That brings us back to the earlier "infiltrator" units (eg the T-600). It's conceivable that an "adolescent" Skynet may have overestimated its chance of success and went for the fear factor of the death metal album cover look of the 600s. It threw together a fough shell to give a few seconds of pause to the resistance - just enough time to bring it's minigun to bear. As Skynet grew in complexity, so did its thinking and thus its creations - or something like that.
I like most of what you said, but I dislike people justifying 600s by what Kyle said. What Kyle said makes McG's 600 impossible. According to Kyle the word Terminator is the same as infiltrator. Let me spell this out in Kyle's own words taken directly from the movie.
“I’m Reese. Sergeant Tech Com DN38416. Assigned to protect you. You’ve been targeted for termination."
For this reason alone are they called Terminators, because they are designed to look human, infiltrate, and
terminate their target, not because they run around the ruins with miniguns strapped to their arms and wear Myers masks.
"…It’s not a man. Machine. Terminator. Cyberdyne Systems model 101."
Skynet didn't design these so there is no adolescent phase in Skynet's development of Terminators. So many people miss that. Cyberdyne designed them from the remains found in their factory. That's why it's called 'Cyberdyne Systems Model 101', not Skynet model 101. Once the design was employed though, Skynet could have made any modifications it wanted such as variations in appearance and toward the end giving them real flesh. Let Kyle go on...
"Not a robot. Cyborg. Cybernetic organism. The Terminator’s an infiltration unit. (did you catch that this time?) Part man, part machine. Underneath it’s a hyper alloy combat chassis. Micro processor controlled. Fully armored. Very tough. But outside it’s living, human tissue. Flesh, skin, hair, blood, grown for the cyborgs. The 600 series had rubber skin; we spotted them easy. But these are new; they look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything. Very hard to spot. I had to wait til he moved on you before I could zero him.”
It's pretty clear that in Kyle's mind the Endoskeletons of the 600s and the 800s were no different. Based on what I quoted, the only evidence that the 600 was different from the 800 is the fact that Kyle says it had rubber skin, not a rubber mask, not inferior technology, not hulking proportions, not field combat tactics. The only mentioned difference between the 600s and the 800s is rubber skin which would most certainly have to be full body and somewhat convincing like the animatronic torso double in the eye surgery scene in T1. We, the audience, can spot the difference between real Arnold and the fake because
IT has rubber skin (the unfortunate result of being made before CG, but you get the point). It is my assumption that Cyberdyne would have come up with something just like that to camouflage their soldier of the future, aka the 600 series, but until Skynet became self aware and twenty some years later found a purpose for the concept it had never been deployed because it lacked the AI to be autonomous.
we've already gotten the Arnold fan service, I've head rumors of the the advent of the T-1000 for the proposed sequel - again a nod to fans, with the thrid installment bringing us possible something completely new - or something like that.
Too much nodding already for the sake of nodding. It ruins the story despite the fact that I loved watching it. And we don't need new. We need done right. The T-1000 shouldn't even play into this since Kyle seems to know nothing about the prototype in '84. He obviously didn't know about it being sent to 1994 after John, or he would have mentioned it. 'Oh, BTW, Sarah, if we happen to survive this Terminator, there's going to be a more advanced one later that can even destroy the one we've already got.'
Am I getting through yet? I'm very passionate about the 'Bible' of Terminator that T1 set up. McG is blasphemy. He knows not what he does.