I don't think this is what makes Apple jump ahead of the competition. M-series is a low-wattage SOC.

I recently bought a lunar lake laptop, which is a similar design but x86. I'm easily getting 12+ hours on Linux and performance is superb. Turns out all it takes is putting everything on the chip and then running it at 15 watts. Which, I think, also proves you do NOT need ARM for such low wattage with acceptable performance. You just need really new production lines and the right chip design.