This is a fair point, but it's certainly a very peculiar - and somewhat offputting - dynamic where the bottom of the range outperforms the top end.

These machines are Apple’s volume in Macs. The MacBook Air, in particular. And today, Apple gets to tout their best-seller is dramatically faster and has dramatically better battery life.

Makes marketing sense to me.

It also gives them a nice profit win since they're not paying Intel anything anymore on their most popular Macs.

I don’t think it will make a huge difference for their profits unless the (modest for the mini, significant for the 13” MBP, nonexistent for the MBA) price cuts significantly move more volume. Apple is notorious for sticking to consistent profit margins and stuffing in as much value as they can to meet their target price points. I would expect that their margins on the MBA are ~20-25%, and ~30% on the rest of the Mac line, just as it’s been since at least the original iMac.

Yes, but that a temporary situation and likely to be resolved in 6-12 months.

Some customers will still choose the older models due to various concerns. -Some customers will hold off out of fear of incompatible software. -Others will hold off because they need to run boot camp or x86 VMs. -Others will need extra RAM or Ports.

Others will have no such concerns and will embrace the new.

The first MacBook Pro immediately outperformed the Power Mac G5.