This, a thousand times this. I had a discussion earlier this week with the owner of a Mac repair shop of 15+ years here in Toronto, who lamented the release of any Mac portable since 2015 - saying 'thank God for the 2012-2015 units, or I would be out of business.'
I told him I'd been buying Macs for 15 years, and during especially times like buying my first iBook at age 15, I absolutely relied on, and still rely on, purchasing a laptop with the intent to upgrade the RAM and the HDD/SSD in the future.
With the laptops continually increasing in price, justified by tacking on useless features nobody wants, and then preventing upgrades, the laptops are out of reach for me to justify as an intermediate iOS developer. The 2017 models locked to 16GB are already virtually obsolete to a serious developer or film editor.
I will not, would not, on principle, buy a computer whose hard drive is soldered to the Logic Board, if only for the sake of retaining the hard drive itself aside from the laptop.
There is no possible, potential benefit a soldered hard drive, or soldered RAM, gives me, and the detriments far, far outweigh any benefits.
Previously, if the hard drive or RAM got corrupted or damaged, I could replace those parts the same day. What now?
Truly - and I mean truly, butterfly keyboard and lack of ports aside, even internally, Apple has finally gone from questionably being form of over function, to its focus on form over function being a literal insult to its long term dedicated users, and simply not responding to criticisms.
So the media laughs at the Touch Bar, fans and critics deride it, and Apple's response - to cancel the non-touch bar version of the 13" MacBook Pro.