> fixed-length instructions seem really nice when you're building little baby computers, but if you're building a really big computer, to predict or to figure out where all the instructions are, it isn't dominating the die. So it doesn't matter that much.

The notebooks of TFA aren't really big computers.

they are. By "small" here, we're referring to the Core size, not the machine size. i.e. an in order, dual issue cpu is small, but a M1 chip is massive.