Except sadly it is not using M.
My first Mac was a Mac - ie the first Mac. 128k of memory and $1000 (with the student discount!) in 1994. I've had every architecture of Mac since then - except for M. This one might just have inspired me to try a Mac again - if it had an M.
The M-series is just marketing. They're just the A-series with more cores and IO. Apple has one family of CPUs, but they give them different names.
They dont need to use an M series. The chip they are using isn't far off (spec wise) a base M4. It's single threaded performance is damn good.
's/in 1994/in 1984/', perhaps?