Unfortunately Lytro is still very much limited by law of physics. It suffers from relatively poor image quality and a limited control over depth of field because it uses a very small sensor for a dedicated camera. The first part (high noise) can be overlooked a bit but the later part is almost a deal breaker because the whole point of the camera is that you can control the focus plan after the picture is taken.
This is why most of the samples of Lytro are macro/close up shots with some background far away because otherwise the effect just isn't that great due to its small sensor. It would all be fine if Lytro was using a technology that didn't have any trade off but it does pay a hefty price to have that information by sacrificing the resolution heavily.
As far as I know, this problem cannot be solved by anything other than increasing the sensor size. At the end, the only way to make Lytro truly worthwhile, IMHO, would be to equip it with a larger sensor to extend the control over the depth of field. Something like the standard APS-C size sensors found in most of the modern DSLRs will be good. However that'll up the price greatly and I just don't know if it's economically feasible at that point. Also with that sensor size, it'll be very difficult to equip it with a large zoom lens like now and the lenses will be more expensive on top the increased body price.
So to summarize it all, Lytro seems to me a neat gimmick that's too costly to make anything worthwhile out of its original premise. Personally I'd much rather see Apple go into the mirrorless market if they are going into the cameras.
