Apple has a practice in the last decade or so, of bumping its older products into a lower price-point alongside the newer hardware. This is a win for everyone as near as I can tell - The lower priced devices bring more people in. Apple gets to keep using existing tooling for manufacturer. Owners of these products from their initial release can reasonably expect longer support.
Also, tangentially and not at all seriously: If you want to see messy, confusing product lines from Apple allow me to introduce you to a little thing called "Performa"
For iPad alone there are 6 iPad versions now. And 4 Apple Pencils.
It's already on Performa level.
Similar things happen to iPhone (4 overlapping nearly identical models every year for a total of 7 currently being sold) and Macbooks (any number of models any given year, they are currently selling 5)
I apologize for being pedantic here, but we're nowhere near Performa-level confusion. There were 70 distinct models of Macintosh Performa between 1992 and 1997 when the last Performa was shipped. What is the difference between the Performa 635, 636, 637, and 638... SKUs, I guess?
There was a model of Performa that sold for literally 2 weeks (the Performa 410). Apple sold the same series of computer under different names: The Performa 630, LC 630, and Quadra 630 are all the same machine.
I agree that Apple has a real naming problem (is this an X as in 'ex' or X as in '10'?) but I really don't find the iPad line up to be that confusing. There are 2 sizes of iPad Pro, 2 sizes of iPad Air, an iPad and an iPad mini.
The difference between many of them is about the same as between 635, 636, 637, and 638
And who exactly is iPad aimed at?
Or can you tell me without looking into specs what exactly is the difference between iPad Pro and iPad Air? Or even looking at the specs: https://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/
Apart from the CPU bump they are so similar that you can't help but to think that they didn't include Thunderbolt in regular iPad just to have something to differentiate them.
Funnily enough, Air weighs more and is thicker than the Pro. A great sign of company completely losing all sight of their product lines.
You don't need 6 iPads. You need 3: iPad Mini, iPad Mid, iPad Max. Name them however you want to name them.
Also, tangentially and not at all seriously: If you want to see messy, confusing product lines from Apple allow me to introduce you to a little thing called "Performa"