Apple is definitively competent at chip design but the end result won't be leagues ahead. They might be something like 10% ahead in terms of IPC and another 10-20% just because they get early access to 5nm compared to whatever "ancient" process Intel is using.
Everyone seems to think about cost and speed all the time.
I think that's only part of the story, which also needs to include the ability to add features and control the entire feature set across chips on all of their devices.
Encryption, ML, graphics, power management, security, etc. are all things that Apple can now add or remove as needed.
The level of optimization they can do is now well beyond just speed and price.
Right now absolutely everyone else is ahead of Intel in the NM race, with some currently shipping chips two process nodes ahead and several announced chips going so far as being twice as small as Intel's current process node. This is partially why AMD has been able to offer laptop CPUs that rival Intel's desktop offerings for less cost.
