> For example on the M1, certain very common operations for macOS apps, like freeing Objective C pointers, which happens millions of time per second, are optimized at the hardware level

I mean, this is _kind_ of true, but it's not unique to Objective C, the M1, or even particularly intentional. The _ARM_ memory model is more conducive to reference counting in general than the x86 one. Nothing special about Apple's chip in that respect, tho.