Apple released the M2 iPad Airs in May 2024. So it was the better part of a year before Apple replaced them with the M3 iPad Airs.
If it's "not fair" to release new and improved products, we would never have new and improved products. There would be no such thing as a M2 iPad Air or a M3 iPad Air – either of which have processing power that greatly exceeds that of the Apple ][ that Apple released in April 1977.
That machine had an 8-bit single-core MOS Technology 6502 processor running at 1 MHz (not GHz). It typically had 16 – 48 KB (not MB, not GB) of RAM. Want to store something for later? Many of the people who owned the Apple ][ did not have hard disks or floppy disks and stored data on cassette tapes using slow tape recorders!
But hey, it wouldn't be "fair" to the people who bought the Apple ][ to ever come out with something like the M2 iPad Air, right? An iPad whose specifications blow that old Apple ][ away in so many ways it's not even funny …