With Apple going big, literally, on the Pros, I strongly suspect that there will be bigger Airs in the future to compensate and fill that niche. Apple actually doesn’t have a problem cannibalizing from the bottom - they view their own product stack as designed to do that and the new machines are a reflection of that. Each product is designed to fight for its existence from the product below it. That in my opinion is one reason why the new pros are the way they are. The M1’s are good enough that the Pro and Max have to go big to justify existing at all.
My supposition is that Apple views the regular M1 as it’s answer to both the i3 and i5 machines, and as you said are good value for the money. But I’ll grant you it is lacking in the ability to pair it with more powerful GPUs for a more middle-ground machine. But Apple probably feels that not enough distinction to make another product line.
But that’s also why I’d still say the M1 Pro and Max are good value for the money, yes you have to spend more but you’d also have to spend similarly for a comparable PC. So competing in the same product category is what we’re comparing here. As you said we’ll see how Intel mobile devices are priced with ADL and their performance, but it makes sense to compare top of the stacks to top of the stacks when they do drop sometime next year.
