No tactile feedback means no go for many people for obvious reasons.

This sort of surface-y anger makes the rounds every time apple does _anything_ to their hardware.

What were people upset about with the last retina macbook pro refresh?

I can't source this at all but I remember getting into an argument (maybe on reddit?) about how the lack of changes after almost two years between refreshes meant the product line was "dead" or that apple could no longer innovate.

Edit: It just seems to me that if they do nothing it means that steve job's death is also the death of apple, but if they do something big its an indication that they've forsaken their core user base.