See this comparison of the shortening and changing of the TrackPoint cap over time, and you can imagine how the current 3mm caps end up requiring more finger pressure than the 6mm soft rim cap, to get pressure to register:
https://saoto28.wixsite.com/trackpoint4life/comparison
I own a very nice ThinkPad P1, but my daily driver is currently a ThinkPad W520 battleship from 2012, entirely because its TrackPoint is more comfortable to use. (I acclimated to the P1's chiclet keyboard easily, but the slippery TrackPoint cap was definitely harder on my finger and hand.)
On the W520, I can type prolifically, all day and evening, 7 days a week, without discomfort. I don't want to break the TrackPoint soft rim magic that helps make that possible.
2. If someone in the US wants to try to make good soft rim 3mm caps that will fit modern ThinkPads, and save Lenovo from losing TrackPoint adherents, here is a starting point that Saoto kindly shared:
https://grabcad.com/library/softrim-trackpoint-cap-for-3-mm-...
If you can do soft rim with high-quality molding (not 3D printing, and determine the right materials and processes, and red top), some people are so desperate that they're paying $50+ for a single tiny 3D-printed cap to be mailed from Japan. If I was confident that high-quality caps gave a W520-like experience, I'd gladly pay $100 for 10 of them, just to start with.
