We've come a long ways from insidious-but-clear "I'm a Mac" ads, to groanworthy-and-confusing "86x faster performance" promotional metrics.

To be fair: They have the internal metrics on how many people are still on Intel-based Macs, and its very possible that this influences the types of comparisons they choose to make. There's still so many Intel macs out there.

The targeted snark isn't the issue. The issue is that even well-informed techies ignore Apple's metrics until they can read the fine-print. And the average Intel Mac owner probably doesn't even know what "x86" means. The target audience is almost nobody.

I don't think it's meant to be a marketing point, just an in-joke. Like you said, the target audience is quite small.