Slightly misleading yes, but we're talking about $30 on phones that cost nearly a $1000. Accusing Apple of playing "marketing games" with carriers is a bit of a stretch.
That's assuming everyone buys the cheaper version with no memory upgrades. Apple's average sales price is significantly higher than that. This seems marginal.
If you give companies an inch on stuff like this, they'll take a mile. There's no legitimate reason they should be able to play this kind of pricing game, regardless of the relative price increase.
For the record, it's not on the Pro models — just on the cheaper models. They're not "nearly a $1,000", and the fact that they're only doing it on some models shows what an artificial giveaway this is. There is no reason for it other than economics: they think they can get an extra few bucks out of these models, but they don't think they can raise the price even higher on the Pro models.
