Apple could have released many upgrades to the MBP, especially considering what competitors with far less cash and fewer employees have accomplished in upgrade cycles every few months.
I don't think they are going to discontinue the MBP, but I do wonder what the plan is that they're executing. Do long cycles increase confidence among consumers that the machines will last a long time? Can they have low profit margins at the release date without worrying markets that they won't increase?
They've released 4K and 5k iMacs since then. Most people would consider that a reasonable desktop update.
There is "Productivity" (Generic Office Productivity) and there there is Productivity (Making Industries Turn). No doubt they could have iPad Pro's do both, but by the time you've made the iPad Pro able to do Maya, Premiere Pro, Da Vinci Resolve etc, you've turned it into a desktop again.
They may very well try to do that, arguing the iPad Pro is a better platform that embodies the vision of how they'd like desktop computing to be, but that platform is years and years away.
Also worth realizing that Developers aren't the bulk of people using computers for "Productivity", our use case isn't the primary one. Not that I'd be happy if Apple decided to ignore it. That'd be really sad.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Monitor-P2715Q-27-Inch-LED-Lit/d...
Nice thing about Thunderbolt is that you could hook 2 up at 60hz. I know if I run 2 at 4k, one will be 30hz; haven't seen a good answer if I run at a lower res. 4k is too small anyways (when I had it paired with a TB, I was able to run both at 60)
I do miss the webcam, but am happy with USB 3 instead of 2. As for the integrated power, I miss that, but this monitor + an extra power adapter is still $300 or so cheaper than the TB. :-)
To be productive you need big monitors and overlapping windows and terminals and drag&drop, and beyond a physical keyboard you need a pointing device that doesn't require you to cover the things you are looking at with your fingers. And nobody wants to sit for 8 hours a day stretching their arms out to touch a monitor or crouch over a tablet on a table.
As I watch my kids using iPads regularly, I realize they don't really know anything at all about a 'desktop' or why its so complicated. We can argue well they need to learn how a computer works, its important etc etc. Maybe they don't for the most part and could just build on top of our knowledge base to get to the next place. We are the old people telling kids to get off our lawn.
iPads make good, portable devices for a lot of things. But it'd be a foul up of epic proportions to try to move their laptop/desktop users to it.
As Apple products are super-overpriced I think "Why not buy a computer with maxed specs?" this way I can counter the fact that I will have a discontinued computer in five years or so. Right now the rMBP 13" with maximum specifications (16GB RAM, 1TB Flash Drive, Core i7) costs around $2,700 + taxes, this is a lot of money but those specs are the minimum nowadays and I want to future-proof it, so I am kind of forced by my profession to buy it. Unfortunately, all shipping companies in my country have a limit of $2,000 per import so it is obvious that I cannot buy it online, I have to travel to the US.
Have you read /r/mac or /r/apple ? There is at least five posts every day of people complaining about issues with the keyboard, the display, the graphic card, the disk (mostly the disk utility reporting inaccurate information), and even the hinge. Most of these issues can be solved going to a "Genius Bar" and asking for a replacement. Cool, but I cannot do that in my country because there is no "Genius Bar". If I travel to the US to buy this over-priced computer and it comes with a defect I will have to come back to get a replacement; to prevent this I would need to stay in the US for a couple of weeks to check everything before going back to my country.
Another reason to buy the customized version, that way the money spent in flight tickets, hotel room, and local transportation will be worthy. I got the random number of $5,000 as my budget, and the devil knows I've been sitting on this money for several months waiting for Apple to release the goddamn redesign that they have been promising since last year.
There are some very nice laptops produced by other vendors, and with Linux, you'll be able to do as much programming on it than on a Mac.
But also because 2) Apple is making the move away from Intel to their own customized ARM processor.
The rumor's been around, before. But really, why else not bump the processor and maybe some subsystems, if and in lieu of a more major redesign?
P.S. This is just rampant, uninformed speculation pulled from my posterior. And I've no information and limited confidence as to whether such a move could be made sufficiently performant. Still, why not a bump or two, in this intervening time?
Review the announcements at http://www.apple.com/pr/library/ - they often announce new Macs in their fall announcement, and generally never at the iPhone announcement.
In addition to various leaks of the new MBP chassis, there was recently a leak of upcoming trademarks (http://bgr.com/2016/09/07/iphone-7-iphone-7-plus-2016-macboo...) which included the MBP TouchBar.
I am not an iOS dev, but I would certainly want git, bash, and emacs. I can see how a lot of people might be accustomed to making image content in photoshop or whatever...
On a side note, my 6 year old lenovo is beautiful, works perfectly after 6 years (I replaced the battery last year) and would probably still be competitive on weight/size today. It was $650cdn when I bought it. Two years later I bought a Macbook air to develop apps. It lasted less than two years, had two power boards and a power adapter replaced. It ended up in the garbage after spending more than $1200.