Many hope that Apple will dump the MF'ing butterfly keyboard. Some hope Apple would resurrect the 2012-2015 MBP design with updated internals & TB3.
At this point I don't know what to expect. With rumored A-series processors coming to Macs, I don't know if Apple will stall any further hardware updates until the processor change is ready to roll out.
What I do know is Apple has do something! The lowest end MBPs and the lowly MacBook are coming up on 2-years-old. And still being sold at the same prices! The product line is stale. It feels like changes are coming though. But if there are no changes and no indication that changes are afoot (i.e. moving to A-series processors but first starting with dev previews of macOS on A-series hardware) someone needs to grab the executive team by their necks and ask them WTF they're doing.
I agree about the keyboard, but I generally think Apple is on a good track with the Mac again since a while, and is remedying many mistakes they made with it. The Mac mini got exactly the type of upgrade that many (especially professionals for who the iMac Pro was a little too much) have been waiting for, and the MBA redesign and the 2018 MBP refresh were also both pretty good, except for the half-baked keyboard "fix" that barely fixed anything. This year's iMac update was also great – a redesign is way overdue here, yes, but the updated internals are a big jump and even the thermal situation turned out significantly better than many people expected. Externally, they'll probably look outdated in a year or two when Apple finally brings their battle against bezels to the Mac-front aswell, but internally, they are capable, future-proof machines for many years to come.
The nonTB 13" MBP will probably be phased out in favor of the new MBA, so I don't think we should use its' updates (or lack thereof) as a metric for Apple's plans with the Mac. The target audience of the new MBA doesn't really care that it's maybe 10 percent slower than the nonTB MBP, and other than that, the MBA is ahead of it in almost every area. Having both of them in the lineup and upgraded regularly would just be unnecessary redundancy; it makes sense for them to simplify their lineup by only focusing on one of the two. The general consensus is that there wasn't supposed to be a new MBA and that the nonTB MBP was intended as its' replacement (even Apple said so themselves I think), but when they realized how much many people wanted a new laptop under the MBA branding, they quickly changed their plans and suddenly, there wasn't a need for the nonTB MBP anymore.
What concerns me more is the lack of updates to the MacBook, on that point I agree with you, especially since a not insignificant chip upgrade (Amberlake) would already be already available for them since several months. I think the MacBook fulfills the important role of being the best Mac for people who value portability above all else, which none of the other MacBook Pro/Air models are quite ready to replace yet (nor should they). My guess is that either Apple is neglecting this machine in favor of other, more heavily requested Mac updates like the Mac Pro (which doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be any upgrades to it at all, but they may go down the path of the last iMac update and only refresh the MacBook on every second or so chip release), or that they have a significant redesign for it in the works that is just taking longer (possibly, but not necessarily ARM-related).
Either way, even without a MacBook refresh this year, is seems like this will be an exciting year for the Mac. The new Mac Pro and the 31.3" display, the redesigned 16" MacBook Pro, all the strongly rumored features for macOS including the second step of their big Marzipan project, the rumored professional-grade over-ear headphones, who knows what else... personally, I think that 2018 was already one of the strongest years for the Mac in recent history, but 2019 has the potential to exceed that once again. As long as they finally give us a more reliably keyboard, at least.
