It'd only be $100 more if it were $1399
Yeah I know what you're saying, I guess it's just annoying that they force the 512GB. I'd rather they offered it as 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD standard so that I could just upgrade the RAM to 16GB, but of course we can't do thaaaat because then there's too large a price gap with the M3 Pro MBP, which (most likely) a lot of people don't need.
Kinda reminds me of a lot of the suit shops here in Japan. They ostensibly show a "from XX price" in the window but when you go inside to see what they have, that price only applies to the absolute garbage tier suits that nobody would ever want to buy or wear.
After (not) much deliberation, think I'll just pick up an M1 Macbook Pro 14 inch as originally planned. Silly me for expecting them to offer anything genuinely good price/performance-wise.