The average person doesn't know or care about M1. If you are on HN, you are an enthusiast ("Pro" in Apple parlance). To everyone else, Apple just made their already pretty quiet and fast laptops, quieter and faster.
I think the article is right that the world is waiting to see if Apple's new bottom-up design org can deliver a new category-owning product. So far, they've proven that they can improve the legacy suite of products in meaningful ways and aren't afraid to roll back poor past decisions. I think the author is probably right that Apple's services org is getting much more attention than in the past.
When everything flows downwards, you get a singular vision, blind spots included. I think we saw that with Ive. This was true with Jobs' Macintosh too, before Ive joined. Today, we have fewer blind spots, but we haven't seen evidence that there are leaders willing to take big swings into new categories. Time will tell...