Well, Apple has managed to move all the way down to a 5nm process while Intel still hasn't made it past 14nm. AFAIK that's the largest limiting factor for Intel. I can't speak to why they have been stuck there for so long.
There's a reason the only laptops getting 10nm are low-quantity premium laptops.
There was a youtube video where the guy used a scanning electron microscope to compare gate sizes between 14nm intel and 7nm AMD and both were basically the exact same size.
The conclusion was that the term is useful only to compare a single companies product line against other offerings in that line (eg comparing Intel's 14nm to Intel's 20nm makes sense but comparing Intel to AMD based on node size is meaningless).
Semiconductor manufacturer has been able to use refractive optics (lenses) for decades and decades. The biggest change until now was to immersion lithography as we started getting into UV. Now we're into EUV (extreme UV). Lenses no longer work, everything has to be done with reflective optics (and even then the mirrors get ablated over time). It's the biggest single change in lithography we've seen and Intel still hasn't been able to pull it off in volume.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-announces-delay-to-7...
Apple is getting performance that matches the best of Intel has while beating the power draw of basically all they have.
And it's not just the CPU. The built in GPU of the MBA is surprisingly powerful, and the neural engine is beyond what Intel has.
Yes, Intel needs to get their chip fab back on track, but I also think they have issues with their chip designs (and perhaps something larger with x86).