The MacBook Air is once again the benchmark by which other laptops will be measured

I want to pay a little more attention to one point Chaim Gartenberg made when writing about the importance of these computers:The most exciting — or frightening, if you’re a traditional PC chip company — part of Apple’s new chips is that the M1 is just the starting point. Imagine what Apple’s laptops might do if the company can replicate that success on its high-end laptops and desktops or after a few more years of maturation for the M-series lineup.It’s not difficult to divine the future of Intel and even Qualcomm’s roadmap — they are consistent (and consistently dull) in their year-over-year improvements. Different people could count differently, but I think there are eight distinct Macs that Apple sells: the Air, the entry level 13-inch MacBook Pro, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, the Mac mini, the iMac (two sizes on this one), the iMac Pro, and the Mac Pro.I’m listing them all out to make a point: if you’re familiar with Macs, you have a sort of inherent idea of what those computers are, relative to each other. Nick Statt:The new App Store Small Business Program, as it’s called, will allow any developer who earns less than $1 million in annual sales per year from all of their apps to qualify for a reduced App Store cut of 15 percent, half of Apple’s standard 30 percent fee, on all paid app revenue and in-app purchases.┏ Apple’s biggest App Store critics are not impressed with its new fee cut for small developers. Quite a day for web apps!Google says it has been building a progressive web app version of Stadia that will run in the mobile version of Apple’s Safari browser, similar to how Microsoft intends to deliver its competing xCloud service on iOS sometime next year. Sean Hollister makes a good case for the entry-level GPUs being better than you might expect.┏ Google Stadia survived a year, but its future depends on games like Cyberpunk 2077. It’s made only harder by the launch of next-gen consoles from Microsoft and Sony, with the Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation 5 offering many of the same (and in some cases, better) load times and performance benefits Stadia touted last year without any of the compromises of using a streaming platform.┏ Google Pay’s massive relaunch makes it an all-encompassing money app. Even though encryption is only beginning to roll out to people who sign up for the public beta for Android Messages, turning on encryption for RCS is a very big deal.┏ Amazon announces upgraded Echo Frames smart glasses as it opens availability to everyone.┏ Intel’s new laptop is designed to help small companies take on HP and Dell.