Definitely what the author means:
>There’s nothing that happens when you adjust the contrast or white balance in editing software that the camera hasn’t done under the hood. The edited image isn’t “faker” then the original: they are different renditions of the same data.
That's not how I read it. As in, this is an incidental comment. But the unprocessed version is the raw values from the sensors visible in the first picture, the processed are both the camera photo and his attempt at the end.