I have to question whether this is actually true though. Yes, they have deviated somewhat from the design of older Thinkpads, but I think it's debatable whether

I have to question whether this is actually true though. Yes, they have deviated somewhat from the design of older Thinkpads, but I think it's debatable whether they're objectively worse, for the most part. I will say that things like the capacitive F key row on the X1 Carbon are pretty clearly a bad idea, but other minor changes to keyboard layout and even the clickpad thing I would argue could be considered better if you take someone who has never used either version and train them to use both and ask which they prefer. I personally have a T440s and it's a great machine, and I exclusively use the trackpoint. Because the clickpad actually depresses like normal buttons, it's still pretty natural to use it like a more standard trackpoint with buttons. I mean, you can't say whether if IBM still owned Thinkpad they would not be making similar design decisions in order to appeal to mass market tastes. I feel like there's a sense in the Thinkpad community that the new Thinkpads are getting steadily worse but I would argue that that's more due to ingrained preferences rather than objective facts. It's just that because Lenovo is a Chinese company it's easy to blame the perceived downfall of Thinkpad as Lenovo driving costs down.