While I've had this feeling at times in the recent past myself, there's a kind of irony in this conversation being reinforced by the new MBP. Apple committed the time and resources necessary to essentially build an entire new iOS device and integrate it into the Mac, including the Touch ID sensor, and add explicit support for it in the majority of their applications (over two dozen, ranging from the little freebies like Notes and Preview up to all of iWork, FCP, Motion and Logic).
Whether one thinks the Touch Bar is "worth it" -- or even the right approach to adding touch support to the Mac -- is a different debate, of course, and worth arguing about. But if Apple wasn't committed to the Mac product line, it's hard to see why they would have bothered. This isn't something they just hacked together at the last minute to make it look like they've been doing something; they've really been doing something. For the Touch Bar to make sense it's going to have to show up on the non-pro Macbook this year, and I suspect on the Magic Keyboard.
I think the real anger is around what's going on with the desktop Mac line, particularly the Mac Pro and the Mac mini. I suspect that the new "trashcan" design had some kind of critical flaw that left Apple in a Catch-22 situation: they can't upgrade it without changing the design, but the market is too small for them to spend a lot of money changing the design again.
I suspect that the custom hardware has something to do about it. They have basically custom everything and a cooling solution that probably prevent them to shop around for easy GPU upgrade. The engineering cost must be awful just to duplicate the performance level you can get with off-the-shelves component. Even server grade components can fit in tiny "alright looking" cases nowadays.
Apple seems like it's lazily milking its userbase, but I think the truth is that it spends so much time and attention on pointless crap that all the stuff we care about on HN looks half-assed in comparison.
It looks going pretty ok to me.
I have almost 50Gb of free Dropbox storage btw, through referrals + events like the space race. But that's not really a fair fight anyway, since (aside from Dropbox) no one offers free space in exchange for actions..
For cost comparison (UK pricing);
iCloud: 50GB: £0.79 200GB: £2.49 1TB: £6.99 2TB: £13.99
Google Drive: 100GB: £1.59 1TB: £7.99
So, Google wins on free tier, but Apple takes it on options and cost thereafter, and 15GB arguably is still insufficient for "OS storage" in any real tangible terms.
[0] no I don't have data. I do know plenty of Dropbox users though, and next to none of them have any extras.
As you said, there is not major failings in the new MBP ... but it comes after 2 years wait, in a side event (i.e. not really the big front stage for this "Back to the Mac"), with muddled message. Apple has made bold decisions in this Mac but didn't follow up by giving the impression it was behind it. You get USB-C, yeah, hopefully maybe some third party will do cool stuff, like screens because Apple is not doing those anymore, ... It is also bad timing with the phasing out of the Wifi Router dropped like that as an unremarkable footnote despite being key in cloud feature like "Back to my Mac" or "Time machine". There was a definitive feeling that something was off.
MacRumors all black buying guide, Apple regular lack of comment about its future plan made that feeling even worse.
Twice in a month after that, Apple had had to confirm that they are still committed to the Mac, both to the public and to their own employees ! That's what people are concerned about. Nobody wants to buy into a dying ecosystem and Apple 2016 has done very little for the Mac. We will see how 2017 turns out, but I'm part of the people that prefer to wait until November 2017 to see if Apple is now sliding the MBP into a bi-yearly release cycle to decide if it is time to think about a plan B.
edit: Forgot to mention. I think on its own that the new MBP is a great machine, I'm itching to get one. I'm actually delaying the purchase decision as much as possible for the reason mentioned above.