For what it's worth, everything I have heard about the new renovation is that it's incredible. I'm hoping to play it in a week or two, in which case I will report back.
The difference between the waste areas at Poppy (the brown "bunkers") and the dunes at Cypress is that the dunes are much closer in appearance to the white bunkers they have there. I'm guessing it's the native sand at Cypress, but I have no clue. Poppy doesn't have a native sandy soil that's adequate for bunkers, which is why I believe they are white. The jury's out for me on how it looks, I want to see it in person. A picture with increased saturation from Joann Dost is always going to polarize opinions.
What's amazing to me is that we've championed all sorts of ideas on here about what golf architecture should be, Poppy (and RTJII) have seemed to listen and now, with it's sand-capped fairways, Poppy is very firm and fast (from all reports I've heard), has no rough, and acres of short grass around the greens!
We're crushing it for being 6th or 7th on the peninsula, but the huge majority of us can't access three of those courses. I'm far more excited by the prospect of having a course that will rank 3rd out of 4th of those courses, especially when the two public tracks ahead of it are Pebble and Spyglass. Not to mention that I'll be playing it for hundreds less than the other 3 courses which it is competing with.
That being said, Powell was kind enough to show me around Wissahickon last summer. Seeing it in person during construction, and seeing the finished product the last few days on here, that's got to be the obvious candidate for best renovation this year. I don't know what it was before, but it's a world class course now.