Now I wish I hadn't found the prices...
I switched to a surface book about 4 months ago, and will probably be upgrading to this when the $ is in my budget.
Just speaking as someone that's tried both the book, pro, and laptop, I found the pro to be the most versatile of this weird "kind of tablet" line microsoft has going. You don't gotta push a button to take the screen off (that only works kinda sometimes and can lag), it's smaller/lighter, still just as powerful.
There was initial excitement when the 1st generation launched with actual Wacom technology, as a lot of us do work in Windows, but it quickly fizzled when Microsoft cheaped out and went with less performant ntrig digitizers.
With Wacom's Intuos tablets you've probably noticed they have a really big bezel. Maybe 2-3 inches around every side. It's not just a physical design decision, they need that in order to work. MS couldn't accommodate that on the surface, so the accuracy at the edges dropped off. And this being Windows with a lot of software not designed for touchscreens, that meant you were trying to poke at tiny toolbar buttons in the least accurate region of the digitizer.
Ntrig solves that, it's let them at least be consistent across the whole surface, even as bezels got smaller and smaller. But like you said, the peak accuracy of Wacom in the middle of the screen probably beats it.
I sold my SP3 to buy a 9.7" iPad Pro when those came out, mainly because I got annoyed with the digitizer. If you draw a line slowly you can see it get visibly pulled back and forth along the digitizer grid. To get smooth lines you have to do fast sweeping strokes, which I really didn't like.
For reference, lines drawn on a SP3 in OneNote: http://i.imgur.com/bxpnPSv.png
In an AMA on reddit the Surface team attributed some of the pen performance issues to "capacitive coupling" making the pen not detected as accurately if you let the tip touch a ruler, so those are drawn freehand. Even so, you can clearly see the lines get pulled into the pattern of the ntrig grid.
I also had one of the Surface Pros with ntrig digitizer. It was near impossible to draw properly. Quick sketching is fine, but slow and precise lines were impossible. Cursor just jumped around and was unusable.
If Apple made a big push to improve their hardware, get full blown Photoshop with Adobe’s brush engine, this could conceivably change. Everything’s too piecemeal right now though. File management is still terrible, Photoshop brushes are only available in Adobe’s terrible apps, lots of Bluetooth buginess from app to app, inconsistent UI patterns etc. The newest Procreate update and Affinity designer are pretty cool, but it’s still not there yet.
Disclosure: Microsoft employee, so arguably biased toward the Surface.
You can see some slight vertical jogs, but nothing to the degree of what the Surface has. I've never noticed it in actual use on the iPad. On my SP3 I definitely did.
I don't actually know how the technology in Apple's Pencil works compared to Wacom and ntrig, but my assumption is that it's more similar to ntrig with having the detection hardware up front in the display/glass assembly instead of behind it. It uses an active stylus w/ battery (similar to ntrig), while Wacom's stylus is a passive batteryless device.
In terms of accuracy, iPad and Wacom seemed similar to me. Never used a Cintiq (just the screenless pads) so I can't make a fair comparison. I've heard that the Cintiq has more visible lag with your stroke catching up to the pen, but that's much harder to notice when you're drawing on your desk while watching a separate screen.
The iPad is my favorite, hands down. It feels very natural to use.
Whether or not it is equivalent is a subjective judgement on the part of the user.
Personally, the current stylus input supported by ntrig is sufficient for my particular needs.
The ntrig technology Microsoft acquired has been significantly improved since its first implementation, so I think your judgements are perhaps somewhat obsolete?
I'm sure their digitizers work great for the average user, but Wacoms are primarily devices for pros. None of the Surface stuff is at that "level," unless you're comparing them to other (IMO bad) PC integrations.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2016/10/26/the-surfac...
But when it comes to actually coding, it's much less "easy" than on a MBP. Some people swear by powershell but I just did not jive with having to do that when everyone else is using bash - so I'm using WSL, which has... difficulties. Random stuff doesn't work - SSHFS for example. Obviously anything than needs a GUI, though if you config just right you can get a display server ported through to windows through some sort of godless black magic.
I know they're still working on WSL, and if they can lock that down, I think Windows machines will be fantastic all-around dev tools, especially for a very visual developer like me (I just can't get over how great it is to whiteboard on the surface pro).
I tried that, then went back to using VirtualBox in seamless mode with Lubuntu. I was very disappointed. I'm still more productive on my 2012 Macbook Pro than I am on my 2017 Windows laptop.