Can you specialize in summoning/binding by spirit (fire, air, earth, etc)?
How about specializing in sorcery/counterspelling by spell type (combat, detection, manipulation, etc)?

I ask because the first one can't be more specific (unless you specialized by force rating too), but the latter can by individual spells (though counterspelling specialization based on a particular spell is a pretty good way to never see 2BP/Karma come to fruition).

specialization for conjuring would be the spirit type, you would get +2 dice for a particular spirit, -2 dice for any other type doing this on all tests

for Sorcery, i would guess your specialization would have to be in a particular type of spell, Combat, or health or Illusion, again you would get +2 dice for that spell type alone, -2 dice for any others

There's no -2 penalty for using something outside of a specialization anymore

sorry, i "grew up" in gaming playing SR3, and will always consider unspecialized magic at a negetive when you've specialized one aspect, or at least say your working an elementalist who specializes in fire, earth and air spirits wouldnt necesarily be affected but water spirits they would have a neg 2

but hey that would be a house rule if i was running a game, i just play

The penalty is worked in already. Rather than being a +1 to the specialization and a -1 to the rest of the skill for free, you pay points to get a +2 to the specialiation. Essentially, you raised the rating of the entire skill, then penalized every part of the skill except the specialization which you also added a die to.

It's a much cleaner way of presenting the same idea as the SR3 specializations.

-Frank

not to mention it's something i personally would actually consider taking, even if i was to be good at the whole skill in general (ie, if i take pistols 4 (slivergun 6), then i boost my pistols skill to 5, then i gain 1 point to the specialisation also.

not so in SR3.