

Apple was part of the founding of the current version of ARM and produced the first consumer mobile ARM device. As a result they uniquely have extreme latitude to use the ARM core however they want. There are differences to the hardware as well as the instruction set. The combined graphics memory and ram for instance.
I’m not sure why you thought my comment was defensive. It wasn’t in disagreement with you. I was pointing out that legally, because of Apple’s founder status, they have more rights to modify the ARM core than, for instance, Qualcomm or Samsung.
As far as I know both all of the ARM chips that Apple makes are heavily modified to the point that it’s never been totally clear if it is a superset or not.