it stays on permanently through reboots.
I agree with you that the clickpad buttons are inferior. It's much harder to drag and drop, for example.
The W530 still has the proper trackpoint buttons. But it's a 1080p screen with a numpad that displaces the main keyboard.
Lenovo sells USB trackpoint keboards (with and without a trackpad). I already had one for my HP desktop box and ordered another on the assumption that sooner or later Lenovo will turn to the Thinkpad line to shit and I'll want that keyboard for whatever laptop I get next.
That said, I suppose I'm the audience that Lenovo's changes are targeted to. As a current owner of an early 2011 macbook pro, I just ordered a T440p yesterday, but for a long time I was deciding between it and T540p. I prefered T540p to the very similarly priced and equipped w530 (for my price range) because of the new trackpad.
I eventually settled on the T440p because of its greater portability and centered keyboard.
There's just more people who care about a good trackpad than a good trackpoint. I've used lenovo trackpoints and just can't get used to them, so I suppose it must be similarly difficult for trackpoint users to learn to use trackpads effectively, but I don't think either is inherently better.
I get that maybe more people are interested in the trackpad but I don't see why Lenovo improves the pad at the expense of the trackpoint. I disable the trackpad on my laptops so there's a net loss for me when they degrade the trackpoint buttons.
If they insist on degrading what distinguishes a Thinkpad then they'll be yet another generic laptop provider.
Just because it was originally conceived and created then, doesn't mean there hasn't been a fair amount of evolution in those products since that time.
Nothing has shown itself as significantly better yet.
For an IDE for, say, C/C++, Visual Studio beats it soundly. For Java, Eclipse.
All that said, these tools are quite useful despite being old--I don't mean anything pointing out their age other than that a somewhat old laptop is probably still quite sufficient.