About the escape key, is it not possible to place a digital version of it in the touch bar?... not defending apple I'm also not happy with this MBP but I think at least that can be worked around.
CAPS-LOCK ⬅ CONTROL ⬅ ESCAPE ⬅ CAPS-LOCK
Escape is just too far away for my vim-flow. This has been much better. It's mostly positive outside of vim too. The only real gotcha is using another machine.If it's just an ugly margin around the Esc key then I still think it's poor UX work.
However this is coming from a UK user on which the key in question has the symbols "§" and "±". Which I never type. I understand the US layout has some more useful symbols there.