I think this gets lost in the fray between the "omg this is magic" and then the Apple haters. The M1 is a very good chip. Apple has hired an amazing team and resourced them well. But from a pure hardware perspective, the M1 is quite evolutionary. However the whole Apple Silicon experience is revolutionary and magical due to the tight software pairing.

Both teams deserve huge praise for the tight coordination and unreal execution.

I think this is part of the reason where there are so many people trying to find reasons to downplay it: humans love the idea of “one weird trick” which makes a huge difference and we sometimes find those in tech but rarely for mature fields like CPU design. For many people, this is unsatisfying like asking an athlete their secret, and getting a response like “eat well, train a lot, don't give up” with nary a shortcut in sight.