First up, whilst I know it's probably a bit of a pain, it should be pretty easy to work around. More on the workaround further down.

We are aware of the potential issue and I'm sure that you are right and others are bitten by this problem. However, during user surveys, we've consistently had feedback that the vast majority of TurnKey users want the current "simplified" setup to be retained.

Ideally, I'd like it if there was an "advanced" option where users could choose to either use the (current) minimalist install/firstboot options, or choose an "advanced" install/firstboot where all the other options (such as setting a default keyboard, timezone, etc). It's on our TODO list but unfortunately we are a small open source company with limited resources. So we need to prioritise things carefully. Unfortunately that means working on the things that provide the greatest leverage, to the most users.

If you are having troubles with a paid VMware product, then I suggest that you contact their support to get assistance so it works properly. If it's an unpaid product and/or you aren't getting sufficient support, then I would encourage you to give VirtualBox a try. The core product is Free Open Source software (the addons are also free - as in beer, but not open source). I've never used it on Mac, but it works great on Linux and Windows, so I would expect similar on Mac.

Regardless, you should be able to work around the issue fairly easily. Even though your keyboard is likely to be sending "incorrect" characters to the VM, so long as you use a consistent interface (i.e. use the VM window directly for both initial setup and login) then it should be using the same "incorrect" characters when you both set the password, and attempt log in. The problem should only really occur when you try to use an alternate interface which IS interpreting your keyboard correctly (e.g. web browser, native SSH client, etc).

Once you're logged in via the VM window, hopefully it won't be too hard to install/configure your VM so that it works with your keyboard. You can then reset the password(s) so that you can use them via an alternate interface.

To enable the use of your non-US keyboard, adjusting the keyboard (and perhaps keymap?) should be sufficient. You can do that like this:

apt update
apt install keyboard-configuration

And follow the prompts to configure your desired keyboard. There is also some more in depth info re keyboards on the Debian wiki, although I can't vouch for it (sometimes Debian docs are a little outdated).

If you still have issues, then perhaps you can work around them by setting up a custom keymap? The console-data package should assist with that. Install it in a similar way (i.e. 'apt install console-data').

If you wish to rerun the setup, then you can use dpkg to reconfigure the package(s). Do that like this:

dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Once you are done with that, you can rerun the firstboot inithooks like this:

turnkey-init

Sorry that I don't have better news for you. Hopefully that should get you going though.