To be fair, this kind of dominance is not unprecedented. Intel was even further ahead in the early 2000's. Every new competitor process was further behind the leading edge and not closer. TSMC started launching half nodes like 28nm just to have something in the market that would sell.

But then you started to see the cracks. New competitors would launch new products with very slightly better metrics than Intel's older stuff, just to be, heh, meep-meeped at the next press conference. But the overlap was real, if small. And it grew over time until everyone looked up around the 5nm node and realized Intel had lost.

That's where we are right now with Apple. "Funny in a way", sure. But history says this is more likely to be the beginning of the end. Everything goes in cycles.