And they don't need to. There's hardware available that works just as well, the buzzy marketing space around M1 is just that: marketing. Nobody needs this.
As much as I do not really care about apple machines (and I neither own neither plan to own in the near future) it seems that the M1 laptops have a significant advantage in power consumption over amd64 laptops. And as a linux user, this is only gets worst with linux. I agree however that from a performance perspective the M1 seems to be competitive but not much faster than existing amd64 products.
On a form factor similar to a Macbook Air? I'm sure it is possible to have 24h+ battery life on a Linux laptop; if you ignore the other parameters (battery size and performance) it is meaningless.
thin, no fans, normal keyboard. I have not held a macbook air so I can't comment on weight. The battery size doesn't matter, only how long it lasts while using it :)