I agree with you on all of this, except that I don't think this article really relies on Magical ARM ISA Performance Elves. All it's saying is that the counter-

I agree with you on all of this, except that I don't think this article really relies on Magical ARM ISA Performance Elves. All it's saying is that the counter-theory ("Magical Intel Process Mastery Performance Elves") kept getting trotted out for years as a way that Intel would be able to get past ARM dominance, and never came true.