Your also forgetting the Surface book 2 also has integrated graphics... so its not like because it has the 1050 the battery life is poor... when you use it fair enough but who cares when your plugged in? The fact is its there and you can use it when you need it which is the whole point imo, they are giving you what you need when you need it.
It also has a quad core CPU... and has since November. Its not the fastest version but if you need the multicores its twice what the macbook offers. By the time apple gets the chip in the 13" the surface will have been out 6 months.
Also the size argument is moot to me, like i said ive had 17" all the way down to 11" macbooks and they have just pushed the size to the point where the machine cant use the tech adequately anyway. It was different when screens were 1080p but with the retina displays and also pushing 4/5k displays they just dont do justice. These things arent cheap like I said about £2400 for a top BTO 13" macbook pro with a dual core and integrated graphics... its not a pro machine. Especially If you cant take advantage of the tech inside it because of its thermal envelope.
Many pros will have a dedicated workstation or desktop to get heavy work done, even so many will also use the MBP as a one stop machine for both as they are so expensive. By the time you have a workstation and a high end 13" your hitting 9-10k easily.
On the road the difference between a 12 macbook and 13 macbook pro in the real world is not going to be night and day... they are essentially the same, ok the macbook uses lower watt CPUs but apart from ports they are very similar and perform within 10% too.
The workstation is a far better investment, people are still using 2009/10 mac pros... they last, laptops dont and they haven't changed in 10 years. Exactly the same use case, you cant do anything more than you could on a 2008 macbook pro, infact the 2008 would have more variety of ports anyway. Same from people that have held onto 2012 products.
The only inovation, if you can call it that is the touch bar and its so innovative that they feel the need to only offer it on the high end machines which wont end up being the mainstream. The macbook, macbook air low end 13 MBP will be the best sellers. Their logic boggles the mind. Especially when it was released it put the cost of the machines up £300 for what?
If they want adoption they need to put it on everything! Stupid.
Dedicated graphics dont have to be like a 1050 or 1060 there are a lot of other that use graphics like the MX150.
I dont think people realize how poor the performance is from integrated graphics. The 10 year old 5770 in the mac pro performs about the same as the intel 650 and the 5770 is better in quite a few respects. These 650s are sold to drive 4/5k displays, its frankly a joke by the time you actually use it for some work, driving the displays becomes the laptops main job and doing work like photography the machine is laggy because of the pixels its pushing.
Even lower powered discrete graphics like the MX150 are roughly double the performance of the intel 650. Its shouldn't be that difficult to add something that isnt as power hungry as a 1050.
Just make it a few mm thicker add more ports, its not hard.
So many people are under the apple rock. Look around, all is certainly not hunky dory in the macbook line up I dont know why people are happy paying inflated prices for this level of tech.
They are nice, well put together polished products but ultimately as a work machine other products perform better with better specs for cheaper or similar price.
10 years ago I wouldn't have complained, Apple made all its software to work well with its hardware and lets be honest apple has left this space. Final cut and logic are the only 2 products now and they work extremely well but those are only two sectors. All other software is multi platform and cloud based meaning being loyal to a company isnt necessity as the experience is the same on both platforms.
The elephant in the room is Adobe CC, works far better on Nvidia graphics and windows because you can tailor a system to make sure CC runs smoothly whereas with a mac your stuck with what apple chooses for you.
Lightroom, Premier, after effects all hogs and in the mac world the only machine they run smoothly on is the iMac pro which is ridiculous.
I always make this comparison. If your a wedding photographer and your editing 500 images it might take 5-6 hours. The 2016 macbook pro took 4-6 seconds to zoom to 100% at full resolution. Say you only zoom in once per image, thats an extra hour you will sit waiting for a preview of the image. I use local adjustments all the time and zoom in to 100% many times per image. These little periods of time you wait really add up.
Its not apples fault the CC suit is so badly optimized but Adobe dont care about the mac. They have the monopoly and apple have left them to it, offering no alternatives so the hardware software argument is now moot.
Its time they served the pro market a decent machine under 15" with hardware that the majority can make good use of.
