They compared their M-series chips to older Intel Macs for a while, likely to target users who were still on Intel chips. If they released a lower cost iPhone and compared it to a previous gen Android I could see the reasoning for it. It's not deception if it's a valid comparison and people just fail to understand what's being compared.

Now, is it mildly deceptive because all of the companies using incredibly confusing naming conventions for their models? Maybe!

Why are we so quick to call it deception? Their figure is quite clear. They aren't fiddling with the graph or hiding the labels, they are clearly stating which models it compares against. But I agree on the sentiment that the standard practice should be to bench against the latest SOTA models.