Yes, I agree with Jorgen on this one. I have used Macs since 2002 or so, and this is the first time since then that I am seriously looking at PCs. I still may wind up with the Macbook Pro to replace my original retina Macbook Pro. The new version takes away a lot of utility that I really do use (USB ports, mag safe, HDMI, SD slot, Thunderbolt connectors) and it does not seem to add so much. I agree with a lot of what is written in the open letter. I run a Mac Pro at my studio and use thunderbolt raid arrays, and I use USB 3 and thunderbolt RAID's on my laptop on a regular basis as well. I use the SD card reader a lot, as well as the HDMI port for connecting to my TV and to projectors etc. We lose all of this for four very good connectors which unfortunately do not have any market penetration yet. Couldn't they just give us 2 USB 3.1 C ports on one side, and the SD card reader, 1 USB-3 and HDMI on the other? I am sure if they did that, hardly anyone would be complaining.
Meanwhile, the stuff going on in the Windows laptop world is really interesting. For example, the Lenovo X1 Yoga has a great keyboard, Wacom stylus, OLED touch screen with Adobe RGB gamut, similar processors and memory configurations in an even lighter package which also turns into a tablet. The Surface Book as well has a higher resolution screen which is said to be superb, stronger graphics performance arguably a better keyboard (now that Mac is ditching a normal keyboard for the misery of the Macbook style). It also literally splits into two and becomes a super powerful tablet running a full OS, unlike the largely crippled iOS versions that Apple offers. While the Surface Book is still quite expensive, the X1 is over a thousand dollars cheaper than a similarly spec'ed Macbook Pro.
Don't get me wrong, I like my current Macbook Pro a lot, but I feel like the new one is just becoming a worse and worse proposition these days if you are mostly focused on professional creative arts use. MacOS and Windows are not so terribly far apart these days as they used to be, and Mac is increasingly the OS that forces you to put up with a lot of B.S. (try the new safari! dialogs asking you to install things now or remind you later, with no option to dismiss. Endlessly pushing iCloud, iTunes, Photos, Safari, Siri, Notification Center, Continuity etc, default settings that hide the Library, prevent opening third party apps and so on). I don't want to talk to my computer until it looks like Alicia Vikander.
The programs that I use on a regular basis are mostly universal:
the Adobe Suite, Chrome, Davinci Resolve, Color Navigator, i1 Profiler, Skype, VLC and so on. I just don't see why I should continue to pay more to get less these days...it seems to me that Microsoft and other manufacturers are paying more attention to creatives these days than Apple. If you think the Macbook Pro was bad, the Mac Pro has not been updated since the beginning, and even then it was quite annoying as a Pro box. All of a sudden I had a million cables and external boxes all over the place instead of an orderly desk area! It works quite well, but the casing itself is a huge pain as compared to the older version.
I don't want to be a curmudgeon before I am even 40...I just wish Apple would take the pro users into account. I don't think they will, however, which is why I am looking so seriously again at Windows.