mr. h

I think Apple have hit the nail on the head with this one. It's soo much better than the trashcan. And it has USB-A ports!

For anyone who's wondering, this is the one that will (FINALLY!!!) introduce LPDDR4 support: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13774/intels-keynote-at-ces-2019-10nm-ice-lake-lakefield-snow-ridge-cascade-lake

AppleInsider said:

While Apple is expected to split iTunes into several apps in macOS 10.15, due sometime this fall, the new Music app will reportedly keep most of iTunes's associated functions.

This includes "smart" playlists, library management

Good! And indeed, phew!

and syncing with iPhones, iPads, and iPods.

Not good! Synching of iPhones is where all the bloat started to happen in iTunes. Why should a music app be in charge of synching things with an iPhone or iPad that contains music, movies, photos, loads of other miscellaneous data, and apps? It makes no sense! Apple should have a dedicated iOS <-> macOS sync. app, or use a Music app for synching music, a Videos app (that doesn't currently exist) for synching video files, Photos for synching photos, and the App Store for synching and managing apps.

jimh2 said:

The Apple has a significantly smaller footprint (w: 12" vs 14", d: 9 1/4" x 8 1/2", h=negligible difference). Weight is tell tale with the MacBook Pro weighing in a 3.02 lbs versus the Dell's 4.0 lbs.

Those are the 13" MacBook Pro dimensions.

The 15" is 13.8 x 9.5 inches and weighs 4.02 lbs. In other words, bigger and heavier than the Dell, if not by much.

freethinking said:

Is the takeaway from the Test that the dell outperforms the mac when plugged into power? Which for me is 99% of the time and when I’m on the road I don’t do heavy workloads just browsing and itunes.

The takeaway is that the price of the 15" MacBook Pro is completely outrageous and totally unjustifiable. It used to be that when Apple launched a new Mac, that it was actually very price competitive with Windows PCs, when you actually did a proper "Apples to Apples" comparison (for want of a better colloquialism), in other words compared a MacBook Pro to a similarly sized and weighted machine. Alas, this is no longer the case. It's no wonder that Apple's Mac sales aren't up to much.

dewme said:

Case in point, my single iPhone 4s battery effectively died after about 5 years.

I wouldn't call a battery dying after the end of its expected life a "failure". Batteries have an expected useful lifespan of a few hundred or possibly one thousand cycles depending on exact chemistry and structure, and when they have no useful capacity left can be replaced to return the phone to original working order.