The confusion stems from Apple’s support of corporate markets. IT Managers buying en-masse will want the cheapest bulk deals possible and so Apple keeps the absolute cheapest models around for this exact reason. It’s also why the £1300 touchbar MacBook Pro still exists.

It does however not make it easy if you’re just an average person trying to navigate what should be a simple good/better/best product lineup.

We could probably make a good arguement that Apple need to reduce a lot of bloat from their entire product lineup.