Why? The MacBooks aren't competing against their previous iterations (since you can't buy them anymore), but against their non-Apple competition.

When you'll be buying a new laptop, you won't be choosing between a 2018 MacBook and a 2021 MacBook, but between 2021 MacBook and offerings from Lenovo, Dell, Microsoft and others.

Well, I think the decision is a little more complicated.

If you are upgrading, OS inertia may prevent you from choosing a machine that doesn't run the OS you're currently on. So a lot of Windows users may not even consider a Mac, and vice versa.

The latest 13" x86 MacBook Pro released less than 1 year ago and is still for sale.

There's a Macbook Pro 16" that you cannot get with a M1 Processor. That's the one I have.

So yes, you can compare to the current gen and would be choosing between that.

You sure can still buy the old ones.

I suspect you will be able to for another year or so. See comment from me elsewhere on this thread for my reasoning.

Well, yes, if you look back so to say, you can put an older Intel MBP and a new one with M1 side by side and get a comparison showing the latter fares better. But when you look into the future, if you are a customer considering a purchase of a new laptop with Apple Silicon, they would benefit from a comparison with the top Zen 3 offerins, even though such a comparison might be much trickier than the one with Intel.

The new Zen 3 offerings are indeed tantalizing. Even if you never buy an Apple Silicon Mac, the kick in the pants it has no doubt delivered to both Intel and AMD benefits all of us.

And as a friend keeps reminding me, this is their cheapest entry level processor :)