I think their point is that the 11 inch MacBook Air when it actually comes to the size of the design is more similar to today’s 13 inch MacBook Air than it would be a theoretical 2025 11 inch MacBook Air, because of the different size of bezels.I don't recall having problems with the 11" screen + keyboard.
If Apple made an 11 inch Air today with modern thin bezels, it would require compromise on the keyboard, much like the magic keyboard for the 11 inch iPad Pro does with half-size enter, shift, function and arrow keys.
The original 2010-2015 11 MacBook Air didn’t require any compromise in the size of the keyboard because of its massive aluminum screen boarder.