> How are Apple store employees/nerds going to explain this product line bifurcation?
I really doubt most Apple customers care. A few do, but they've long been the minority.
Yeah; but the ones that don’t care about the details often ask someone “which one should I buy?”
Currently, for MacBooks, the answer is “the small one doesn’t have a fan, so for sustained work like games or iMovie it is slower. However, it is smaller, lighter, quieter and cheaper”.
In the days of Intel modems, advising against buying from AT&T and T-Mobile was sound, as the performance was worse than a Qualcomm model.