There was a time (up until yesterday that is) where the Pro series was targeted to said HN demographic. I think the amount of criticism is perfectly reasonable.
On top of all this, the keyboard will feel more fragile and have more complexity. I prefer reliability over unnecessary complication.
A) Has been served by Apple in the past B) Provides value to Apple in the form of developing all kinds of software solutions that it's other users directly benefit from
Objective-C frameworks for user space and drivers, use of distributed objects, designing GUI applications via Interface Builder, productivity applications like Lotus Improv and Virtuoso, the way applications were packaged didn't had much to do with UNIX culture as such.
That's probably true, but isn't its success in part driven by the deluge of Linux/Unix users who were thrilled to finally have a Unix based machine with a beautiful UI that ran on Intel CPUs? Also increased sales from word of mouth by those same ex Linux users telling their Windows using friends to switch?
I happened to use LC III Macs and was a developer back then.
A few years ago I did some work related to acquiring new customers, which required creating an iOS application.
None of those experiences had anything to do with UNIX, yet I am a developer.
Personally, the only reason I am not found of the new Macbook Pro is the price, as I rather have something like the W510's successor.
And in fact AFAIK the standard developer machine at Apple is an iMac (which has an escape key on its standard keyboard).
As a developer, i'm extremely jealous. I've actually made something somewhat similar[0] with a physical keyboard because the idea of a set of keys that I can have do useful stuff is such a nice idea.
I would love it if not only was that set of buttons on my laptop, but that it was programmable and customizable per application (half of the keys on that keyboard only work in my IDE)
It might not be for you, but it's not useless.
[0]http://i.imgur.com/jQ72mEA.jpg Cut me some slack on the button functions themselves, I actually don't use a lot of them and want to re-do the layout for a while to get rid of them, but just haven't gotten around to doing it.
I would have been much more impressed with better basic specs, and maybe a new separate keyboard with touchbar/trackpad features.
A keyboard with OLED keycaps would be awesome for creative applications and for developers, because you could see a full set of functions at the same time, and you could set them up to switch automatically as you switched applications.
Also, do people really use the regular function keys in anger ? In my java IDE the only more or less common shortcuts on the function keys are the debugger run and step over/through. Those are used in "read mode" rather than "type mode" and I would think that a proper row of debug related custom button on the keyboard would rather be an improvement compared to remembering which of F7 or F8 step into the next line. And that's it, I don't use them at all in any other application, especially not in the terminal, text editor, browser, mail applications, ...
Is the HN demographic really that much more sophisticated than me, or is it simply overblowing the issue in a similar fashion that allegedly no "real power user" would get over the loss of Blackberry physical buttons.
Ironically, a few years back, as a proper power user touch typing function keys on a mechanical keyboard (windows use and abuse function keys for about everything), my choice of mechanical keyboard included those function keys and that was seen as a weakness by the "real pro user" of the time that never left the home row and were very proud showing off their happy hacking keyboard professional.
edit: Just to avoid confusion, I touch type. Just not the function keys.