If you mean no SD card reader etc, it's my understanding that pro photographers tended to use a USB3/thunderbolt reader anyway, as the integrated reader was connected over USB2 internally and was far too slow for pro use.
- Touchbar at all
- Battery reduced from 99 whr to 76 whr
- Lost magnetic charging port
- Lost every other useful port
- Keyboard generally considered worse
I currently have a 15" mid-2015 MBP, and I use the DisplayPort, HDMI, and USB-A ports on a daily basis. Losing the ports doesn't bother me too much, but similarly priced or cheaper laptops don't ask me compromise there. On the other hand the battery life, touchpad, and keyboard will be absolutely stellar or I'm not buying it, especially in this price range. Again, others ask me to compromise less. While Apple still has the best touchpads in the industry, others are catching up. Meanwhile, Apple has regressed in several ways
I don't particularly like the touchbar (though that may change if IntelliJ ever bring out their promised support and it's any good), but it's not a huge deal for me (at least after I remapped esc to caps lock; I now do this on every keyboard I use, as I find it more ergonomic). I do love the touchId thingy, but they could have done that without the touchbar.
I prefer the keyboard to the retina MBP one, though I preferred the pre-retina MBP one to either. There was something about the feel of the rMBP (and MacBook Air) one I never liked. This is very subjective, of course.
The port situation mostly hasn't bothered me, as I just use a USB-C hub with power passthrough. It would have been nice to have at least a single USB-A port, but realistically I wouldn't use it much.
I find battery life to be similar to the previous one, generally. I think the size sacrifice is worth it, at least for my needs, because it makes the machine very portable. I barely notice the weight of it in a backpack now.
My biggest complaint is one you haven't mentioned; you can't get an integrated GPU only version. You can't even fully disable the discrete GPU. This means that you're stuck with all the quirks of the dual GPU setup. This is a step back, IMO; I've no real use for a discrete GPU on my work machine, and these dual GPU Macs have never quite worked properly.
I wasn't expecting to like it as much as I did, really, but I was mostly impressed.
I have tried 3 and all 3 have not worked well with 2 screens (one screen being 2k)
As far as I'm aware, you've never been able to fully disable the dGPU. On my previous 2011 MBP, the dGPU failed. You could twiddle some UEFI variables to prevent switching to it so the system would boot, but it didn't actually cut power to it so it just ran hot and the battery died in 3 hours. Also, all the DisplayPorts were attached to the dGPU, so you couldn't plug up external monitors anymore if you did that. Units with the dGPU have worse battery life when there's a monitor plugged up, because it forces a switch to the dGPU.
I read this every time it comes up on HN yet every single one of the five photographers in our shared office laments nothing more than the missing card reader.
If it was so slow why not just upgrade it to a USB3/PCIe-connected reader? and being a 'pro' device why didn't they do that already when USB3 became available?
Some of the top end cameras use both CF and SD, so sure, it doesn't cater for everyone, but SD has become so ubiquitous it seems odd it's missing.
(I'm actually not sure what the reason for this was; iMac SD card readers were PCIe).
EDIT: According to Apple, all the laptops are USB2: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204384
Desktops are PCIe.