I know several data scientists (the whole team in my company and some people in others) who just use a laptop (and a Mac at that).

>Maybe I'm in my own bubble but does TF have small scale uses where you would run it on a laptop?

That, plus huge scale uses where it doesn't make sense to run on a beefy desktop even, so you just use whatever to deploy in a remote cloud/cluster/etc. A laptop means you can do it from wherever, and a laptop with good specs/battery means you can do all other stuff, for longer, with it...