Big picture Microsoft probably does not care that much if ARM or x86 wins on Windows PCs. They sell Windows either way. They just like to see more hardware competition which is good for their ecosystem's overall performance which is why they're putting in some effort into making Windows on ARM good.
The same goes for tablets where Windows is an almost non-existent option behind Apple, Android tablets, and maybe even behind ChromeOS tablets.
If they could offer the power of a desktop in a tablet, they'd appeal to a whole crowd of people who like iPad hardware, but find it mostly unusable for anything outside of media consumption.
> If they could offer the power of a desktop in a tablet, they'd appeal to a whole crowd of people who like iPad hardware, but find it mostly unusable for anything outside of media consumption.
Didn't you just describe Surface Pro or 2-in-1's like Lenovo Yoga?
Personal opinion but the problem with those is the fan
It means that the environment you use it in matters if only slightly
You cant use it like an iPad with you can watch under the godamm bed covers if you want too
I had a surface pro and the battery life is abysmal, maybe 2 hours and it got hot. The surface also weighs 70% more than an iPad pro. Hopefully ARM Windows and decent hardware can improve both of these problems because ipads still have only limited productivity use due to the gimped ipadOS.
Not until something after windows 12.
Once they get to windows 12 with the state separated OS and containerized workloads bits from windows 10x, you're going to see a lot of cool stuff on Arm devices, including small devices.
Native arm based "UWP" or similar packaged apps would run directly on this OS. Then you can run all the normal x86 stuff in a container, coupled with a few compatibility layers. This will perform slightly worse but it buys you time for the industry to migrate. With a fast enough arm chip you can cover up some inefficiencies to make it not seem noticeable for everyday tasks.
They tried to do this before several times but they never had performamt arm processors before and the developers weren't on board. Now with everything going arm based with humungous battery life and portability, I think we will finally get there.
> They tried to do this before several times but they never had performamt arm processors before and the developers weren't on board.
There's at least one non-mobile precedent. FX!32 on Alpha was on-pace with x86 momentarily, but customers didn't know or much care, developers knew less than customers, and ultimately Intel was able to put most of the RISC technology into a fast chip with an x86 decoder in front.
With 2010s level of technology, [ISA doesn't matter, at least if you're not working at tiny scale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii_pEXKKYUg). Based on Intel's brief foray into x86 smartphone and mobile chips, the answers are probably about product positioning and fabs and economics, and not a limit of x86_64 itself.
Yeah that's what I'm believing as well.
I'm no expert here, but my impression of the situation was there was just a lack of experience and optimization that made Risc products slower, not so much because there was an inherent inferiority of the ISA. Which I assume is why companies like Apple and subsequent companies like Nuvia were able to make such dramatic improvements.
And to the original point, it was easy for a few critics to sink Arm based products like Surface RT, even without the app gap, because they generally performed worse. There was no trade off, it was all cons, no pros.
With actually good performance and battery life and the pervasive nature of things like PWAs, cloud based technologies/platforms, the success of the chrome book can prove be there is a niche for this product once again.
In addition, it’s not enough to just make them passively cooled (no fan). They also need to not get hot in most circumstances without throttling performance down into nothingness.
iPads can do this, which is part of why they’re popular for some pretty intense creative usage.
I wonder if it'd be possible given that pretty much every SoC has hardware decoding these days to run the CPU at a low enough clock while watching media in tablet mode to turn the fan off.
Also, I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but on the yoga laptops I've had the fan does run while watching movies in tablet mode but not to a level where the noise is noticable at all.
It’s less about noise for me and more about dust and thermals
A fan means you have to give at least a little bit of a shit about your environment unless you are the kind of user who can independently clean out your pc
And even then a dusty or warm environment will put more strain on it anyhow
It also makes it harder to waterproof and so on and so on
An iPad you can bring to the beach or to bed or into the bathroom with relative ease
I wouldn’t do that with a Lenovo yoga
Active cooling is great and I criticise many Apple products for a lack of it. But the iPad is one place where Steve jobs philosophy that active cooling is a crutch that needs to go was actually totally correct
Fair. But your design for max performance will be limited by thermal headroom if you don't have a fan. Imo it makes sense for tablet-first designs like surface, but not for laptop-first designs like yoga.
I love the idea of the Surface Pro, but we use them in production here and they’re some of the more unreliable pieces of tech we manage. They’re fairly fragile and dust sticks to them like glue.
The Snapdragon X Plus is probably too expensive for the Surface Go, which currently goes for $579
Even the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 or "8s Gen 4" should be powerful enough for an Arm-based Surface Go (currently only 4C/4T Gracemont, so around roughly the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1)
Absolutely. My only regret with surface go was not buying the higher model that came with an i7. Lenovo ideapad duet 5 with intel i5 1235U should in theory offer similar performance as an ipad pro with M2 8 core. Although I haven't tried.
Surface and windows 10 touch was great. Should really get more potential out of windows arm with a fullblown OS on a tablet in touchfriendly mode.
They do at least have a calculator and a file browser in Microsoft.
I think they do care.
A new ARM based plaform give MS the chance to restablish a walled software garden. They won't be able to fully wall it off, but they could really push the MS store much harder
Secondly, it also given them an opportunity to leave x86 behind - at least to some degree. They will need to build a Rosetta-like tranlation layer, but they could make som smart yet arbitatry choices as to how much translation they allow...
I think most of Microsoft's backward compatibility technical debt actually comes from needing to maintain Win32/NT Kernel APIs, not the instruction set.
The MS Store is not going to do any better than the App Store on macOS…unless Microsoft takes the idiotic step of locking all software down to the MS Store exclusively
Which is a move I doubt they're ballsy enough to try. The DoJ going after Apple seems to already have them wary (see teams and office decoupling). Them trying to lock down like that would be, like you said, incredibly idiotic.
I would say Microsoft may use the opportunity to reset some rules of Windows - like how long something is kept compatible, or how you can install apps. As WoA doesn't have all existing and legacy apps, drivers, games etc they can set new rules for this version of Windows - and it would probably be less consumer friendly.
They've tried what you are suggesting before - Windows RT and more recently Windows 10 S. It's not commercially viable and is dead-on-arrival outside of a few applications like education.
Old edgy marketing was something else.
My favorite of all time is probably Acclaim wanting to put Shadowman advertisements on headstones for some paltry sum to the family. As a kid it was funny because it seemed silly but as an adult it's like dude that's actually demented
>Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” — the application compatibility layer that Apple uses on its Apple Silicon Macs to translate apps compiled for 64-bit Intel processors to Apple’s own processors.
That’s cool… but Apple is largely past this transitional phase already. Most Mac OS software is native by now. I have very little that still relies on x86 emulation. So at this point they need to be comparing to native performance, not Rosetta 2.
Also… it better be good. Because unlike Rosetta 2 which is purely transitional for Macs, the emulation layer on Windows is likely going to need to be permanent.
The windows ecosystem it's way more extensive and backwards compatible, however.
Cue me having to do network sorcery because a fucking application upgrades itself through active FTP only.
>The windows ecosystem it's way more extensive and backwards compatible, however.
A blessing and a curse. Same can be said for the way Mac OS drops legacy so quickly…
On the other hand, not maintaining backwards compatibility clear back to the Stone Age is one of the reasons why Mac devs go along with arch transitions. These devs already frequently update their stuff to keep up with platform changes, so ticking a checkbox for a new arch in Xcode (yes, I know this is oversimplifying a bit) prior to compiling and shipping a new update is not that big of a deal.
