I agree that they call it optical zoom. If you go to the apple.com web page for the 15 Pro, the second pane in the brag bar says "iPhone 15 Pro Max has the longest optical zoom in iPhone ever. Far out."
Under the tech specs for e.g. the 15 Pro, it says:
- 3x optical zoom in, 2x optical zoom out; 6x optical zoom range
- Digital zoom up to 15x
I agree that calling it optical zoom is questionable since none of these phones actually have zoom lenses. But calling such setups "zoom" has become standard practice for cell phones. Apple is just using the de facto standard terminology in the industry; you can't really expect anything else from them.
What they're doing is definitely not digital zoom though. There's no two ways around that. Expecting them to call it digital zoom is absolutely wrong. Maybe "cropping" but not "digital zoom." There's no way you can get from what they're doing to the term "digital zoom."