Is the Neo basically a decoy product to make the MacBook Air M5 look like a better deal?

I can’t help but feel like the Neo might function as a decoy product in Apple’s pricing ladder.

By putting the Neo at the bottom of the lineup, Apple pushed the base MacBook Air up to $1099 while still making it look like the “better value” step up. The jump to 512GB base storage almost feels like part of that psychology too adding relatively cheap NAND that costs Apple $2-$3 while making the higher price feel justified or making consumers feel like Apple is somehow benevolent that they are offering 512GB of storage whilst Windows laptops at a similar price point have been for years. They basically disguised their price increase on the base model M5 Air as a "price cut".

Obviously Apple’s pricing decisions are driven by a lot of factors, but it made me wonder if the Neo is also serving a positioning role in the lineup.

One unintended side effect I’ve been wondering about is whether this could also reduce MacBook Air sales if some buyers go for the cheaper Neo instead. The inadvertent side effect of this will be less Macbook Air sales. There will be a dearth of second-hand Macbook Airs on the used market so the prices will be artificially propped up versus how they were before due to a lower supply on the second-hand market.

Curious what everyone else thinks; is the Neo basically acting as a hook to make the Air look like the smart buy, or am I overthinking Apple’s pricing strategy?