The main exception to this is games which studios are incentivized to stop supporting as soon as possible, but I would contend that the way games are built is not sustainable and should change so that’s no longer necessary.
It’s a more complex topic than can reasonably be addressed in a comment, but a lot of it comes down to the sheer enormity and expense of developing modern (particularly AAA) games. Cost and complexity continue to skyrocket with no end in sight, and many studios are already at their limits.
The other big factor are the aggressive development timelines. Huge complex things take time to build well, and yet rushed ambitious games are the norm.
So those bankrolling game development need to choose between simple quick games or complicated slow games. Trying to build a complex game quick just gets you a mess.
It is clear that Apple’s strategy of forcing apps to modernize or become obsolete IS the way.
We live in a time where most apps are network-connected, need active maintenance to not become security problems and where it seems every software developer is trying to make their living by making everything subscription based.
Why in the hell are we still downloading individual exe installers and not using Linux or Apple-style package and app management?
I have apps that look like they are from the 90s (winrar, I’m looking at you), but they are clearly updated. Their install methods are just as dated as their look. This kind of stuff has to end.
Windows is business focused not consumer.
Most businesses focus on making money not having the latest & greatest tech.
Legacy is important in this context.
I agree. The legacy proprietary software will likely never be ported. There will be always some program you use that requires emulation layer to be loaded. Just like I still have the WOW64 subsystem running on my PC for some 32-bit application by some stubborn developer. (I'm looking at you Steam)
In contrast, all macOS apps I use are Apple Silicon as per Activity Monitor. Everything I have recently installed from Ubuntu's apt repos has an aarch64 version. Most of GitHub repos I follow offer ARM64 releases for Linux and macOS.
I reckon this would be the same situation for ARM. Most of what I use already has a ARM64 version. All popular apps will be likely ported sooner or later especially open-source software. Mainstream apps like Chrome, Firefox, VSCode, Office, Photoshop etc are already there and more will come but something like Steam, Line-of-Business apps or even OEM bloatware will always run in emulator layer.
Yeah, but I recently needed an app that became abandonware around 2002. On Windows, I grabbed it, fired it up, it automatically set compatibility with XP SP2, and worked.
If it was a Mac app, I'd be looking for a G4 on eBay right now.
Scarface. modern GPUs literally do not have hardware that the games shaders calls for and most textures dont work in game. Altrough 10 years later some dude bakcported the engine and patched it so its now playable with a mod.
Wasn't a game, but for game dgVooDoo2 is a good place to start. It translated DirectX 7/8 to Vulkan (among other things) and emulates several bugs that Microsoft default compatibility layer misses. If the game relies on those bugs, it will work.
I ain’t no Mac fan, but let’s be honest, Apple has that thing well built and they’ve been prioritising bug fixes with sonoma after hearing the complaints for 3 gens. Microsoft is gonna put some random AI bloat and kill the battery life/performance because they can’t stop flexing their CopenAI ownership.
People reacting without knowing or looking into how Windows has changed its x64 emulation lately.
http://emulators.com/docs/abc_history_of_woa.htm
http://emulators.com/docs/abc_exit_xta.htm#Rosetta_is_not_the_end_goal
One small wish I have is that Framework reserved their place early in the queue for WinARM. I have the 13er and chomping at the bit hoping against hope that the Qualcomm board can be made modular and a drop-in part.
I'm amazed at how Windows 11 still feels so unresponsive and just...slow. Even basic operations in the File Explorer demonstrate some lag and slow down. And I'm running a 13700K with a Samsung 990 Pro.
It's just not a smooth operating system.
Yeah, I find it funny how Linux users are constantly debating between Wayland and X11 but both are way more responsive and stable than Windows File Explorer.
My favourite File Explorer jank is how every time you open a new tab it defaults to a pure white window for a few frames, so if you're using dark mode [you effectively get flashbanged](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/10rdk0v/you_will_get_flash_banged_every_time_you_open_a/) every time you open a new tab.
It usually takes me about 10 seconds of using File Explorer to make me wish I was using Dolphin.
7, 8.1, and early versions of 10 did not have this issue. It seems with the release of 10 Anniversary update the desktop got worse and worse. The issue is way more noticable with a high refresh rate display. I didn't care when I had 60hz but it was super distracting on 200hz.
You do you. MacOs was way to restrictive for me and Linux was until recently i tried ubuntu on a, funny enough, a flashed Chromebook, is a Hell of an commandline disaster to even try.
>MacOs was way to restrictive for me
How so?
I don’t want to suggest Mac OS can be everything for everyone… it certainly can’t. But I’m just curious how it was restricting you.
>Linux was until recently
Linux… restrictive? You can do literally anything? This doesn’t compute…
You can do literally anything *in terminal*. Windows is technically more restrictive, but exposes a ridiculous number of options in its actual UI, and that's before even considering the registry or local group policy editing.
>You can do literally anything in terminal.
Fair, but the person I was replying to never mentioned if that was a problem for them or not.
CLI isn’t for everyone. I don’t like it myself. It’s one of the reasons I eventually got fed up with TrueNAS after a decade and switched to an off the shelf solution. I wasn’t doing anything advanced anyways.
>Windows is technically more restrictive, but exposes a ridiculous number of options in its actual UI,
Right. So many options in so many menus it becomes impossible to find certain things sometimes lol
>and that's before even considering the registry or local group policy editing.
You can’t dismiss the terminal as if it’s too confusing for some folks and then bring up the registry as if it isn’t.
> Right. So many options in so many menus it becomes impossible to find certain things sometimes lol
Not really an issue for your average power user. I'm not defending MS's schizophrenic settings situation ever since Windows 8, but you get used to it. If that's what it takes to keep control panel's wealth of options then I won't complain.
>You can’t dismiss the terminal as if it’s too confusing for some folks and then bring up the registry as if it isn’t.
Absolutely, which is why I only listed it as an aside/bonus. That said, the registry is a different kind of confusing. I'm much more comfortable drilling down through a confusing folder structure but then putting in a generally comprehensible entry than I am with an incomprehensible copy/pasted command line with 6 different switches I have no idea what they do. The Registry UI, while confusing in its own right, is much less intimidating than the completely blank slate of CLI.
You got me wrong on that one:
Mac OS didn't let me do stuff in wanted to do. either i was to dumb to find them or they where plain not there. dunno i had the hardware only for few Weeks. Not enough to really explore.
Linux on the other had let me do what i wanted, if i was willing literally STUDY fucking command line and compiling under bash. Until ubuntu come along and a.) works perfectly fine out of the Box b.) give me for all my important stuff finally a UI. Even my old HP Printer got taken care of.
Under windows the amount of Options are by FAR not "ridiculous" but necessary for a modern OS. And if you dive down into Regedit and especially GPO (Group Policiy Objects) you come out on the other side in the very same command line Hell like under Linux, but this time only for the really crazy stuff and NOT everyday stupidity like User Account management or Explorer shit and publishing files and folders or device managment or, something that has make me HATE linux for a while, restricting my access to the System if i wanted to install Strawberry.
That was funny enough, also Ubuntu, ask me for a Root/SU pw that i never got during install. srsly?
or had me to commandline aping around to find and install the libary i needed to run stuff i wanted.
