> Note that AMD has been beating Apple on single core performance since day 1

On EEMBC CoreMark. But CoreMark is not a meaningful benchmark outside of embedded devices.

From your linked article: "CoreMark focuses solely on the core pipeline functions of a CPU, including basic read/write, integer, and control operations. This specifically avoids most effects of system differences in memory, I/O, and so forth."

Memory & I/O are integral to CPU design, which is why AMD's own marketing material emphasizes it so much.

So you decide to cherry pick one single thread benchmark out of many to decide that AMD wins in single thread lol. In most benchmark, m1 is much faster than 4800u in ST.

Power usage follows directly from the 5nm process.

It's a factor, but not the only one.

It also depends on the foundary and the exact process and of course the CPU design.

In which case will make a very nice marketing speech for AMD

Apple just entered an extremely competitive market with the M1, which is good because we win if this market is more competitive.

They didn't enter any market they weren't already in. They've been selling laptops and sff desktops for years and they certainly haven't and aren't going to started selling CPUs. Not to say that the competition isn't good, they just haven't entered into any new markets.