They could have been optimizing for lower power consumption rather than more compute power. For example, the next iPhone chip will likely not be the most powerful when it comes to compute, even if it beats the other iPhone chips.

And that's exactly why I put the word "almost" in the sentence!

Maybe currently, but they are only on their second generation of laptop chips.

I guess going forward the current A-series chip will be lower power/performance than any reasonably recent M-series chip (given the power envelope difference).