You're probably right. If Intel had said (internally): "Screw it. Let's just extend x86. It's not like we have anything to fear from AMD." You'd probably have had it a bit earlier. (Though it's not like most buyers of x86-based systems were screaming for 64-bit until into the 2000s anyway so it's not clear that there would have been a big push to pull the timeframes in by much.)
And Intel would probably have still pushed too hard on frequency and ILP--because Microsoft if a senior Intel I exec I knew who isn't prone to lying is to be believed.
Also, yeah. Apple Silicon is great but it's not new paradigm great. If anything, the revolution has been in heterogeneous computing (esp. GPUs to date). And a lot of that has been partly enabled by open source.
Again, if no one (including giants like Apple and NVIDIA) has invented new ways to run code in the last 30 years either, it seems like wishful thinking to argue that Intel would have somehow done it had they been less wrong about VLIW.