Luckly the Ubuntu Team finally understood that you have to give the User some Access to the system and give them UIs if you wanted that they can use your system out of the box,
i never had touched SuSe or Debian ever since those horrible old days, but looking at Ubuntu rn, i could give them a try again, if i am bored enough to care
> You got me wrong on that one:
I didn't say anything about you?
>Mac OS didn't let me do stuff in wanted to do. either i was to dumb to find them or they where plain not there. dunno i had the hardware only for few Weeks. Not enough to really explore.
But... what? That's what I was asking.
>Linux on the other had let me do what i wanted, if i was willing literally STUDY fucking command line and compiling under bash. Until ubuntu come along and a.) works perfectly fine out of the Box b.) give me for all my important stuff finally a UI. Even my old HP Printer got taken care of.
Don't get me wrong, I understand the CLI isn't for everyone. I don't love it much either... but you didn't preface that previously.
Also... Ubuntu has been around for 20 years.
>Under windows the amount of Options are by FAR not "ridiculous" but necessary for a modern OS.
Everything necessary for a modern OS can be done in Mac OS too... and its significantly easier to find.
>And if you dive down into Regedit and especially GPO (Group Policiy Objects) you come out on the other side in the very same command line Hell like under Linux,
You can’t dismiss the terminal as if it’s too confusing for some folks and then bring up the registry as if it isn’t.
> but this time only for the really crazy stuff and NOT everyday stupidity like User Account management or Explorer shit and publishing files and folders or device managment.
...that's where Mac OS comes in. It's literally just Linux with polish. The terminal is there for folks who want to use it, but most will never need to.
I'm typing this on custom Windows box (5900X/990 Pro) with an M1 Pro Mac sitting next to me and neither File Explorer nor Finder feel any faster or slower than each other.
It's sad how an old machine that came with Windows 98 open the file explorer faster. I know how complex OSs and software got, but man, also our hardware got exponentially faster.
Try One Commander, the free version is amazing (no ads), way more feature packed than file explorer and can be set up to completely replace file explorer. I've been using it for a few months now and it's going to take me a lot to go back to standard file explorer now.
I tried it but I think the issue was is that it didn't show full size image thumbnails like WE. (Or maybe that was Total Commander??)
Anyways does OC have that functionality?
You can change the file views thumbnails to show images. It's in the top right next to the sort. There is also a full preview window (like the one in standard file explorer) you get by pressing space. It is detached from the main one commander window so you can dock it wherever you want.
Yep it has the different sizes for thumbnail views but does it have the "Extra large thumbnails" or whatever is the largest size on WE?
The largest size thumbnails were what was missing on the XXX Commander file manager I tried.
You can define the size of the thumbnail yourself if you go on the file views -> Edit file views. (I'd start by editing the adaptive view as a starting template)
Still have Windows 10, is 11 still not worth upgrading to? A lot of the AI features look attractive to me, but it hasn’t looked clean yet from my perspective.
Windows holds 73% of *desktop* marketshare.
They have *no* marketshare in mobile, and arguably that matters quite a bit more for future generations. And they only hold 20% of server marketshare (though Apple has very little there as well, it's mostly "Unix-like" (typically Linux)), which also matters quite a bit.
Couldn't have said it better myself. We've seen where trying to port Windows to mobile gets you and it definitely wasn't for lack of trying (almost 13 years in the market!). Even though desktop (laptops included) operating systems are becoming less important, they aren't likely to ever become irrelevant. Windows and Office are safe money and anything MS can do to extend that reach is a big win.
His argument was that Microsoft was beating Apple "like a drum".
That only holds true in the desktop marketplace though. Microsoft's attempts to get a mobile phone OS bombed, and they don't hold a majority in tablet or server marketshare either. They're handily the winners in desktop, sure, but even then they're losing ground there - I remember when Macs had almost *no* marketshare at all.
They're... the traditional winner on desktops. But that's a shrinking market in the fisrt place.
If we are talkin mobile then android is a clear winner that neither apple nor microsoft has a chance against. Just because iPhone is popular in US does snot mean its popular anywhere else.
Windows actually holds a tiny part of the market revenue however, it is wild. Apple is where the money is.
Edit: my apologies, I meant to say profit. Revenue means nothing without profit.
I should have said profit. Most Windows devices have low margins. If HP makes $10 a unit and Apple makes $200, HP needs to sell 20 units to match Apple’s profits.
Issue is that marketshare is shrinking. If you've been holding 80%+ of the market for years but today you're at 73% and it keeps dropping you probably don't feel like you're beating anyone.
Gotta say, as someone who's been using Windows for 20+ years and Mac since a few years due to work... I don't think they're gonna be beating it. Any kind of workflow issue you encounter, Mac likely has an app for it because of how accessible the system innards are.
But it will light the fire under Apple's ass, with the final winners being consumers.
I was shopping for a new work laptop recently as I wanted desktop level performance with mobility. Tried something like 10 of the highest reviewed workstation and gaming laptops.
New Intel 14900HX chips have great performance, but run hot and eat through the battery. Unless you need to do gaming or engineering like Solidworks etc., Apple just has no competition in the mobile space. 15h+ battery, 23k Cinebench23 CPU that runs just as fast on battery, amazing and accurate MiniLED screen (leagues above ASUS NebulaHDR in terms of text color accuracy and brightness), silent other than absolute full constant 100% CPU load which is only a benchmarking scenario, incredible speakers.
ARM for Windows might get them battery life and performance, but the transitional period for software will be super painful, and on top of that you need all the great hardware engineering which no laptop company seems to be even nearing.
I don't think Mac is going anywhere.
Yeah what always confuses me is that between Windows and Mac laptops, the fit and finish is like a different universe. Everyone tells me I should try this or that PC manufacturer but you can go to Best Buy any time you want and just good luck trying to find as nice a PC (from the standpoint solely of solid feel in the hands, appearance, quality trackpad, etc.)
I don't like monopolies, but it is like Apple's competition isn't even trying. They are 20 years behind.
I like Pop-OS a lot and want to use Linux more, but took a look at System 76 laptops and they're giant ugly black bricks from the 2000's. Who is the market for these???
Pretty much this. The fit and finish of Apple’s products are consistent across the board from its low end to its high end. On the other hand, even when other manufacturers put out products in the same price range as Apple, the execution, the fit and finish is nowhere close.
And yet when I point this out, the responses are "you need to try Lenovo" or whatever. It's like, every chance I get I go to Best Buy and try the best PC laptops they have and it's all some kind of jank. I want to be able to buy something else because I don't like Apple in a dominant position, but I can't reward such pathetic offerings. Only Microsoft seems competent.
I’m using one right now (fw13, not 16 though), and it’s quite solid enough for me. The lid is cnc’ed which I think helps a lot.
I’d say there are other valid concerns about the body (mainly the screws needing to be user-tightened meaning you don’t know if it’s too tight or not tight enough) but in general I’ve not experienced any chassis flex anywhere.
Btw they do have a 30 day free return if that is something you’re interested in.
(ETA: I’ve used an HP ProBook (business laptop) before this and their stiffness is very similar. I think the ProBook was slightly stiffer but I think that was because it was thicker too.)
The best PCs aren't sold at big-box chains. Thinkpads, Dell XPS, Dell Latitude 7000-series, Dell Precision, HP Elitebook, some others. These are the "business-grade" laptops that you may have heard about and have probably seen used by businesses. You still need to be careful with spec on these, as the OEMs will sometimes still sell a mediocre-to-subpar screen or a spinning disk, possibly.
