Note that they are ON apple.com but won't ship for 1-2 months.

Meanwhile if the camera had the sensor and processor to handle 4k @ 15fps, and they didn't enable it, someone would be complaining that they didn't give the user the choice. Extra options are not a bad thing, even if they're useless (to you)!

So the speakers support these new HQ audio codecs, but do existing portable devices support them?

There's a chance that the output from the headphone jack on your Thunderbolt didn't match the Sony's aux input very well. Too-high or too-low signal levels can really murder your audio quality. This is one reason I'm really disappointed that the new iPhone connector doesn't offer line-level audio output (yet).

Can anyone else not see this without thinking of the Red vs. Blue argument about the Warthog?

@TBone45 I would think the Alpha A99 is the obvious Sony competition to this camera and the D600.