I don't think APM is misleading. Your basic assumption is that computers are better at StarCraft than humans. The whole point of these experiments is to prove that. Or to see whether we are advanced enough to build such a computer.
The whole point of these APM shenanigans is to make sure that the competition is about intelligence, not interface. Even without any fancy technology at all, the computer starts out with a massive interface advantage. An API is just better that a screen and a mouse. It would be really cool if we could hook up a human brain to SC2, to give the human the same interface, but we can't. So we go the other way and limit the AI's Interface.
The final step in that would be to give the AI the same interface as the human, i.e. point a camera at the screen and connect a robotic arm to the mouse. But that just creates computer vision and robotics challenges, which are probably seen as a distraction at the moment.
But such a robotic arm would definitely have a limited APM, so the current approximations don't seem to bad to me.
The whole point of these APM shenanigans is to make sure that the competition is about intelligence, not interface. Even without any fancy technology at all, the computer starts out with a massive interface advantage. An API is just better that a screen and a mouse. It would be really cool if we could hook up a human brain to SC2, to give the human the same interface, but we can't. So we go the other way and limit the AI's Interface.
The final step in that would be to give the AI the same interface as the human, i.e. point a camera at the screen and connect a robotic arm to the mouse. But that just creates computer vision and robotics challenges, which are probably seen as a distraction at the moment.
But such a robotic arm would definitely have a limited APM, so the current approximations don't seem to bad to me.