Just my speculation, but rather than “lowering the specs“, I think they’re positioning themselves to release a “budget” option in the $800 range with a 4k scree

Just my speculation, but rather than “lowering the specs“, I think they’re positioning themselves to release a “budget” option in the $800 range with a 4k screen, which will probably match performance with the low end intel iMac. Matching encoding speeds with Apple Silicon is probably an easier task, since they can create on-chip, hardware accelerated encoders, which exist on iPhones already.