Like almost everyone, I'm financially constrained as well as space constrained. so buying multiple expensive machines, or a high end Mac Pro or something is not on the table as an option.

So it's a compromise.

My compromise at the moment is to use a MBP for Apple things, do smaller Linux and Windows things in a VM on it, and do big Linux and Windows things on cost-optimised rented servers much more powerful than the XPS from Dell. That seems to be a better use of the resources I have for the workstation class problems I'm choosing to solve.

An additional target of my interests is the M1-class processor with it's ARM plus extensions architecture.

So I will wait and see what the next high end, ARM-based MBP from Apple is like. By all accounts the M1 is an excellent and powerful processor, competitive with other Intel-based laptops, so its successor may be a good match for my needs. It might not be, in which case I will need to revisit my strategy, but until it's announced we don't know, and it doesn't make sense to buy an XPS at the moment for what might be just a few months of only marginal discomfort. I have my servers after all.