I too hated the need to press <Esc> all the time when I started with vi. It sounded as bad for wrists as the Ctrl key for Emacs.

The trick I've found (I don't remember where) and used ever since is to map the "kj" sequence to <Esc>, since it's otherwise unlikely in normal text. It's just a simple instruction in the vim config:

:imap kj <Esc>

That foot pedal is a cute project though.

Alt-l (lowercase L) works out of the box and doesn't move the cursor. I also map a press and release of capslock to escape for when I need that (it's control the rest of the time).

I just tried this and Alt-l seems to move to the line above (equiv. to Esc+l), Alt-J the line below, and in gvim it produces some accented characters for me. It would have been a good combination for finger movement though.

Remapping esc with capslock mod has definitely helped me maintain sanity. I'm still using the prev gen MBPs but I can only imagine the frustration the new MBPs introduce by omitting a physical esc key.

I use capslock for escape