So there are a couple of glaring problems:
1. The keyboard. Ugh. The keyboard was ostensibly changed to shave half a millimeter off the thickness of an MBP. 0.5mm. The old chiclet keyboard was fine. The new one is basically worse in every way. It's louder, feels crappier to type on, has a high failure rate (as witnessed by Apple's free repair program) and is otherwise expensive to replace. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about the keyboard; and
2. The touch bar. This was is more mixed. The big problem is you don't have an option for not having it and Apple's reason for adding it is simply to raise the ASP (average selling price) of Mac SKUs. That's it. The old Macbook Air was too successful. Many people object to it because you lost a row of function keys with tactile feedback (ie physical key). Some really objected to the loss of a physical Escape button. Probably vim users.
I agree with you that Touch ID is great. I sure wish the latest iPhones had it (you could put a sensor on the back if you didn't want to lose the screen real estate). Face ID is absolutely atrocious.
Anyway, the problem here is that basically Johnny Ive went insane, chasing thinness to the extreme. Design is the art of compromise (as they say) and no compromising on thinness led to shitty products (eg the 12" Macbook).
There are many people here (myself included) that for years simply wanted a 13" Macbook Air with an upgraded screen (as close to edgeless as possible and higher res) and more memory. That's it. We waited for years. We got the shitty 12" Macbook instead.
It's incredibly frustrating to be so close to perfection but to take a giant step backwards instead.