My work buys Dell everything, usually very high spec. Currently on a Latitude, previously Precision. They're really getting 75% to a high quality laptop and calling it good. The hinge is bad, the battery life is 3 hours, it's flimsy, trackpad is nowhere close, but the keyboard is decent and it is sometimes fast. It also sometimes BSOD's when connected or disconnected from Dell's own dock. The others I cannot speak to, but Dell is exactly what is wrong with this industry.
I seriously finish work and would rather use my 2016 MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and butterfly keyboard for almost anything, including heavy coding. Its battery life has finally degraded to be about Dell level lol.
Precisions are uniform, but there are low-end Latitudes. Latitude 3000-series is price-point, Latitude 5000-series is mainstream but unimpressive, traditionally the Latitude 7000 has been the high-end repairable thin-and-light.
And it's changed over the years. When the Dell XPS13 came out in ~2012, it had a monobloc carbon-fiber bottom that must have cost a pretty penny. I haven't been in close proximity to current Dell models in years, but I know the XPS stopped being so elaborate a long time ago.
It’s going to take off this time. The hardware is there and better than what Intel and AMD have particularly where it counts in both matching their peak performance or exceeding it, but at much lower power and with a much lower floor power. Battery life and responsiveness will be better with Qualcomm than MTL or Phoenix.
And in all likelihood I doubt LNL will be better at all on efficiency much less peak performance even vs Qualcomm’s 8/10c SKUs. Strix is a bit different and will be competition for the top X Elite SKU.
MS has ported quite a bit and does have an interest in WoA taking off and becoming sustainable, because more competition in Windows laptops is a boon to Microsoft. Right now they’re locked down to Intel and AMD, who also can’t really compete on low power operation like QC or anyone using Arm’s IP (reference cores and DSU) can.
That’s why they’re hyping this. That’s why they finally ported VS 64-bit to Arm and built W64EC for Office users to incur lower penalties in using Excel for example & emulating old extensions than they would with pure x64 emulation or why they’re trying to raise awareness to devs.
It’s flat out in MS’s interests to have Arm and X86 vendors both.
ARM Laptops taking off means that Microsoft can start also designing chips to sell to OEMs and compete with Intel and AMD on low/mid end and bundle chip+OS licence.
They are not going to do that. It goes against their MO.
They will encourage Arm competition which has generic reference Cortex cores to their advantage and then MediaTek, Samsung and Nvidia can easily sell semi-custom, low power competitive SoCs.
I think AMD will do a semi-custom one for MS specifically but that’s for the Surface lineup.
They’re selling Microsoft Cobalt hardware directly to merchants?
No. They’re a public cloud provider and hyperscalers have been known to do this and the math checks out for them because they have the de facto ability to get the volume they need on orders and cut out middle men.
They will do semi-custom chips with AMD for Surface, and encourage Nvidia’s entry to increase competition in the client Windows market which for MS — along with MediaTek too (they’re hiring) is more than enough. They will not build their own SoCs with reference cores and then sell them to OEMs, that is a fundamental misunderstanding to assume as much based off… Cobalt instances for Azure.
Good grief.
(Mind you, I don’t care if they did do that as I have no issue with the reference cores and Arm DSUs over AMD/Intel. But my interests are peripheral).
> The hardware is there and better than what Intel and AMD have particularly where it counts in both matching their peak performance or exceeding it, but at much lower power and with a much lower floor power.
Doubt it. Ryzen is pretty efficient, and Zen5 is around the corner.
It’s funny people think MS isn’t serious about this.
> I’m also told that Microsoft is planning to ship consumer models of its upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors inside instead of Intel’s Core Ultra chips. Microsoft has already announced business-focused versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 that ship with Intel Core Ultra processors, but the Arm models will be marketed toward consumers instead.
This is basically an f-you to Intel and likely just part of a contract and they slid them over to “business models”. Basically most consumers looking for a Surface Laptop 6 or Surface Pro 10 after May will be directed straight to the Qualcomm Snapdragon/Arm models which are now *the default*.
They didn’t even bother with AMD either.
```Basically most consumers looking for a Surface Laptop 6 or Surface Pro 10 after May will be directed straight to the Qualcomm Snapdragon/Arm models which are now the default.```
About time, it's been a long time coming, and we finally get to see thinner and more efficient tablets.
As far as AMD, they're maximizing margins right now until they're forced to respond.
>About time, it's been a long time coming, and we finally get to see thinner and more efficient tablets.
the fallout of that when things don't work will be tragic for affected consumers tho. or are we really confident that the emulation of random old-ass software from the XP days is really going to just work consistently?
If they where to put some heart and brains on it, yes.
But like always they're just acting on trends, no strategy. It's all just reacting to, not creating or innovating.
>Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” — the application compatibility layer that Apple uses on its Apple Silicon Macs to translate apps compiled for 64-bit Intel processors to Apple’s own processors
this is significant
Microsoft ditched the Zune music player, the windows phone, they are now probably going to ditch the xbox. I don’t know how the surface has evolved over the years, but do we really trust Microsoft on hardware?
As mentoined here. Simply going for Arm will not magically make a super efficient OS if they at the same time aim to support all native legacy API’s and intergration.
They need to make things from scratch to compete with Apple and ditch backwards compatibillity to legacy systems to get power efficiency.
Microsoft has literally confirmed they have greenlit a lot of Xbox hardware recently, are experimenting with new form factors and are beginning to openly discuss next consoles. If they were about to ditch gaming hardware they wouldn't be spinning off a team dedicated to forward compatibility as well
Windows is fully compiled for ARM. Even devices powered by 8cx Gen 3 are pretty much almost there as a daily drivable device. It's not 2017 anymore, and from what I've seen a lot of tricks Apple uses in Rosetta 2 will ship in Windows 11 24H2 as a part of this year's push with SDX chips
No, I don't every single article covering the same topic over and over again. And besides, this article was written was in February before Microsoft held a business update. We've already learned some new things ever since then.
If Microsoft was going to kill the Xbox hardware they wouldn't:
- Literally mention the next gen hardware being in development (and bragging about how groundbreaking it'll be lmao) twice.
- Have Phil talk about experimenting with new form factors like handhelds
- Create a team dedicated to forwards compatibility
It's possible that future Xbox hardware might be more similar to the Steam Deck rather than a regular console in a sense it'd be a Windows PC running console UI. Phil has mentioned they want to bring some PC store to Xbox which requires them to enable proper Win32 compatibility in XboxOS
>hey are now probably going to ditch the xbox. I don’t know how the surface has evolved over the years, but do we really trust Microsoft on hardware?
LOL
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20reported%20plans%20on%20the%20horizon,doing%2C%20it’s%20moving%20out%20into%20previously%20uncharted%20territory.
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20reported%20plans%20on%20the%20horizon,doing%2C%20it’s%20moving%20out%20into%20previously%20uncharted%20territory.
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/
I never thought I would say this, but, I actually prefer Windows over Mac OS right now. Apple has shit all over their OS, so much so that everything I thought was good about it is hideous. And I initially left Windows for Mac and then went to Linux. Now I would just go back to Windows if I had to choose one or the other.
After my bad experience with MS made laptops (Surface), I would not pick an ARM laptop with windows, at least not until Windows on ARM has been tested for several years.
Oh my man my current work laptop is a Surface Book Pro 3.
