Those disturbingly happy articles should really be titled something like "the openness of the PC is about to end forever" --- because that was likely the end-goal all along.
These new machines are not PCs. It's not out of the question for some company to build a new BIOS-architecture machine in the future, though it will probably eventually require sourcing x86 chips from vendors other than the Big Two as crypto keys will probably be required to even boot the chip if they aren't already.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/intel-to-kill-off-th...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/intel-were-ending-all-legacy-b...