The M1 Pro is faster. The M1 MAX is an M1, but with new control software which makes it keep crashing.

You missed the joke they were making about the Boeing 737 MAX.

I assume it was a reference to the 737 Max..

Not to mention in casual conversation when talking about the M1 Max and people think you’re talking about the more general “M1 Macs”.

In isolation, maybe. But it follows the naming convention of their iPhones models:

base model < pro model < pro max model

but it's not M1 Pro and M1 Pro Max (which would be arguably better than what they did)

It's M1 Pro and M1 Max.

It would be odd for me if "Max" were not the "maximum".

That's still a bad naming convention. It won't be the maximum forever.

But it will the the max M1 forever. When M2 comes around, that's a different class.

It appears that M1 Max itself comes in 24-core and 32-core GPU variants. So I guess some M1 Max chips are more maximum than other M1 Max chips.

Well I'm not necessarily a fan of the naming but assuming Max stands for maximum, it's pretty clearly the best one. The one you get if you want to max it out. But they should've called it Pro Max for consistency with the iPhones...