PowerPC was developed by IBM. Apple got involved when Motorola could not deliver a faster 68k to beat Intel's 486 which was passing 50MHz. So they joined IBM along with Motorola and formed the AIM alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) to build better processors.

> The M1 is the first time since PowerPC they took a risk.

There's little to no risc (buh-dum-tish) in moving to Arm these days. It's a well supported and understood architecture and found everywhere.

> I really want a linux powered ARM workstation but Apple aren't going to make that.

Apple has the power to steer its own ecosystem. When AMD was working on its Arm A series server processors I kept thinking "This sounds like a backwards approach destined to fail. Why not start by making a performant Arm SoC with 2-4 cores and GPU with a TDP of 10-20W? Target it at consoles/tv/laptops/desktop computing and jump start the desktop Arm market which will naturally lead to demand for Arm servers." The Idea was an Arm SoC that could fill the gap between low power/performance Arm SoC's for mobile/embedded and the power hungry yet performant x86 chips. Basically an AMD version of the M1. That could have really changed things but the big issue AMD would face is where's the Arm Desktop software ecosystem? That's why Apple can take these "risks", they have full control over the whole stack.

The 6502 was introduced at Wescon in September 1975.

Apple I was out in April 1976. That's seven months.

The KIM1, a board made by MOS to demonstrate their 6502 chip, was also released in April 1976. Even they didn't beat Apple to it.

Commodore Pet was December 1977. Rockwell AIM65 was 1978. Acorn System 1 was March 1979. Atari 400 was November 1979

In short: I don't know what the heck you're talking about.

Similarly, the Lisa was a very early 68000 machine. The Amiga and Atari ST were years after the Lisa and Mac. Only very expensive workstations from HP, Apollo and Sun were before the Apple Lisa.