Genuinely curious, why did so many developers ask for the return of the physical Escape key when you could easily re-map it to caps lock? Before this was an officially supported option, I always hated having to do big hand-shimmies every time I needed to press the escape key, which is quite often for programs like vim!
That's fascinating, I didn't realize that key serves multilingual support in some countries. Is that the standard configuration in China or a common setting for that key there?
It's been the macOS default for a few yeas. Before that, we usually assign Cmd+Space for this (in Windows it was Ctrl+Space for switching language and Shift for toggling between English and Chinese). Then Siri came so the combo stopped working. Possibly it was then when Caps Locks became the default.
Speaking for myself - I find hitting the normal escape key location natural and easy. Especially when I'm typing fast, I can hit it without accidentally hitting another key (e.g. tab).
This might be in part because I'm a tall man, with large hands and long fingers, and also Esc normally has more of a separation from adjacent keys than capslock does.
But another reason I don't want to remap caps lock is that when I am typing on a coworker's computer, odds are high they don't have things remapped the same way. Imagine looking like an idiot in front of your peers, because your muscle memory makes you not know how to type :)
(Also, I'm not sure if people who do that remapping swap caps lock with a different key? Personally, I fully utilize the caps lock key - it wouldn't be much of an improvement to put it in an unusual location, and getting rid of it is not something I'd consider.)
tl;dr - Different people have diverse habits, preferences and needs. Apple's challenge is to design a keyboard layout that works well for as many as possible.
