Holy cow. You could almost say (naively I suppose), "They're almost there!" Of course, who knows if the distance between 600 and 12 is infinitely easier than the distance between 12 and 11. Still ... Progress!
Also from the article: "Conceivably, Maynard said, someone with a clever sieve idea could push this limit as low as 6. But it’s unlikely, he said, that anyone could use these ideas to get all the way down to a prime gap of 2 to prove the twin primes conjecture." So seems like something completely different is needed to actually prove the twin primes conjecture.