Yes, although to be honest I'm more bothered by the lack of a physical power button. No matter what anyone hopes for, sometimes the OS gets locked up. I really don't want to be relying on a softkey at that point; nor trying to remember some non-obvious keyboard combo.
As a machine for dev: I'd rather see physical ESC and Power keys with the touch strip in between. That'd keep it nice and symmetrical while keeping the two keys I actually kinda care about.
To be fair - depending how hackable the strip is, I can see a hell of a lot of positives for developers. On-keyboard build results, anyone? ;) Also... developers probably don't make up as big a slice of the market as we probably like to think.