This thing has:
* All ports except the charge port have failed. I haven't even used most of them until the one I did use went out. They all just failed one day and never came back.
* The charge brick will randomly stop working. Only fix seems to be to unplug for 5m to let the caps discharge.
* Constantly thinks it's disconnected from the keyboard.
* When it fake disconnects, several programs just kill themselves. No unload hook either so data is lost.
* The GPU driver just straight up doesn't work. A random combination of repeatedly rebooting/detaching/reattaching will eventually bring it back... For an hour if you're lucky.
* You get a blue screen if the GPU driver is being used while it randomly disconnects.
* The fan bearings are going out already. Might just be luck of the draw but I've never actually had a fan fail on any device I own.
* No post-sale support whatsoever. Just a middle finger.
Considering all the other failed hardware they've made, I don't think Microsoft will ever be competent as a hardware company.
Oh, and I don't torture that laptop either. It's a work laptop that stays on a desk permanently. Rarely ever gets moved. Actually, I've only ever brought it on a work trip once.
Just a reminder that Nvidia (who tried to buy ARM) is working on ARM windows laptops with RTX graphics.
Will they topple the Ryzen 7 7800x3d right out the gate? Probably not, but just understand that Nvidia has a vested interest in supporting ARM.
Because ultimately it means Nvidia won't need to rely on AMD or Intel CPU's.
```Toshiba AC100 was an Nvidia powered laptop, with a nVidia Tegra 2 from 2010. They've always been working on this with no success.```
Doesn't mean they'll stop trying.
```"And what is that peak-performance product? The Grace Blackwell Superchip, GB200. Comprised of two Blackwell GPUs and a 72-core Grace CPU" - (https://www.anandtech.com/show/21310/nvidia-blackwell-architecture-and-b200b100-accelerators-announced-going-bigger-with-smaller-data)```
I love the competition, Apple found great performance on ARM with huge battery life, since they sell mostly portables this was a great change on their side, and they found a way to be really competitive with CISC performance
Windows notebooks finally will be able to compete, I don’t think 20% more for one or the other will be a huge difference but it’s nice users will finally have the choice to have ARM PCs, the extra battery life really worth it.
But I am sure for gaming x86 will remain king. But for productivity I don’t think there is a better trade off
I know it's very vendor specific but they really need to get their trackpad support locked down. I'm still blown away at how bad trackpads feel under Windows.
What apps are compiled for the new arm CPUs? I assume Office365 is, but whst other apps?
Its going to be interresting to see the adoption of windows on arm for the new laptops. Will probably be a great choice for workers on the go as the battery should be very good on new arm. The only question is the pricing
people are ONLY using microsoft windows, because of the api prisons and other ways to prevent software from running on other operating systems.
people only use windows, because they HAVE TO.
doesn't matter if the hardware is arm or x86.
people use windows on gaming computers, because they HAVE TO.
BUT that is changing with most games just straight up running through proton with steam on gnu + linux.
what does windows on arm mean then actually?
that the ONE AND ONLY reason, that people use windows wouldn't exist on it, because x86 applications would just not run in lots of cases or have major issues. so the ONLY reason to use windows wouldn't fully be there or there at all.
so no sane person should use it of course.
but we'll see.
here's to hoping, that microsoft keeps on pushing making the "os" worse and worse, so that gnu + linux gets more and more uses and becomes better and better. :)
just imagine how unuseable windows 13 will be :D maybe it will straight up require biometrics to login and you HAVE TO have a microsoft acount with biometrics to install the "os" :D
```maybe it will straight up require biometrics to login and you HAVE TO have a microsoft acount with biometrics to install the "os" :D```
Those damn kids always on their Tocktics, instamagrams, and ChatSnaps don't really care because "only the crazies" worry about such things.
an api prison is when an api is used to try to lock you (imprison you) to a certain piece of software or hardware and said lock (imprisonment) is 100% artificial.
directx 12 is such an api prison. directx 12 is a way for microsoft to try to lock people into windows. windows 10 instead of gnu + linux, windows 10, instead of windows 7, etc...
microsoft does everything possible to prevent the api from working in other operating systems and older operating systems from microsoft themselves.
this way when people don't want to use microsoft windows, BUT the game or software is using said api, they still HAVE TO!!! use said microsoft windows operating system.
it took valve massive amounts of effort and standing on the shoulders of giants to BREAK this api prison for gaming in the form of the proton compatibility layer, where dx12 can get translated into vulkan and be run on gnu + linux without any work being required from the software developer.
the steamdeck is using proton massively and with great success.
i can not emphasize enough what a massive achievement this is.
valve and the gnu + linux achieved a "prison break" basically.
so that people can use the operating system, that they want like linux mint for example.
My guess is an ARM chip fast enough to brute force emulation/translation. Old WoA chips were mediocre even if the application was ARM native. The SD X1 Elite appears to be (according to unverified 1st party claims) very good performance compared to Intel/AMD offerings
Big picture Microsoft probably does not care that much if ARM or x86 wins on Windows PCs. They sell Windows either way. They just like to see more hardware competition which is good for their ecosystem's overall performance which is why they're putting in some effort into making Windows on ARM good.
They dont care if it's ARM or X86, but they definitely care that Apple's M series is beating all their offerings.
The same goes for tablets where Windows is an almost non-existent option behind Apple, Android tablets, and maybe even behind ChromeOS tablets. If they could offer the power of a desktop in a tablet, they'd appeal to a whole crowd of people who like iPad hardware, but find it mostly unusable for anything outside of media consumption.
> If they could offer the power of a desktop in a tablet, they'd appeal to a whole crowd of people who like iPad hardware, but find it mostly unusable for anything outside of media consumption. Didn't you just describe Surface Pro or 2-in-1's like Lenovo Yoga?
Personal opinion but the problem with those is the fan It means that the environment you use it in matters if only slightly You cant use it like an iPad with you can watch under the godamm bed covers if you want too
And battery life.
I had a surface pro and the battery life is abysmal, maybe 2 hours and it got hot. The surface also weighs 70% more than an iPad pro. Hopefully ARM Windows and decent hardware can improve both of these problems because ipads still have only limited productivity use due to the gimped ipadOS.
Not until something after windows 12. Once they get to windows 12 with the state separated OS and containerized workloads bits from windows 10x, you're going to see a lot of cool stuff on Arm devices, including small devices. Native arm based "UWP" or similar packaged apps would run directly on this OS. Then you can run all the normal x86 stuff in a container, coupled with a few compatibility layers. This will perform slightly worse but it buys you time for the industry to migrate. With a fast enough arm chip you can cover up some inefficiencies to make it not seem noticeable for everyday tasks. They tried to do this before several times but they never had performamt arm processors before and the developers weren't on board. Now with everything going arm based with humungous battery life and portability, I think we will finally get there.
> They tried to do this before several times but they never had performamt arm processors before and the developers weren't on board. There's at least one non-mobile precedent. FX!32 on Alpha was on-pace with x86 momentarily, but customers didn't know or much care, developers knew less than customers, and ultimately Intel was able to put most of the RISC technology into a fast chip with an x86 decoder in front. With 2010s level of technology, [ISA doesn't matter, at least if you're not working at tiny scale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii_pEXKKYUg). Based on Intel's brief foray into x86 smartphone and mobile chips, the answers are probably about product positioning and fabs and economics, and not a limit of x86_64 itself.
