People have short memories but the X1 Carbon Gen2 had a dynamic key strip that was so bad that it got replaced with physical buttons in Gen3.
Also, if that is true, perhaps what's truly new is that its actually usable. That's pretty much Apple's thing - making things more usable/useful.
That could be a jet plane from Lockheed Martin or a Thinkpad...
The jury is still out on that one.