Apple Silicon was only an improvement in battery life. AMD and Intel still made more powerful processors coupled with Nvidia and AMD GPUs that blew Apple Silicon out of the water. Also depends what you consider successful since Macbooks are still a small fraction of the laptop market.

Airpods being dominant is something from many years ago. Sony, Bose, even Samsung caught up quickly and offer much better integration since half the features are locked to iPhone only. Airpods were early to market and assisted by forcing users to buy them since their phones no longer had headphone jacks. Which boosts their word of mouth marketing.