The touchscreen is vastly preferable to what would be required to make a physical keyboard work: increasing the dimensions of the device, decreasing the screen size, or incorporating moving parts in the form of flip or slide-out components. I really like how the keyboard appears when needed and folds away when not to give you more screen real estate.
I can indeed confirm that Apple TV will sync back play count and last played data to both synced and streamed iTunes libraries, so these sorts of playlists are quite effective through such a setup.
If you're feeling too constrained by the five-star system, Doug Adams made a wonderful AppleScript that gives you access to half-star ratings.
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/missingmenu.php
Grab the separate "add a half star" and "subtract a half star" scripts and assign them keyboard shortcuts for the best effect.
I live and die by the "least recently played" criteria. Got a series of complicated nested smart playlists set up to ensure that my most neglected music (of sufficient rating, play count and/or newness) is at the top of my "Drivin'" playlist, with the podcasts sprinkled in every three songs. It's like the ultimate radio station.
Should probably point out that the MacBook's 3MB L3 cache is actually a downgrade; the previous model had 4MB across the board. And LED backlighting, while standard in the 15-inch MacBook Pros, is a build-to-order option on the 17-inch model.
And come on, "19th century artifact"? Combo drives may not be top of the line, but they're hardly a hundred years antiquated. :P I'm sure consumers appreciate being able to skimp on a feature they might not ever use in order to save a little money. Same goes for the exclusion of the Apple Remote; perhaps it offsets costs on Apple's end for the new processor architecture and larger hard drives, with a feature that people might not make much use of out of the box. My Apple Remote sits on the foot of my iMac (20-inch Mid 2007), and I almost never make use of it.
iPhone 2.0: Part One, A Physical Keyboard
Obsessing Over iTunes: Super Smart Playlists
Obsessing Over iTunes: Super Smart Playlists
Taking Stock of the MacBook Updates