Trying to ELI5-style compress an answer to 'explain the chip industry' means you have to be very opinionated in a way that's uncomfortable, and the way the ques

Trying to ELI5-style compress an answer to 'explain the chip industry' means you have to be very opinionated in a way that's uncomfortable, and the way the question was framed, part of the answer will sound wrong to you. TL;DR: TSMC bet on a particular manufacturing method (EUV), and it paid off. The company that makes the machines for that method is absurdly backordered. Also, people way overrate how ahead TSMC was/is, there was a halycon moment where Apple went ARM on desktop _and_ had exclusivity on TSMC's best node improvement in years. People were doing Apple's to oranges, ascribing the improvements from the die shrink to Apple's genius / TSMC's manufacturing. For verification dig into Apple community's in-depth reaction to recent M3 release, you'll find the take is generally def. not worth the upgrade if you have M2.