The sibling comment has the correct, more detailed answer, but the high-level answer is that the M-series chips are SoCs with all the RAM on-die. That lets you push way more data than you can over a bus out to socketed memory.
The tradeoff is that it's non-upgradeable, but (contra some people who claim this is only a cash-grab by Apple to prevent RAM upgrades) it's worth it for the bandwidth.
Apple had soldered DDR ram for a long time that was no faster than any other laptop. It's only with the Apple Silicon M1 that it started being notably higher bandwidth.
> The tradeoff is that it's non-upgradeable, but (contra some people who claim this is only a cash-grab by Apple to prevent RAM upgrades) it's worth it for the bandwidth.
That, and if you come at it from the phone / tablet or even laptop angle: most people are quite ok just buying their computing devices pre-assembled and not worrying about upgrading them. You just buy a new one when the old one fails or you want an upgrade.
Similar to how cars these days are harder to repair for the layman, but they also need much less maintenance. The guy who was always tinkering away with his car in old American sitcoms wasn't just a trope, he was truth-in-television. Approximately no one has to do that anymore with modern cars.
The memory is in-package, not on-die - on-die would mean that the DRAM is being manufactured on the same 1-2-3-4-whatever nanometer process - DDR is much larger.
The tradeoff is that it's non-upgradeable, but (contra some people who claim this is only a cash-grab by Apple to prevent RAM upgrades) it's worth it for the bandwidth.