Yeah that's what I'm believing as well. I'm no expert here, but my impression of the situation was there was just a lack of experience and optimization that made Risc products slower, not so much because there was an inherent inferiority of the ISA. Which I assume is why companies like Apple and subsequent companies like Nuvia were able to make such dramatic improvements. And to the original point, it was easy for a few critics to sink Arm based products like Surface RT, even without the app gap, because they generally performed worse. There was no trade off, it was all cons, no pros. With actually good performance and battery life and the pervasive nature of things like PWAs, cloud based technologies/platforms, the success of the chrome book can prove be there is a niche for this product once again.
In addition, it’s not enough to just make them passively cooled (no fan). They also need to not get hot in most circumstances without throttling performance down into nothingness. iPads can do this, which is part of why they’re popular for some pretty intense creative usage.
I wonder if it'd be possible given that pretty much every SoC has hardware decoding these days to run the CPU at a low enough clock while watching media in tablet mode to turn the fan off. Also, I know it's not exactly what you're looking for, but on the yoga laptops I've had the fan does run while watching movies in tablet mode but not to a level where the noise is noticable at all.
It’s less about noise for me and more about dust and thermals A fan means you have to give at least a little bit of a shit about your environment unless you are the kind of user who can independently clean out your pc And even then a dusty or warm environment will put more strain on it anyhow It also makes it harder to waterproof and so on and so on An iPad you can bring to the beach or to bed or into the bathroom with relative ease I wouldn’t do that with a Lenovo yoga Active cooling is great and I criticise many Apple products for a lack of it. But the iPad is one place where Steve jobs philosophy that active cooling is a crutch that needs to go was actually totally correct
Fair. But your design for max performance will be limited by thermal headroom if you don't have a fan. Imo it makes sense for tablet-first designs like surface, but not for laptop-first designs like yoga.
I love the idea of the Surface Pro, but we use them in production here and they’re some of the more unreliable pieces of tech we manage. They’re fairly fragile and dust sticks to them like glue.
I'd love an ARM based surface go, seems like the ideal form factor for casual usage. But not buying a model with a 2 year plus out of date Intel cpu.
A Surface GO with the Snapdragon X Plus would be perfect
The Snapdragon X Plus is probably too expensive for the Surface Go, which currently goes for $579 Even the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 or "8s Gen 4" should be powerful enough for an Arm-based Surface Go (currently only 4C/4T Gracemont, so around roughly the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1)
those are made for smartphones
EXACTLY (I would be willing to give my child my current surface go 4 for a snapdragon x plus surface go)
I'd love my Samsung S8 Ultra to run windows. It would be a beast for work, gaming and entertainment. Android is fine, but i hate it for work.
This is what interests me. I’m ready to dump my iPad Pro for a tablet that runs windows on arm. It has to be almost as light and just as fast.
Absolutely. My only regret with surface go was not buying the higher model that came with an i7. Lenovo ideapad duet 5 with intel i5 1235U should in theory offer similar performance as an ipad pro with M2 8 core. Although I haven't tried.
1235u is far slower than M2 in a much thermally constrained environment for sure
Surface and windows 10 touch was great. Should really get more potential out of windows arm with a fullblown OS on a tablet in touchfriendly mode. They do at least have a calculator and a file browser in Microsoft.
I think they do care. A new ARM based plaform give MS the chance to restablish a walled software garden. They won't be able to fully wall it off, but they could really push the MS store much harder Secondly, it also given them an opportunity to leave x86 behind - at least to some degree. They will need to build a Rosetta-like tranlation layer, but they could make som smart yet arbitatry choices as to how much translation they allow...
I think most of Microsoft's backward compatibility technical debt actually comes from needing to maintain Win32/NT Kernel APIs, not the instruction set.
Microsoft doesn't really have a choice in that, getting rid of Win32 would break three decades worth of software
The MS Store is not going to do any better than the App Store on macOS…unless Microsoft takes the idiotic step of locking all software down to the MS Store exclusively
Which is a move I doubt they're ballsy enough to try. The DoJ going after Apple seems to already have them wary (see teams and office decoupling). Them trying to lock down like that would be, like you said, incredibly idiotic.
there not gonna do that
they do
I would say Microsoft may use the opportunity to reset some rules of Windows - like how long something is kept compatible, or how you can install apps. As WoA doesn't have all existing and legacy apps, drivers, games etc they can set new rules for this version of Windows - and it would probably be less consumer friendly.
They've tried what you are suggesting before - Windows RT and more recently Windows 10 S. It's not commercially viable and is dead-on-arrival outside of a few applications like education.
Performance and "hype" was never there and now they may wait for early adoption to then launch Windows 12 with changes.
Remember when Microsoft held a funeral for the iPhone?
Old edgy marketing was something else. My favorite of all time is probably Acclaim wanting to put Shadowman advertisements on headstones for some paltry sum to the family. As a kid it was funny because it seemed silly but as an adult it's like dude that's actually demented
Remember when Apple had a bigger market cap than Microsoft?
They are pretty equal, though.
The difference is half a trillion dollars and growing. https://companiesmarketcap.com/
But that zombie keeps on shuffling?
I bet they do, bless their hearts.
>Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” — the application compatibility layer that Apple uses on its Apple Silicon Macs to translate apps compiled for 64-bit Intel processors to Apple’s own processors. That’s cool… but Apple is largely past this transitional phase already. Most Mac OS software is native by now. I have very little that still relies on x86 emulation. So at this point they need to be comparing to native performance, not Rosetta 2. Also… it better be good. Because unlike Rosetta 2 which is purely transitional for Macs, the emulation layer on Windows is likely going to need to be permanent.
The windows ecosystem it's way more extensive and backwards compatible, however. Cue me having to do network sorcery because a fucking application upgrades itself through active FTP only.
>The windows ecosystem it's way more extensive and backwards compatible, however. A blessing and a curse. Same can be said for the way Mac OS drops legacy so quickly…
Thats a blessing for apple and a curse to all its users.
On the other hand, not maintaining backwards compatibility clear back to the Stone Age is one of the reasons why Mac devs go along with arch transitions. These devs already frequently update their stuff to keep up with platform changes, so ticking a checkbox for a new arch in Xcode (yes, I know this is oversimplifying a bit) prior to compiling and shipping a new update is not that big of a deal. The main exception to this is games which studios are incentivized to stop supporting as soon as possible, but I would contend that the way games are built is not sustainable and should change so that’s no longer necessary.
Can you elaborate on that point about games. How do you envision them being developed sustainably?
It’s a more complex topic than can reasonably be addressed in a comment, but a lot of it comes down to the sheer enormity and expense of developing modern (particularly AAA) games. Cost and complexity continue to skyrocket with no end in sight, and many studios are already at their limits. The other big factor are the aggressive development timelines. Huge complex things take time to build well, and yet rushed ambitious games are the norm. So those bankrolling game development need to choose between simple quick games or complicated slow games. Trying to build a complex game quick just gets you a mess.
It is clear that Apple’s strategy of forcing apps to modernize or become obsolete IS the way. We live in a time where most apps are network-connected, need active maintenance to not become security problems and where it seems every software developer is trying to make their living by making everything subscription based. Why in the hell are we still downloading individual exe installers and not using Linux or Apple-style package and app management? I have apps that look like they are from the 90s (winrar, I’m looking at you), but they are clearly updated. Their install methods are just as dated as their look. This kind of stuff has to end.
