It's not just inflation, the Euro has been getting crushed as decades of negligence by the ECB show up. That's not stopping any time soon and the ECB looks like it will be in the position to either destroy the Euro or destroy the bond market.
He might be being hyperbolic, but the euro is definitely not doing too hot right now - it's gone from $1.18 to the euro a year ago to $1.02.
The Air in the UK is £1,249, up from £999 - a 25% increase.
The EU price is €1,500, up from €1,050 - a 43% increase.
At least some of that has to be explained by the euro dropping ~14% against the dollar. Take away 14% from the EU price and you get €1,290 - pretty close to the UK price.
You just listed a bunch of things which have not changed between the last model and this one, to brush off the new model being much more expensive.
The parsimonious explanation is that the Euro went from 120¢ to 98¢ in the intervening time. I have no opinion on why that happened, I will pretend I don't even know what the ECB is.
Compared to the M1 Macbook Air, the M2 Macbook Air has:
a £50 premium in the UK vs US.
A €200 Euro premium in Ireland (for example) vs US.
So, you are right. Apple raised prices. I suspect exchange rates. It is easier to account for unfavorable exchange rates in new products than in raising prices of existing products.
On Apple.co.uk M1 is listed at £999.00 and M2 at £1,249.00 (respectively € 1,168 and € 1,460, not far from the actual prices in Europe)
The same difference exists in European Apple stores (~+25%).
They simply kept lower prices in US in my opinion, but obviously comparing US prices with non-US prices for a US manufacturer it's not going to work in favor of the non-US market.
