what makes Apple's M1 so good?

By all reports, Apple has done something miraculous with its M1 chip - like every chip maker is doing as good of a job as it can, and then Apple is like Homer as the new manager at the Bond-ish Villain's Nuclear Plant:

Here's a good article going into how the M1 stands out.

Its interesting that Apple's secret sauce is System-on-a-Chip, and intense specialization (I mean even the earliest iPhone blew other devices out of the water in terms of responsiveness, in part because of custom scrolling hardware. At the time I thought about the old Amiga and Atari ST, and how much more interesting game machines they were than the PC, it took the PC years to catch up with sound and graphic cards - its own custom hardware, but less well-integrated) But that specialization seems to be at cross-purposes to how Apple is using the same chip family for all devices: from Watches through Phones and iPads and Macs.

Cool times for Apple fans!