Agreed. I found it ironic that Apple considers the function area unused space so in their "Pro" line they replace it with something they view to be more usable

Agreed. I found it ironic that Apple considers the function area unused space so in their "Pro" line they replace it with something they view to be more usable but it seems most pro software[1] already made use of function keys, it's the consumer MacBook line that would miss the function row the least. [1] Software dev tools