Each to their own, but I've set mine to always and only display the brightness and volume knobs, and I still find it significantly slower to adjust those, than

Each to their own, but I've set mine to always and only display the brightness and volume knobs, and I still find it significantly slower to adjust those, than on my old mbp. But in all fairness, the F-keys on a mac never really worked like function keys, they've always been more of a row of OSX-keys. I can understand why Apple felt a need to innovate that space, but I am not impressed.