It's because their naming conventions have gone out the window.
When it was iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5S you knew where on the product timeline your phone was. Now it's iPad Air, Air 2, 9.7 Pro, 9.7, 12.9 Pro, mini 4. It's all over the place.
When Jobs came back to Apple, there was a similar chaos regarding the Macintosh models. Lots of numbers, letters, and qualifiers, and the purpose of a new model was seldom clear.
The phone is a little unique in that sense. iPads or Macs not disclosing their specific version number is not new. When you got an iPad 3, it just said "iPad".
I'm afraid I must agree. They must be working on a bunch of new things or one huge new thing, trying to find their next big hit, because nothing seems to actually be advancing anymore.
(What's new here, apparently: they dropped the price by $70 and bumped the processor.)
They're consolidating their lineup and dropping the price. The iPad Air is no more. Now there's just an iPad in one size, and an iPad Pro in two sizes. I think the iPad mini is still around but I don't imagine for much longer.
