I think low compute is actually a pretty interesting niche. By throwing all that compute at people, Apple all but guarantees the quality of software (VSCode extensions, web sites, etc) will be garbage.

I think the next major OS innovation will come from a company focused on architecture, design, and software efficiency over computing resources and device size.

Well, I am not an Apple devotee, either; moreover, my impression has been that, unlike IBM or Microsoft or Sun, neither Apple itself nor any of its products have so far made any impact on my life or work whatsoever. I may well be wrong, but I am not even sure if anything was much different had Apple never existed in the first place.

In what way? It is certainly another step forward in terms of battery life, but it's incremental and doesn't fundamentally change how people use laptops. Don't really think it changes the market either. People with Macs will upgrade eventually and people that don't use Macs now are unlikely to change because of it.