Apple always has treated the iPad as a very different platform from the Mac, and the software has quite some differences. The iPad as a tablet still has a lot of differentiation features. Also, the iPad market size is way bigger than the Mac. Finally, as they keep the margins on all the products they sell pretty close to each other, why would they care if people bought a few MacBooks instead of the iPads? Here, more the marketshare vs. PC laptops would be the incentive for Apple to be very competitive on the MacBook price. With the Apple Silicon, no longer a substential part of the device revenue goes to Intel.

One way to avoid cannibalism among products is have the revenue and profits align so you don’t care what people choose. In that sense, the MacBook at 800 is less than a comparable iPad Pro plus magic keyboard-but you’re also locked in to a keyboard and trackpad.

Personally, I always liked the MacBook Air and MacBook form factors but never purchased them. I went for iPads instead and left power use to a MBP or Mac mini. I could see the MacBook being more compelling if it’s the only way to develop, but they’re moving Xcode to the iPad I think down the road...

Or maybe they think of the MBA and MB as legacy formats. That could make them not directly competitive at all and potentially complimentary.

Has Apple ever shown an aversion to cannabilizing itself?

When Jobs first came back, he eliminated every product that put Apple in competition with itself. I feel like that motivation stuck around for a while, though I think it may have been gone even before Jobs’ passing.

That was to simplify the product line. They had multiple consumer “Performa” Macs. They were about to go bankrupt.

Under Jobs they also introduced the iPod Nano and killed the iPod Mini even though it was the best selling iPod.

Of course they introduced the iPhone at the height of the iPods popularity.

The iPad overtook the popularity and revenue of the Mac while he was CEO.

I was not following Apple closely back then, but I heard, that when Steve Jobs came back, the whole product lineup was a mess with many directly competing offerings. The iPad and the MacBook are not such a direct competition. Also, before the iPhone was introduced, but the rumor mills were already running hot, many people doubted that Apple would make a phone which could cannibalize their cash-cow back then, the iPod. Well, they did, they actually placed it in direct competition, and we know how that ended up :).