Apple has products in their lineup where they refresh and keep the name. Example: Mac Studio is the same every refresh.

I speculate they gave themselves a lot of thermal engineering margin to bump up TDP with the M-series MBP design (or perhaps they underestimated how good the M-series chips were going to be) The battery being at the TSA limit of 100Wh is quite nice as well. Another benefit is that it now differentiates the "Pro" line from the rest of the laptop lineup quite significantly. For most people the Air has enough power now and its plenty thin and light. The pro line is for "true" pros with actually intense workflows.

I'm a dev and the MBP line is definitely overkill for me. The 15" MBA handles everything I can throw at it.

Congrats on the front page MH, hard to forget fellow Chicago/midwest entrepreneurs.

Fight fire with fire. Anti-drone drones that are near cost parity. Or make some investments to develop, cheap, mobile, relatively short ranged point-defense systems. A middle ground between CWIS and CROWS or a CROWS-like system optimized for drone defense. The engagement distance will be close, but it turns the asymmetry back around.

South Korea is a very young democracy with fresh memories of what it was like under dictatorships. The people very much understand the price it took to get to that point and is not complacent in stomping out wannabe autocrats.