Thanks all for giving me advice and making recommendations, this gives me a lot of recent info to go on to start my search, which is what I was hoping for.
I tried to +rep everyone for contributing where I was able, if you already had rep from me, consider this additional +++
I admit to having an iPhone 8 Plus, overall, its great, it just works, however the battery is a sore spot with me. I don't like that they wear out and don't keep a charge and then it costs an arm and a leg to replace them. Also, my old iPhone, a 4s, got to the point the battery wouldn't keep a charge for an hour, and I couldn't update the OS anymore, so kind of forced obsolescence. I also admit to feeling a bit slimy owning it for a lot of reasons not directly related to the products. It's kind of a love hate thing. I have wanted to move off to another android phone maybe like a samsung whatever, but I have similar issues with the Google borg. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.
I have an Apple 4 TV box, it works good, I kind of like my HD firestick functions a little better, but the best part of the Apple TV is I can pair my Air Pods with it and listen to the TV without disturbing others who are trying to sleep, since I'm hard of hearing from my time in the military, I have to have the TV loud enough to make out what people are saying to understand it, the air pods are great for solving that problem, although like most Apple products, they are also over priced imo. I wouldn't go back to a wired head phone/ear phone kind of thing ever again. The Air Pods are great! I like the Apple iPad, its handy to have around. The Apple watch is nifty. So, I have a lot of apple stuff. But I have always had Dell laptops from work, and home built PCs for gaming.
With that said, overall my experience with apple products is pretty good. Which is why I was considering the laptop to stay in the eco system. But I have always had PCs, and its always been a love hate relationship with those too. Its always something, I'm always tweaking something to make this work with that or whatever, and I often hear that there are a lot of apps for pc, and not mac. At this age, I just want something that works. If PE doesn't work on Mac, that would be a small problem. I'm still playing, albeit on a very reduced scale, I haven't resorted to sweat/chat scale yet, but its probably in the cards after I retire
but I don't want to have to jump through hoops to make PE work on a non-native platform.