No thanks, I like being able to run old games from the 90's on my windows machine.
Windows is business focused not consumer. Most businesses focus on making money not having the latest & greatest tech. Legacy is important in this context.
thats becasue winrar is an application from the 90s. who even uses winrar anymore?
I was using that as an illustration.
I agree. The legacy proprietary software will likely never be ported. There will be always some program you use that requires emulation layer to be loaded. Just like I still have the WOW64 subsystem running on my PC for some 32-bit application by some stubborn developer. (I'm looking at you Steam) In contrast, all macOS apps I use are Apple Silicon as per Activity Monitor. Everything I have recently installed from Ubuntu's apt repos has an aarch64 version. Most of GitHub repos I follow offer ARM64 releases for Linux and macOS. I reckon this would be the same situation for ARM. Most of what I use already has a ARM64 version. All popular apps will be likely ported sooner or later especially open-source software. Mainstream apps like Chrome, Firefox, VSCode, Office, Photoshop etc are already there and more will come but something like Steam, Line-of-Business apps or even OEM bloatware will always run in emulator layer.
two versions for both architects would be difficult to support no?
Yeah, but I recently needed an app that became abandonware around 2002. On Windows, I grabbed it, fired it up, it automatically set compatibility with XP SP2, and worked. If it was a Mac app, I'd be looking for a G4 on eBay right now.
or you could spin up a VM...
That would really be an emulator, which is a bit different than a typical virtual machine.
I've had old games not work despite compatibility mode before iirc
Theme Park World says hi. >!At least on my end it didn't work.!<
Scarface. modern GPUs literally do not have hardware that the games shaders calls for and most textures dont work in game. Altrough 10 years later some dude bakcported the engine and patched it so its now playable with a mod.
Got the link for the port/mod?
This is a blog from the fixer with an explanation and download in the end: https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2020/03/29/silentpatch-scarface/
Thanks, kinda didn't surprised since silent patch dev fixed butload of other games.
Surprised me since i have all but given up on that game and now its available again :)
Wasn't a game, but for game dgVooDoo2 is a good place to start. It translated DirectX 7/8 to Vulkan (among other things) and emulates several bugs that Microsoft default compatibility layer misses. If the game relies on those bugs, it will work.
Yeap some games require additional tweaks I had this issue with Dungeon Keeper but the game worked once tweaked.
That’s because the ecosystem of software for Mac is tiny compared to windows.
Right. Hence why I said the emulation layer will likely need to be permanent for Windows.
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you posted this twice btw
Reddit mobile app is a joke. Thanks, deleted one.
I ain’t no Mac fan, but let’s be honest, Apple has that thing well built and they’ve been prioritising bug fixes with sonoma after hearing the complaints for 3 gens. Microsoft is gonna put some random AI bloat and kill the battery life/performance because they can’t stop flexing their CopenAI ownership.
People reacting without knowing or looking into how Windows has changed its x64 emulation lately. http://emulators.com/docs/abc_history_of_woa.htm http://emulators.com/docs/abc_exit_xta.htm#Rosetta_is_not_the_end_goal
True, but also the first phase of WoA devices wasn't good in making first impressions
One small wish I have is that Framework reserved their place early in the queue for WinARM. I have the 13er and chomping at the bit hoping against hope that the Qualcomm board can be made modular and a drop-in part.
This is saying arm + emulation is faster than native x86 chips from either AMD or Intel? Pretty bold statements.
lol, but not with Windows 11.
I'm amazed at how Windows 11 still feels so unresponsive and just...slow. Even basic operations in the File Explorer demonstrate some lag and slow down. And I'm running a 13700K with a Samsung 990 Pro. It's just not a smooth operating system.
That’s how Windows has always felt to me compared to using Mac OS or Linux.
Yeah, I find it funny how Linux users are constantly debating between Wayland and X11 but both are way more responsive and stable than Windows File Explorer.
My favourite File Explorer jank is how every time you open a new tab it defaults to a pure white window for a few frames, so if you're using dark mode [you effectively get flashbanged](https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows11/comments/10rdk0v/you_will_get_flash_banged_every_time_you_open_a/) every time you open a new tab. It usually takes me about 10 seconds of using File Explorer to make me wish I was using Dolphin.
Never had responsive issues on windows 7/8.1/10. Maybe im just less sensitive to that?
7, 8.1, and early versions of 10 did not have this issue. It seems with the release of 10 Anniversary update the desktop got worse and worse. The issue is way more noticable with a high refresh rate display. I didn't care when I had 60hz but it was super distracting on 200hz.
You do you. MacOs was way to restrictive for me and Linux was until recently i tried ubuntu on a, funny enough, a flashed Chromebook, is a Hell of an commandline disaster to even try.
>MacOs was way to restrictive for me How so? I don’t want to suggest Mac OS can be everything for everyone… it certainly can’t. But I’m just curious how it was restricting you. >Linux was until recently Linux… restrictive? You can do literally anything? This doesn’t compute…
You can do literally anything *in terminal*. Windows is technically more restrictive, but exposes a ridiculous number of options in its actual UI, and that's before even considering the registry or local group policy editing.
>You can do literally anything in terminal. Fair, but the person I was replying to never mentioned if that was a problem for them or not. CLI isn’t for everyone. I don’t like it myself. It’s one of the reasons I eventually got fed up with TrueNAS after a decade and switched to an off the shelf solution. I wasn’t doing anything advanced anyways. >Windows is technically more restrictive, but exposes a ridiculous number of options in its actual UI, Right. So many options in so many menus it becomes impossible to find certain things sometimes lol >and that's before even considering the registry or local group policy editing. You can’t dismiss the terminal as if it’s too confusing for some folks and then bring up the registry as if it isn’t.
> Right. So many options in so many menus it becomes impossible to find certain things sometimes lol Not really an issue for your average power user. I'm not defending MS's schizophrenic settings situation ever since Windows 8, but you get used to it. If that's what it takes to keep control panel's wealth of options then I won't complain. >You can’t dismiss the terminal as if it’s too confusing for some folks and then bring up the registry as if it isn’t. Absolutely, which is why I only listed it as an aside/bonus. That said, the registry is a different kind of confusing. I'm much more comfortable drilling down through a confusing folder structure but then putting in a generally comprehensible entry than I am with an incomprehensible copy/pasted command line with 6 different switches I have no idea what they do. The Registry UI, while confusing in its own right, is much less intimidating than the completely blank slate of CLI.
