I am surprised about them dumping MagSafe, because it's a superior power option to USB-C. And it's also surprising that they didn't include at least one USB-A port for compatibility, but that's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. The touch bar I am actually excited about for what it's worth. There's a lot of developers out there that still use the mouse for a lot of actions in their editor / IDE because they can't be bothered to learn the keyboard shortcuts. When those IDEs start to embrace the TouchBar it will make a lot of their lives easier by surfacing actions like stepping through a debugger, refactoring, etc.
So on the whole I really don't see that Apple is abandoning developers. I just look at what Microsoft is doing with the Surface line and I wish that Apple was investing more heavily in the same direction.
Off the top of my head:
Dell XPS 15 has up to 17 hours of battery life, a 4k screen (that can be upgraded to a touchscreen), dedicated Nvidia GPU and up to 32 gigs of Ram
The Razor Blade and perpetually on the horizon Razor Blade Pro have QHD or better touchscreens, 16 gigs or more of RAM, and the best line up of dedicated graphics cards you're going to find in a laptop. Oh, and they did reactive/programable touch keyboards without removing core functionality from the device. Can't find specs on battery life at the moment. Plus, mechanical keyboard and glowy lights!
And there's the ThinkPad line up which has basically everything under the sun now.
Not to mention the Surface Book, which claims 12 hours of battery life, meets your dedicated GPU and RAM needs, and has a killer scree, that supports a some rather interesting input devices. And it can connect to an iPhone 7 without a dongle.
There are options out there.
Every report I've seen from owners of the 15 says that even the 1080 version struggles to get 6 hours so where did you get 17 hours from?
I get about 8 hours on my 2 year old 15 rMBP with Safari. Less than 4 hours with Chrome.
Between Chrome and Photoshop my GPU seems to be on pretty much all the time on my MBP. I get probably 5-6 hours on it working unplugged(my power cable is usually at my standing desk and some days I'm lazier than normal so I get close to this before standing up again).
I get close to 8 hours with a late 2013 MBPr 15".
I don't see any 32Gig update, either as standard (16GB) or even as a customization option.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-15-9550-laptop/pd
As for the battery life, LaptopMag gives: 10:26 for the 1080p XPS 15 and a meagre 6:36 for the 4K screen.
I also think the SSD is quite slower, single thunderbolt port (it has 2 USB 3 ports and HDMI), and the touchpad is worse. So there's also that.
Also, dell battery life is only decent with the 1080p screen. Everything I heard about the higher resolution touch screen is that it eats battery life (and the 16 GB of RAM on the XPS 13 only comes with the touch screen).
Yes, the new MBP wasn't all we could have hoped for, but I had held out for a very long time and it's the best option I have.
EDIT: A actually do also have an XPS 15 w/Ubuntu, but that combination isn't quite a replacement for an MBP.
So am I a "pro" user? I make iPhone and web apps with lots of users that generate many millions of dollars per year, so I'm at least "prosumer", which is probably more in line with Apple's target market for MBP than someone who makes 3D games or does VFX or motion graphics, etc.
You just described my reaction to every single MBP thread I've seen since the announcement. Not only did I not want to participate in the drama, I have a feeling that a fair number of people who did will turn around and buy an MBP anyway. People are risk-averse and howl indiscriminately when things change. Let's hear about some real experiences of developers having problems using it, then it may be legitimate to revisit the issue
Otherwise, it looks like a solid upgrade. I don't need the battery life and would prefer to trade it for 32GB, but I understand why they made that decision.
Not to say that external monitor support in Linux, especially Ubuntu, is terrible: try using a 4k monitor along with a non-4k monitor. It will simply create so many issues that, in the end, you'll open your wallet and get a Macbook Pro. I've just bought a 2015 15-inch.
I know there is some overlap, but I'm shocked at how credulous HN seems to be in the face of the Internet Outrage Cycle.
Every newsworthy event generates a hoard of people that try to cultivate outrage to drive traffic to their site or to gain some recognition. A lot of this is natural, people aren't even cynical about it.
But it's useless to pay attention to it.
As someone who has been on MBP's for the last 7 years I recently jumped ship for 15" Dell XPS with Windows 10 and I am happy I did. However, that is because to me Win10 is now way more appealing than OSX. I hadn't updated OSX since Mavericks because there were exactly 0 new features that interested me. I don't have an iPhone/iPad/iEtc and I don't use the built-in OSX apps and it honestly seems like those two thing are all that Apple has cared about with OSX in recent years.
It wasn't easy to find a laptop with hardware that is acceptable coming from an MBP, it was a short list. But OS wise, Windows 10.1607 is, for me, way better than OSX at this point. IMO OSX feels dated, and toy-like compared to what Win10 has become. I was a heavy terminal user in OSX, like many dev's it was the *nix part of OSX that got me. But now with both the updated command prompt and WSL I don't miss the terminal, period. Also, Win10 virtual desktops already work better than OSX!