Lenovo didn't have enough influence over their platform to shove software keys down the market's throat and get any 3rd party software adopt them in a useful manner. If you're developing software for Windows, that particular version of the Thinkpad is a vanishingly small portion of your target market. With Mac software and the MBP, it's a substantial one.

Apple's positioning here is fairly unique. They can add this feature and expect a significant number of developers to actually implement it.

Software keys on their own to just control the computer's built-in functions don't strike me as particularly useful. The strength in this is like Steve Jobs' original pitch with the iPhone's touchscreen versus a fixed hardware keyboard. It can adapt to new uses and functionality as needed.

That is if the API is open to all applications and not restricted to App Store ones.

That was in gen 2. They reverted to normal keys in gen 3, 4. So I guess they learned their lesson.

You also need drivers for those touch keys which makes installing any OS more difficult

Honestly bough how often do you hit escape on a mac? So having it as a digital key won't be the end of the world.

>50x a day, probably. I practically live in Vim.

maybe you mean 50k (not x) because in Vim it's used every 10 seconds, which makes it several thousands times a day

yes

1/ Cancelling a dialogue box 2/ vi 3/ Force Quit

Dozens if not hundreds of times every day. And that’s just in the GUI. I’m not even a Vim user or anything.

> So having it as a digital key won't be the end of the world.

That's quite an assumption. What makes you think that'll be an option?