First of all, sorry this is gonna be a long post. But it is just about narrow subject only considering display technology trying to explain their differences and what are their limitations.
However flickering and/PWM has nothing to do with IPS or edge lit vs back lit. It is depending on the LEDs used for the backlight, and usually in my understating PWM is used to hide quality of the leds, because when using leds with linear dimming (without PWM flickering) their color temperature and color reproduction features can change a lot depending on their brightness, so you would need to use well binned leds which cost more and yields are lower. But if you choose to use cheaper leds that have wanted color temperature and color reproduction features at full (100%) brightness you can then dim them using PWM (so flickering them on/off rapidly for different brightness levels).
So PWM can be found in both types. However, Edge Lit needs less leds and it might be still somewhat cost effective to use quality leds without PWM in those but when you have thousands of Mini Leds it will be different thing.
Also PWM frequency has much to do whether PWM causes issues. Very low frequency PWM is easily noticeable and straining eye, like iPhone OLED or I had Zenbook that had 400Hz PWM but I tweaked it up to couple thousand to get rid for PWM issues for me. Using PWM around 15000Hz like in MBP 14/16, it is fine for the most people. Obviously no PWM is the most preferred.
IMHO, all panels with LCD and separate backlight are intermediate step before self illuminating pixels, but those have their own issues again starting with uniformity/mura and so on.
Again, there are many many IPS edge lit panels with PWM, it has nothing to do with anything else but the LEDs used for the backlight.
Burn in is where LCDs are great even there has been some IPS panel models that were prone to burn in like wear but generally that is rarely an issue anyone needs to worry about.
Micro LED surely will be the best of these mentioned. But we'll see when they are available. They have their features too which some might not like and they likely will suffer from the many issues found in OLED's in mura issue especially.
As I said even OLED have their gravely issues (I hate uniformity/mura and VB issue) but still they are considered the best technology for a TV these days.
EDIT: For the PWM I mainly talked about PWM vs no PWM only in picture quality/flickering point of view. It might be worth to mention PWM has features with heat and power consumption too, so those might have been also at least partly reason for using it.
Well it is, but all display technologies have their weaknesses and strenghts but blooming is more or less something that using backlight behind LCD-panel you cannot be easily get rid of with using less LEDs than actual pixels on the LCD-panel, which is far from that, in MBP 14" there are like 10000 leds while LCD-panel has around 6 million pixels or so and even then if you had as many leds you would need to couple it with the panel so that light of each backlight leds does not "leak" to the next LCD-pixels. But anyway, IMHO this blooming is blown out of proportions over here, IMHO it is not an issue really with this panel when using it at reasonable brightness and IMHO it bothers me much much much less than edge lit IPS light leaks and grayish black level with often some colored tint in it during that, because in both type of backlights the environment where these issues would show are the same and I'd rather take some blooming that those other issues with edge led, but that is just me.
However flickering and/PWM has nothing to do with IPS or edge lit vs back lit. It is depending on the LEDs used for the backlight, and usually in my understating PWM is used to hide quality of the leds, because when using leds with linear dimming (without PWM flickering) their color temperature and color reproduction features can change a lot depending on their brightness, so you would need to use well binned leds which cost more and yields are lower. But if you choose to use cheaper leds that have wanted color temperature and color reproduction features at full (100%) brightness you can then dim them using PWM (so flickering them on/off rapidly for different brightness levels).
So PWM can be found in both types. However, Edge Lit needs less leds and it might be still somewhat cost effective to use quality leds without PWM in those but when you have thousands of Mini Leds it will be different thing.
Also PWM frequency has much to do whether PWM causes issues. Very low frequency PWM is easily noticeable and straining eye, like iPhone OLED or I had Zenbook that had 400Hz PWM but I tweaked it up to couple thousand to get rid for PWM issues for me. Using PWM around 15000Hz like in MBP 14/16, it is fine for the most people. Obviously no PWM is the most preferred.
IMHO, all panels with LCD and separate backlight are intermediate step before self illuminating pixels, but those have their own issues again starting with uniformity/mura and so on.
Well, IMHO edge lit has its weaknesses which IMHO are much worse than those of in back lit / Mini LED with local dimming and it could never reach the same black level for example what Mini LED allows, that is simply from the fact that IPS LCD-panel cannot block all the light, so you need to have backlight technology to do that and this cannot be done with edge leds in any decent way.
Again, there are many many IPS edge lit panels with PWM, it has nothing to do with anything else but the LEDs used for the backlight.
Burn in is where LCDs are great even there has been some IPS panel models that were prone to burn in like wear but generally that is rarely an issue anyone needs to worry about.
IPS LCD-panel itself offers good viewing angles without changes in gamma for example from the angle, unlike VA or TN which are more or less bad in that. Vibrancy and colors have more to do with the backlight and filters used to create colors, they can be bad in IPS too, but Apple makes ones with good colors and wide gamut.
Well, here I beg to differ but I respect your preference here. There is no contest IMHO between MacBook edge lit IPS vs Mini led IPS, the latter wins easily. I just cannot take gray blacks and light leaks. Again blooming is not an issue in MBP 14" IMHO. Has there been even any respectable reviews saying blooming is bad? Not talking about Youtube clickbait reviews.
Micro LED surely will be the best of these mentioned. But we'll see when they are available. They have their features too which some might not like and they likely will suffer from the many issues found in OLED's in mura issue especially.
As I said even OLED have their gravely issues (I hate uniformity/mura and VB issue) but still they are considered the best technology for a TV these days.
Interesting to see if they change the panel or not, CPU itself does nothing to it. Not sure how much higher price would need to then, also could be issue with yields these days there are constant shortages in production it might not be practical for that either.
EDIT: For the PWM I mainly talked about PWM vs no PWM only in picture quality/flickering point of view. It might be worth to mention PWM has features with heat and power consumption too, so those might have been also at least partly reason for using it.
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