1. The removal of the physical escape key. I flat out reject having to remap the caps lock. The touch bar soft key is not an acceptable replacement. A physical escape key is unequivocally non-negotiable.
2. The price. I'm not going to pay $1,000 more for the same level of upgrades I got in 2013. With taxes, I had to dole out $3,200 CAD for a personal laptop, which was right against the fence of what I was willing to pay. I refuse to spend over $4,000 on a laptop.
These two issues, along with the removal of the headphone jack[1] on the latest iPhone puts me in the uncomfortable situation where for the first time in a decade I am researching alternative hardware outside the Apple ecosystem.
[1] My IEM headphones cost $1,500. I'm not going to carry an adapter to plug them in, and lose the ability to listen while charging.
MBP Model Read Write
Jul 2014 15" 1.1 GBps 1.0 GBps
May 2015 15" 2.0 GBps 1.5 GBps
Oct 2016 15" 2.9 GBps 2.2 GBps
1) Very slightly faster. (2.9 vs 2.8) 2) 2 TB SSD instead of 1 TB. 3) Ability to charge and drive monitor over single cable.
But what is the price?
1) $4,199 -- nearly $1000 more expensive than the last one. 2) Complete inability to plug in any peripheral I already own without a dongle. 3) No physical ESC key.
It's only $150 more if I stick with a 1TB SSD. But if I do that, literally the only significant benefit I get from the new machine is the ability to drive monitor and charge over a single cable -- and of course, I've got to replace my existing (expensive, beautiful) monitor to do that.
Plus as an added bonus, they're discontinuing the Time Capsule, which has been my main local backup solution for years.