The fact that the function keys aren't "customizable" is a feature, not a bug. The contextualization being touted as a selling point of the Touch Bar means that instead of relying on muscle memory to push a key that is always going to be in the same place, I will now have to look away from the screen to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

Do you frequently use applications which, on the fly, change what their keyboard shortcuts are? Like, copy is Cmd+C right now, but five minutes from now, in the same application, it will suddenly be Option-P instead? And Fn-Q ten minutes after that?

If not, why do you assume that an application won't consistently present its contextual touch buttons in the same locations each time it presents them? Because the only case in which you couldn't develop muscle memory for those buttons is one in which they are not in the same location each time the application presents them.

(and if your retort will be that you use different applications which will make different choices for their contextual buttons, well, they probably already used different keyboard shortcuts for application-specific tasks, and you developed muscle memory for those, so...)

Though oddly not properly aligned. It's about 2/3 of the way off the ~ key for some reason.

It's because they wanted to keep the same distance from the touchid on the right side. So in order to keep it nicely aligned they put it there (only assuming here).

Wouldn't that make it easier to hit with your finger? You'd have to stretch less.

Not if you have dozens of years of muscle memory for it being all the way to the top left. And since it's not a button you can't go by feel.

I would guess the margin on the left is still in the touch area for esc. If you've used the split keyboard on an iPad, they went as far as to include invisible key duplicates for the keys at the edges. The ones on the border are actually usable on either the left or right half.

Perhaps there is a business opportunity here, selling $9.99 USB-C Esc key dongles?

An app to display it in vim would be enough. But add another $9.99 app for the delete (forward) key, after all those years (it's fn backspace now). An example of market creation by the removal of features.

Even my Samsung tablet has a default keyboard with both backspace and delete.

Clearly we need a USB-ESC standard.

It needs to be a shiny, red, poundable button. Maybe something that makes a helluvva noise when you hit it.