Upon Steve Jobs return to Apple, his first order of business was to scrap the massive product lineup with confusing points of differentiation and created a simple product matrix.
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This quite literally saved the company. Tim Cook is heading in the direction of Gil Amelio. I'm an Apple enthusiast and I have trouble explaining to friends what the point of difference is between the Air, Pro, Max, Plus, suffixes across product lines.
This is portraying history inaccurately. Jobs did simplify the lineup and it was indeed helpful. However the Mac lineup previously had dozens of models and even third party models, with 3 or 4 models all taking up the same price and performance brackets each. Jobs hit the reset button, but he didn't stick to anything like the table you shared for very long. The last few years under jobs had the Mac lineup similar to what it is today. What saved Apple was the iPod and Microsoft. Microsoft not only helped bail Apple out, but they also kept tripping over their own feet during this time period. But even with all that, Mac sales of the era you are showing and even during the end of the Job's era were no where near what they are today. With Ive and Jobs out Apple has increased its sales 3x what they were. Jobs was needed for the relaunch but he was too strict and would have held the company back in the long run. Ive's form over function was eating the company alive with lawsuit after lawsuit from failed hardware designs that couldn't be properly engineered due to absurd requests from the design team, and fading consumer confidence as their devices bent, overheated, got keys stuck, couldn't get a signal, had no ports, were too slow,... the list of hardware fumbles is endless.
Cook came in with banger after banger and sales soared under his leadership. The M series Macs knocked it out of the park with their performance. Then when the case redesigns came in, they knocked it out of the park again with useable ports and keyboards. He launched the most successful best selling audio devices the AirPods and the best selling watch, the Apple Watch, all while increasing iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales.
There is nothing confusing about the Mac lineup now or with the addition of a new base MacBook. Heck we already had a base MacBook in the past.
MacBook = Budget entry level device for students and lower income.
MacBook Air = Mid range thin and light coffee house work horse for those on the go with non software intensive workflows.
MacBook Pro = The high end machine for heavy tasks and professional workloads.
I don't mean to disrespect the graph, but lumping all consumers into one bracket isn't realistic. There are consumers who want to be in the Apple ecosystem that don't have thousands of dollars to throw around. There are consumers that need something more performant than an entry level machine, but are just looking to get the job done, they don't need a hotrod. And there are consumers that are tech enthusiasts who want power or others who just want to experience a premium luxury device. If Apple isn't selling a device in each of these segments, they are leaving money on the table.
On the other hand they could waste money by over crowding the market with devices that are too similar, but so far that hasn't been the case. Apple has been missing the budget segment from their mac lineup. They have the iPhone SE/e, the Apple Watch SE, the base iPad, the base AirPods, etc. Now it is time to complete the Mac lineup with the base MacBook's return. Selling the aged M1 MacBook Air at Walmart was the successful trial run.
MacBook is really the lineup that you can complain the least about when it comes to this topic:
MacBook $649
MacBook Air $900
MacBook Air 15 $1100
MacBook Pro 14 $1500
MacBook Pro 16 $2300
There are hundreds of dollars clearly delineating the price brackets and markets for these devices. If you are going to bark up this tree, at least direct your energy at the iPhone lineup first (though even that is a fine lineup serving its purpose and should make complete sense with the iPhone Air).
You will never see these issues and complaints being raised by general consumers and the sales numbers back it up. These things come from the hardcore Apple enthusiasts. They don't like change. They want their 3.5 inch phones (even though small phones don't sell) and they want their 3 device line up (even though a broader lineup helps sell more devices). If Apple listened to the vocal minority of their fans, they would be bankrupt by now.
