Just to add... MR users with a cow with 8GB memory & 256GB storage aren't the key mass market demo for this."Why would they release an M2 MBA if they're just going to release an M3 MBA next year?!?!"
Because schools. Apple wants to have a brand new MBA in stores during the summer so students could buy them before returning to classes in the fall. Students are a huge segment of the market for the MBA, and Apple is not going to skip a year of sales waiting for the next chip just because some people on MR are upset.
People here are obsessed with processors and memory bandwidth and one SSD or two, etc. Back-to-school shoppers are not. Look at the real world and real consumers.
It's back-to-school students who are.
And not those obessed with RTX 4090 and i9 benchmarks.