I wonder if any of the people watched the demo. They showcased Terminal, and there was an escape key on the touch bar. They also specifically said pressing the "fn"'key would show function keys on the touch bar, which is exactly what you have to do on current Apple keyboards to use the function keys.

It seems like a non-issue to me unless people simply don't like the touch bar not being physical keys, which is fine, because they can just get the other Pro without it.

I haven't. I based my prediction on the assumption Apple engineers are not stupid. For what I observe, it's quite the opposite.

The bar's function varies according to the application being used. It should be trivial to make, say, iTerm, which is immensely popular (I use it myself) have Esc and function keys available by default.

I imagine Cathode (http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/), another favorite of mine, will have beautiful function keys.

> because they can just get the other Pro without it.

Plus, it's cheaper.

In their presentation, Terminal had some contextual functionality mapped to it, including a tray which slid out and hid the escape key.

So no, by default, you will not get the F keys when you open Terminal.