That's great from Griffin, kudos to them for doing this. And shame on Apple for dropping the ball.

It's too bad we'll never know what would have happened under Jobs.

What annoys me is that for example Lenovo has 30 notebook models... so how much effort would it have been for Apple to release a laptop that accommodates real professional users a little bit, with, say: a 5th laptop option?

Apple's assumption (which is probably backed up by usage studies) seems to be that "real professional users" use their laptops portably, and use lots of weird ports, but almost never at the same time. So the laptop itself can be lighter to encourage that portability, while the ports can live on a dock at a desk (e.g. the Cinema Display, an older iMac, or that multi-port USB-C dongle that will probably just hang permanently off all the cables it's been joined to.)

For those exceptions to the "almost" never—mostly IT people doing field support—they make a litany of adapters. Adapters make sense for this use-case: the target type of user already carries many in a "toolbox", and this is just adding on a few more.

And don't forget the Mac Pro. Apple's own internal "real professional users" are, as far as I know, more likely to use a Mac Pro at their desks and then a MacBook for mobile portability—but they won't bother to try to do work with the MacBook that'd be better done on the Mac Pro. Which includes plugging strange peripherals into it.

it'd be pretty helpful then to have an updated Mac Pro

I don't think it's a question of effort: it's a decision on the part of Apple to keep a minimal product line.

That's cool, but it's rated to 60W and I believe the 15" MBPs are 87W.

The 87W product is slated for February