They shouldn't be offering 256GB on the base model given the price rise (arguably at all, even on the M1 MBA). Let alone making it slower by default.

This is the type of response of acceptance I totally disagree with. You're happy that Apple are selling you a throttled base revision but Apple is actually taking the piss. The ability to double the SSD capacity by adding the missing chip would only cost Apple three bucks. It's intentional hobbling of the platform. That they do the same dirty trick with the so called MacBook Pro is shameful. The MBP is not a Professional machine.

When you can buy a DELL with 6x the SSD speed you realize that Apple SSD solutions a dumpster fire.

You definitely will on an 8GB machine under memory pressure. Which happens more often than people imagine if you are using a number of Electron Apps.

Been using an M2 Pro for a week (16GB RAM, 256GB SSD), absolutely cannot tell. Large dependency installs (node, go, c++, python) are insanely fast, docker builds are fast, everything is just fast.