[cutemonster]

> how hard Intel about-faced with Alder Lake and took Apple to the cleaners with a more bloated ISA, decidedly worse silicon

I don't understand. About-faced and take to the cleaners? (Not a native speaker)

[smoldesu]

Ah, that's fine.

About-face is a military-derived term that means "to turn around quickly", as if commanded to.

"take to the cleaners" is a phrase usually used in sports that describes one team completely defeating another in one game/instance.

Hope that helps :p