Yes, PA micro was the place where the "last of Mahicans" of US chip industry were.

>Also, apple have pursued 2 (very) fast cores whereas other chips often have 4.

Yes, because people into app development are as web developers, and the word "mutex" gives most of them a panic attack.

Android style java should've been more multi-threading friendly, but that does nothing about people not utilising them.

> this iteration apple have beaten almost everyone else to 7nm, so the difference is much more dramatic.

Yes. I remember how Mediatek beaten Apple to 10nm thanks to them being a Taiwanese company, but nevertheless "ruined it all" with their helio x30's design being designed with more marketing considerations than engineering ones. Their marketing guys couldn't wait to announce "hey we have 2 more cores than you Qualcomm!"