I have an esc key...?

It's very easy to remap caps lock to escape.

That's not the point. You shouldn't have to map caps lock to escape.

There will always be other potential physical keys that aren't on your laptop keyboard. You could just as easily say that you shouldn't have to use modifier keys to trigger Page Down on a Macbook Pro keyboard. Where's my Print Screen SysRq key?

Ok so why isn't the 2012 mbp hated because it doesn't have that key?

2012 MBP has the escape key.

It doesn't have print screen / sysreq, why is that OK?

Because those keys are not used nearly as often as escape. And because osx has a different keyboard shortcut for screenshots so the print screen key is largely irrelevant.

The reasons you listed are largely why I don't care that the escape key is gone from where it was.

Why not, it's better anyway?

Because caps lock is already remapped to ctrl. :p

You are entitled to your opinion. Don't thrust it onto others.

If only it were so easy to remap my hand! Caps lock is already dedicated to control and most apps don’t support ^[.

Check out Karabiner Elements (https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/).

You can create a rule to change caps lock to control if pressed with other keys, else escape if pressed alone.

I have no affiliation with it, just ran into this issue myself and it solved it for me.

That kind of highlights an issue for me though. If Apple were really on the ball with macOS they would have a better remap utility built in.

Instead we have Karabiner Elements which has been of mixed stability in my experience.

Many times I've had it completely disable the internal keyboard on my late 2013 MBP to the point where I have to plug in a USB keyboard to recover or if on the road do a force power reset.

Ok then it you have caps remapped to ctrl, remap ctrl to escape.

There are many valid criticisms of the touch bar macs, losing one key in particular is pretty low on the list.

> i[f] you have caps remapped to ctrl, remap ctrl to escape

The whole reason to remap caps lock to ctrl is that ctrl is in a terrible location.

Escape is in a relatively terrible location as well, the default ctrl location is just as bad, hence remapping escape there isn't really worse than escape in the top left.

Not so much when you already remap the Caps lock key to Ctrl though.

“You are holding it wrong”?

They didn't remove it, at least not functionally. There's still an ESC, it's just on the Touch Bar now.

That's not an escape key. Please don't apologize for this.

I use vim and switch between a butterfly/touchbar Mac (work machine) and a Thinkpad (personal machine). Using the Mac keyboard has actually negatively impacted my typing speed when I use other systems! I remapped my vim keybindings, and now my muscle memory has atrophied.

This dumb machine has actually made me a worse typist. I am so frustrated.

That sucks for you. I'm able to use it just fine and the Touch Bar is way more functional for me both as a developer and for editing digital media.

Remap caps lock to escape. I use vim and I can't stand the "standard" esc key position anymore.