Fair enough. The missing piece of the puzzle is where Canon is on sensor and processor development. Are they about to pull another rabbit out of the hat? We shall see. Or not.
As the rumor goes now... canon claims to have caught up to Sony in their next sensor tech.
I am not sure we need a rabbit out of the hat sort of thing to be honest. Silicon based sensors are now reaching the point of saturation. As in you can’t squeeze much more DR out of them. Why do you think the new and improved DR is 15 stops vs 14.7 stops of the A7III. 0.x increase in DR becomes a little pointless.
Sensor read out/speeds and such is where the major gains are. It makes complete sense especially for canon and their DPAF system. That thing will shine as a mother if it had proper speed behind it. If they do that... they will be on top.... but of course there is a kicker.
When Sony has their AF tracking out where you just got a big box appear on the subject you didn’t really know where on the subject the camera was focusing. It also wondered. I had wished that they would go with a more refined representation and just have those little boxes cover the subject. They did implement it and it became more obvious to the user what was going on. They also refined the AF algorithm.
I find canon is now at that same big box stage. And I can see when the system gets confused the box would wonder and at times end up on a subject next to the one I had intended to. Like putting it on the head of someone only to see it end up on the body of the person next to the original person.
I describe it like this because everyone understands that visual feedback. But in essence it is clear that their tracking algorithm can also use some work.
A good tracking algorythm with a the AF tracking speed and responsiveness is the 1DXII BUT by means of the DPAF... Sony can’t touch that to be honest. Of course Sony is very very good at intellegent tracking. So my feeling is you will have blazing fast DPAF on one end, but a superior “intelligent” tracking capabilities from Sony.
Anyway. Canon is always looking at the system as a whole. If their DR is within a half stop of Sony the DR discussion is moot. If AF is faster and better (in low light) than Sony that is big, but sony’s software balances that out. So... it is in the other aspects of the system that canon will be better. Lenses will be a big one (Cheaper conventional glass, and exotic ones such as the f2 zooms and f1.2 primes). Of course you have the usual culprits from colors to reliability (support is in there too) ergonomics, menus etc.
Now... besides that we need to not forget that they will probably push the M line as well. They seem to have dropped the silly upgrade path idea. If the next M bodies are updated as the rumors say I believe they will beat Sony on the APS-C front. And that my friend is securing the future. Truely small, stellar performance, fast etc. From the rumored specs I can see people wanting one over their phones. I would hate not being able to use RF primes on one, but I would likely pick one up for walk around and travel. A single prime and zoom on a M5 mk2. I hate the feel and range finder style of the A6xxx, though I tried hard to like it. I get the feeling others will feel the same and rather go for an M