Skimming Wikipedia it looked like you get discrete graphics unless you have a MacBook Air or 13-inch MacBook Pro. A higher-end option, yes, but probably the more likely one that people actually had here.

And yes, Intel Iris was a good leap forward for their iGPUs at the time! But I don't see any models with Iris and a dGPU, so if you got a model with the dGPU then you would be switching between a potato iGPU and the dGPU.