Hard disagree, the more you look at it, the more this can be described as "a product to convince people that discuss technology online that this is a product for tons of people". Most people need HDMI more than they need record-matching single-thread performance. Most people need more RAM because almost all they do is web-based and not MacOS native. Most people need I/O because they have mice, weird peripherals, and tons of usb drives, mostly USB-A.

That said, it's a magnificent second or third device for the tech elite that's already committed to the Apple ecosystem (having nothing on-device, whose peripherals and I/O needs are covered by more general-purpose computers) and who will absolutely brag that the performance of this lets them do lots of coding (using it as a metric for what a good computer is, in their eyes). Strangely both things can be true at the same time!