Maybe 5h is enough for you, but Apple fans are used to a 10h minimum, likely more. And very thin hardware.
Apple no longer has a truly professional mobile workstation. By focussing obsessively on size and weight, the whole product line has shifted downwards in relative performance, leaving a gaping void at the top end. The most powerful machine in the Apple lineup competes with mid-range PC laptops.
A Windows user can choose from some extraordinarily powerful mobile workstations. If you need it, you can have 64gb of RAM, a desktop-class CPU, two desktop-class GPUs and quad M.2 RAID. You have the choice of ultimate performance or light weight. Apple offers no such choice.
It may be a perfectly rational business decision, but Apple has decided to abandon the high-end. It has been nearly three years since the Mac Pro was updated; even on their supposedly high-end desktop workstation, Apple have traded performance for compactness.
As we have seen on HN, Apple is risking an exodus of professional users. This exodus has already happened in many fields; I know a great many people in video and audio post-production who could not tolerate Apple's indifference towards the needs of media professionals. The abandonment of Final Cut Pro 7 and the inadequacies of FCPX were the icing on the cake. These users were Apple's mainstay in the difficult pre-iPhone years, but Apple seem happy to let them go.
To argue that thin-and-light is never a valid criteria for professionals is a bit out of touch.
Many professional designers/developers work from coffee shops, workspaces, the couch, the airplane, the client's office and so on. Remote workers and digital nomadism (I hate that phrase) is a huge thing right now. And growing.
The question is whether they've gone too-far in this respect and I agree that they have. But, that doesn't mean that thin-and-light isn't a perfectly valid criteria for many professionals.
I personally think their whole obsession by making these laptops thin is contra productive if you think off al the things (non solderable RAM for example) we need to give up for it in return.
Or maybe they should just give the user a choice.
The strange thing is that Apple killed processing power in favour of more Air like features. That doesn't seem to make much sense in a 15" laptop.
I have an embarrassingly old air and I've been waiting for these slim pros to upgrade and rely less on my desktop. I was always only thinking of the 13", but the 15" is so small that I'm almost pondering going for it instead. All I'm worried about is whether or not the extra 500g will make it too heavy for my taste. So it does risk still being too heavy for someone who wants something super small and not powerful enough for those who don't care about portability as much.
I personally think that thinning the frame out while also increasing specs and keeping the battery life high was a smarter move than trying to cram in more RAM and keeping the 99.5 watt-hour battery that, with 32GB of RAM and a better GPU would have resulted in a ~5 hour battery life.
However, what I wish Apple would have done, instead of making the new Macbook (the little 12" notebook), was to make the MacBook Pro thin like they have, with the same specs they have added, and then have the only other offering be a larger, more pro notebook (maybe on par with the 2011 level of thickness / weight) with 64GB max RAM and with one of these great GPUs everyone is talking about. They could have done with a ~5 hour battery life on the main battery, keeping the 99.5 battery for airline regulations, with an extra 50+ watt-hour battery that slides into a slot for use when not getting on a plane. This would have given Apple 2 choices, 1) an awesome MacBook Pro for most of us, and 2) an awesome MacBook Super for the power users who don't mind a 5lb notebook.
There is not too much value in an even lighter / smaller notebook than the 13" MacBook Pro, which is why the Macbook 12" hasn't been flying off the shelf. Most people who can't do with an iPad (or iPad Pro) need a full notebook, not a 12" device that is slow.
Some people need beefy CPUs, some people need beefy GPUs, some people need lots of memory, some people need lots of connectors to avoid a dongle mess.
And instead of offering at least one model that can be fitted with all of that, either as standard or as option, Apple decided that the only group that matter is those that travel a lot and favour light laptops with long battery life.
But, yes, if they were to offer something like what I referred to as a MacBook Super and get rid of all other offerings besides this "Super" and the current Pro, that would satisfy both users.