FWIW the Dell XPS 13 or 15 is considered comparable to the new Apple hardware but a few hundred dollars less. Now for things I did not understand when buying my previous laptop and how I think it is today after having more time to research things while considering an upgrade myself later in the year:
Neither LR nor PS benefits from a really high-end graphics card as those programs don't take full advantage of the faster chips. (exception noted below). For GPU even an older GTX960M with 4GB onboard is fine so again don't overspend thinking there's some big benefit to the latest Nvidia or AMD chips for post-processing your photos. There isn't ( tho as hinted at above unless you do video or 3D processing. I don't. Lightroom doesn't care to begin with)
As for screen res 1920x1080 is good. More just makes icons and text tinier and puts more strain on the system itself for no real benefit IMO. Oh, and avoid a TN panel display. You won't be happy with it. .
More important would be the storage. Minimally get a hybrid system IMO, a 256GB boot SSD with a 7200RPM 1 TB disk which is pretty standard anymore, and USB 3.1 ports will be beneficial too if you decide to use an external SSD for storing your photos. Mine lacks USB 3.1 ports to take full advantage of the speeds my T5 1TB external drive offers. Make sure you have at least one and two or three would be better, and a built in SD reader.
Better would be going all SSD in the first place, 500GB if you can afford it on the laptop and another TB SSD external. I keep my photos on the T5 SSD velcro'd to the outside lid so it doesn't flop around but still plenty portable when I want to bring that drive to a different computer which I sometimes do.
Don't forget to consider weight and size if you plan to carry it around with you, along with battery life if you habitually use it away from power. I currently use a Dell Inspiron 17" and while it's been very good for photo-processing and still very serviceable three years later it is heavier than I'd prefer, now down to maybe three hours on battery, and TBH is a bit on the large size for sitting back in the recliner doing my editing as I tend to do. Sitting at a table 17" is good. In your lap not so much. If I had a do-over I'd go with 15".
One thing of note regarding battery: I've been told that laptops will generally run faster when connected to power than not, less likely to throttle. Maybe someone here could confirm that.
Memory? 16GB is more than ample to run both LR and PS at the same time. Want to spend extra for 32GB then have at it but I doubt you'll find a benefit to it. Personally I'd look for a system with an 8th gen Intel processor since that actually was a big improvement over the 7th generation chips. Skip paying extra for a 9th gen as they're only a slight improvement if any, not worth paying a couple hundred more for. Buy the far faster 8th gen i7 for the same price as a 9th gen i5.
Now if you also plan to use this for gaming too forget all the advice I gave you on GPU and memory. Good gaming machines eat memory like we eat popcorn and absolutely benefit from top line GPU's for the fast refresh rates games need. Those systems are fine for Adobe too if more than a bit overkill, but many are lap burners so better used at the table, and battery life tends to suffer as well.
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/optimize-photoshop-cc-performance.html 
) that was made for it, but I've seen several computers that were very capable on Windows 7 and 8 have Windows 10 mysteriously install itself, despite never wanting it in the first place, and then the computer stops working. One of those was a two-year old desktop with 16gb RAM and an i7 which we used for our photo-editing. It still 'works', but crashes with driver issues constantly. I'll admit that I am very biased due to these issues, and I have no love of Apple, but Microsoft has lost almost all of its credibility with me.
Originally posted by Wasp 
Post #11 by gatorguy
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