I’m completely baffled by this comment. Itanium is dead, never made it to the desktop and so has zero chance and we have an actual mass market Arm desktop available - and apparently selling very well.
I think they were arguing that it showed more promise at the time. I disagree though, I think it was simply too over-priced for the mainstream. M1 is very competitive both performance-wise and price-wise. I don’t think it will unseat the reigning champ x86 but do see them living side-by-side for a long time.
Just as it did with Itanium.
Just as it did with PowerPC.
Just as it did with MIPS.
Just as it did with Transmeta.
Just as it did with ARM last time ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes )
The year of replacing the x86 architecture never arrives ...
Frankly, I would probably give Itanium the best odds (Intel + Microsoft behind it), then Alpha (Microsoft behind it).