I was very disappointed when Apple's latest WorldWide Developers Conference keynote spent longer on emoji than on the future of the Mac. MacOS Sierra looks interesting - some of the cloud features may well be a boon to photographers for backup, and their upcoming file system is actually designed with terabytes of data in mind, and looks like a huge improvement over HFS+ (or NTFS, for that matter). The other notable recent Apple innovation of use to photographers and our ilk is that the latest iMac actually has a wide-gamut display built in (yes, it's digital video standard P3, rather than the photographer's standby Adobe RGB, but they're relatively similar). Given Apple's size, this may cause wide-gamut displays to spread much faster than they have been (I would not be at all surprised if half of all wide-gamut displays in the world are now built in to Apple products (the newest iPad Pro has one, too), and I'd be shocked if that ISN'T true in another year). They're still way ahead of Windows on color management - I've been dabbling with Windows for a couple years, because Apple isn't making the hardware I want, and it's come a long way, but Windows is still no Mac in color management and several other areas (security/viruses come to mind).
I'm interested in a powerful Mac laptop, because I don't think Windows is quite there yet - it has made some significant improvements, but what's now called macOS is still a substantial advantage in my view. Windows has more unexplained instabilities, it's color management and printer drivers are improved, but still not up to Mac standards, security is still a concern (although the "I'll never use it because of viruses" platform is now Android, not Windows), and it just isn't as elegant as macOS. Microsoft has actually backed down on a great cloud backup facility they've had - OneDrive doesn't work nearly as well in Windows 10 as it did in Windows 8, and they no longer offer unlimited storage, claiming that it was used mostly by teenagers storing pirated movies (it was also great for photographers with large libraries
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Why would Apple give us emoji instead of a new MacBook Pro? The current 15" is two years old (not counting a trackpad update that left the processors and most other things unchanged) and lags behind the specs of other high-end laptops in several ways. Most importantly, it's limited to 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of drive space - I know of no other 15" laptop over $1000 limited in that way - all will take 32 GB and some, generally heavier, will accommodate 64 GB. Almost all other high-end 15" laptops have some provision for over 1 TB of storage - either dual "blade" PCIe SSD slots similar to what Apple uses (except that there are two of them)or one blade SSD plus one 2.5" bay for a second SSD or a hard drive. Some heavier 15" laptops have some combination of storage interfaces that gets to 4 TB, generally at great expense (dual 1TB blade SSDs plus a 2 TB SSD or hard drive in a 2.5" bay is perhaps the most common route).
Recognizing that the MacBook Pro is at the more portable end of 15" workstation laptops, I'd expect a 32 GB RAM limit and 2 TB storage limit, not the higher limits found on machines 1.5x the weight. If that could be coupled with a P3 or Adobe RGB display, ideally 4K, they'd have a really nice, modern design, worth the $2000-$3500 they're asking (only the models closer to $3500 would have 2 TB of storage, of course - I recognize that's an expensive feature). Of course Skylake would be expected at this point, but that minor performance improvement isn't the point of the new machine - it's modernizing all the other specs. A new graphics chip has more to offer than Skylake, but I'd rather have 32 GB, 2 TB and an old graphics chip (or the pretty good integrated graphics Skylake has) than antiquated RAM and SSD limits with new graphics...
Unfortunately, what I'm seeing on Apple rumor sites doesn't mention a new screen, RAM or disk at all (in either direction - they could still come), and it mentions a few things I'd rather not have on a laptop for photography. Apple seems enamored with USB-C ports, and there seems a high likelihood that the new MacBook Pro will feature nothing else - a leaked early picture of what seems to be the 13" case shows 4 USB-C, no other ports and no SD reader! The 15" could, of course, feature additional ports (at least for me, the highest priorities are at least one conventional USB port plus the card reader). I'd actually really like some USB-C ports - it looks like a great portable storage port - I just want conventional USB and hopefully HDMI as well.
As far as I can tell, no directly connected USB-C SD reader exists (the only ones I can find on either Newegg or B+H are larger cable-connected readers that are primarily for XQD or CFast), so the simple act of reading a memory card would go from "stick it in the side of the computer" to using an external reader plugged into a "dongle" that adapted the USB-C port to conventional USB. Of course, this only matters to those of us whose cameras use SD - cameras using CF, CFast or XQD are no more or less convenient than they've always been.
The other negative "feature" that seems possible is the "butterfly" keyboard from the 12" MacBook. Apple historically uses the keyboard from the smallest laptop in their lineup across a wide range of sizes - the 17" machines they used to make had the keyboard from the old 12" PowerBook surrounded by an ocean of space. At least I can't get used to the MacBook keyboard, and the current MacBook Pro keyboard is one of the nicest on any laptop (better than anything except some Lenovo keyboards). Of course, they could do a version of the butterfly keyboard with extra travel in the thicker machine, and that would probably be a VERY nice keyboard (the only problem with the butterfly in the MacBook is that it has almost no travel - it actually has an otherwise nice feel). The leaked 13" case shows a MacBook like layout, but not the travel or lack thereof.
Apple being Apple, it'll be thinner and lighter than its predecessor - but do we really need a laptop thinner and lighter than the already svelte MacBook Pro? More to the point, do we need ONLY laptops thinner and lighter than the current MacBook Pro? I'm somewhat concerned that we'll see a machine with both negative features (MacBook keyboard and USB-C only), without a lot of improvements that matter to photographers. Of course, they could surprise me with something with a nice port mix and some other great features...
