The linked website for this discussion is marketing.
Mostly, it's ironic that Apple is comparing themselves to a company that they want so desperately to escape. And, once you do run the math on their actual year-over-year improvements, it's not that different from AMD or Intel. And Apple is increasing their power consumption to hit those numbers. It's quite literally square one in a sense, just with a different CPU architecture and a different manufacturer.
They are selling to professionals, but probably not ones that speak your exact language. Having a solid understanding of hardware puts you into a small small minority of professionals that this was meant to be for. This is the same for Intel and AMD marketing: hardcore tech people are not the target audience for this material.
Professional:
1. relating to or belonging to a profession.
2. engaged in a specified activity as one's main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
"Professional" writers using a word processor might not understand what "hardware-accelerated H.264" means, yet there it is on their website under Air! Are those for "hardcore tech" people?
You're referencing marketing material. All marketing material is to sell the product, usually to a somewhat targeted subset of the buyers. Looking at their sales, and around any office, their marketing, and "Pro" products, appear to be extremely appealing to a large range of professional users. I think this shows that their "Pro" label is appropriate. I'm having trouble understanding why you think it isn't appropriate.
Do you have a notebook in mind that is worthy of a "Pro" label, so I can see what you're baseline is?
Should they buy the Air, or pay the premium for the Pro? After all, they're "hardcore tech" people.
Do you have an example of a notebook where a "Pro" label would be appropriate, as an example, so I can understand where you're coming from?
I do all compiling and heavy testing on servers, so the laptop is just for SSH, analysis software, and regular desktop stuff, for which it is fast enough.
Apple is now facing the same struggle as AMD and Intel. They have a generational processor product that relies on new silicon to get faster, and they can't get new silicon fast enough. The M2 was basically just a wattage-bump of the M1, and looking at the performance increase/processor count, I'm inclined to call the Pro/Max the same thing. You're telling me you added 2 cores to a 10 core system for a 20% performance increase? Wow, color me surprised.
The whole thing feels like Apple's lack of humility here is biting them in the ass. There's nothing wrong with paving your own path in the tech industry, but mocking your competitors is not what a reasonably-educated analyst does. It's what someone in marketing does.