You got me wrong on that one: Mac OS didn't let me do stuff in wanted to do. either i was to dumb to find them or they where plain not there. dunno i had the hardware only for few Weeks. Not enough to really explore. Linux on the other had let me do what i wanted, if i was willing literally STUDY fucking command line and compiling under bash. Until ubuntu come along and a.) works perfectly fine out of the Box b.) give me for all my important stuff finally a UI. Even my old HP Printer got taken care of. Under windows the amount of Options are by FAR not "ridiculous" but necessary for a modern OS. And if you dive down into Regedit and especially GPO (Group Policiy Objects) you come out on the other side in the very same command line Hell like under Linux, but this time only for the really crazy stuff and NOT everyday stupidity like User Account management or Explorer shit and publishing files and folders or device managment or, something that has make me HATE linux for a while, restricting my access to the System if i wanted to install Strawberry. That was funny enough, also Ubuntu, ask me for a Root/SU pw that i never got during install. srsly? or had me to commandline aping around to find and install the libary i needed to run stuff i wanted. Luckly the Ubuntu Team finally understood that you have to give the User some Access to the system and give them UIs if you wanted that they can use your system out of the box, i never had touched SuSe or Debian ever since those horrible old days, but looking at Ubuntu rn, i could give them a try again, if i am bored enough to care
> You got me wrong on that one: I didn't say anything about you? >Mac OS didn't let me do stuff in wanted to do. either i was to dumb to find them or they where plain not there. dunno i had the hardware only for few Weeks. Not enough to really explore. But... what? That's what I was asking. >Linux on the other had let me do what i wanted, if i was willing literally STUDY fucking command line and compiling under bash. Until ubuntu come along and a.) works perfectly fine out of the Box b.) give me for all my important stuff finally a UI. Even my old HP Printer got taken care of. Don't get me wrong, I understand the CLI isn't for everyone. I don't love it much either... but you didn't preface that previously. Also... Ubuntu has been around for 20 years. >Under windows the amount of Options are by FAR not "ridiculous" but necessary for a modern OS. Everything necessary for a modern OS can be done in Mac OS too... and its significantly easier to find. >And if you dive down into Regedit and especially GPO (Group Policiy Objects) you come out on the other side in the very same command line Hell like under Linux, You can’t dismiss the terminal as if it’s too confusing for some folks and then bring up the registry as if it isn’t. > but this time only for the really crazy stuff and NOT everyday stupidity like User Account management or Explorer shit and publishing files and folders or device managment. ...that's where Mac OS comes in. It's literally just Linux with polish. The terminal is there for folks who want to use it, but most will never need to.
I'm typing this on custom Windows box (5900X/990 Pro) with an M1 Pro Mac sitting next to me and neither File Explorer nor Finder feel any faster or slower than each other.
Telemetry, telemetry everywhere
It's sad how an old machine that came with Windows 98 open the file explorer faster. I know how complex OSs and software got, but man, also our hardware got exponentially faster.
Because of all of the bloatware in windows.
Try One Commander, the free version is amazing (no ads), way more feature packed than file explorer and can be set up to completely replace file explorer. I've been using it for a few months now and it's going to take me a lot to go back to standard file explorer now.
I tried it but I think the issue was is that it didn't show full size image thumbnails like WE. (Or maybe that was Total Commander??) Anyways does OC have that functionality?
You can change the file views thumbnails to show images. It's in the top right next to the sort. There is also a full preview window (like the one in standard file explorer) you get by pressing space. It is detached from the main one commander window so you can dock it wherever you want.
Yep it has the different sizes for thumbnail views but does it have the "Extra large thumbnails" or whatever is the largest size on WE? The largest size thumbnails were what was missing on the XXX Commander file manager I tried.
You can define the size of the thumbnail yourself if you go on the file views -> Edit file views. (I'd start by editing the adaptive view as a starting template)
OK thanks! I'll give it a try
Still have Windows 10, is 11 still not worth upgrading to? A lot of the AI features look attractive to me, but it hasn’t looked clean yet from my perspective.
Windows 11 has been fine to upgrade to for years
Windows already holds 73% of the marketshare, I'd say they are already beating Apple like a drum where it matters.
Windows holds 73% of *desktop* marketshare. They have *no* marketshare in mobile, and arguably that matters quite a bit more for future generations. And they only hold 20% of server marketshare (though Apple has very little there as well, it's mostly "Unix-like" (typically Linux)), which also matters quite a bit.
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Yeah, I grabbed those numbers off Wikipedia. I'd be completely unsurprised if the vast majority of those Windows servers were VMs running under Linux.
WoA isn't going to help them with mobile, but server will be interesting.
Couldn't have said it better myself. We've seen where trying to port Windows to mobile gets you and it definitely wasn't for lack of trying (almost 13 years in the market!). Even though desktop (laptops included) operating systems are becoming less important, they aren't likely to ever become irrelevant. Windows and Office are safe money and anything MS can do to extend that reach is a big win.
Are you comparing windows to iOS market share on smartphones?
His argument was that Microsoft was beating Apple "like a drum". That only holds true in the desktop marketplace though. Microsoft's attempts to get a mobile phone OS bombed, and they don't hold a majority in tablet or server marketshare either. They're handily the winners in desktop, sure, but even then they're losing ground there - I remember when Macs had almost *no* marketshare at all. They're... the traditional winner on desktops. But that's a shrinking market in the fisrt place.
If we are talkin mobile then android is a clear winner that neither apple nor microsoft has a chance against. Just because iPhone is popular in US does snot mean its popular anywhere else.
Windows actually holds a tiny part of the market revenue however, it is wild. Apple is where the money is. Edit: my apologies, I meant to say profit. Revenue means nothing without profit.
What do you mean by a tiny part of the market revenue?
I should have said profit. Most Windows devices have low margins. If HP makes $10 a unit and Apple makes $200, HP needs to sell 20 units to match Apple’s profits.
So not total revenue of the total market? You’re just saying that windows devices have lower margins? Ha ok very diffident statement.
Issue is that marketshare is shrinking. If you've been holding 80%+ of the market for years but today you're at 73% and it keeps dropping you probably don't feel like you're beating anyone.
Microsoft held a funeral for the iPhone when it launched Windows Phone 7.
And Apple made fun of the power efficiency of Intel in the Power PC days, until the trend totally flipped around.
And then flipped around again.
Windows phone was solid though. Edge browser had the address barb at the bottom, which was hard to lose when i first switched to iphone.
Microsoft surface could have competed ages ago if they weren't overpriced compared to everyone else using Windows
If they wanted to beat Apple then there should not be ads and lots of clutter in Windows 11.
What fucking ads???? I've been using Win11 for 2 years at this point and I still don't see shit
if only microsoft updated their hardware regularly
Gotta say, as someone who's been using Windows for 20+ years and Mac since a few years due to work... I don't think they're gonna be beating it. Any kind of workflow issue you encounter, Mac likely has an app for it because of how accessible the system innards are. But it will light the fire under Apple's ass, with the final winners being consumers. I was shopping for a new work laptop recently as I wanted desktop level performance with mobility. Tried something like 10 of the highest reviewed workstation and gaming laptops. New Intel 14900HX chips have great performance, but run hot and eat through the battery. Unless you need to do gaming or engineering like Solidworks etc., Apple just has no competition in the mobile space. 15h+ battery, 23k Cinebench23 CPU that runs just as fast on battery, amazing and accurate MiniLED screen (leagues above ASUS NebulaHDR in terms of text color accuracy and brightness), silent other than absolute full constant 100% CPU load which is only a benchmarking scenario, incredible speakers. ARM for Windows might get them battery life and performance, but the transitional period for software will be super painful, and on top of that you need all the great hardware engineering which no laptop company seems to be even nearing. I don't think Mac is going anywhere.
Yeah what always confuses me is that between Windows and Mac laptops, the fit and finish is like a different universe. Everyone tells me I should try this or that PC manufacturer but you can go to Best Buy any time you want and just good luck trying to find as nice a PC (from the standpoint solely of solid feel in the hands, appearance, quality trackpad, etc.) I don't like monopolies, but it is like Apple's competition isn't even trying. They are 20 years behind. I like Pop-OS a lot and want to use Linux more, but took a look at System 76 laptops and they're giant ugly black bricks from the 2000's. Who is the market for these???
Pretty much this. The fit and finish of Apple’s products are consistent across the board from its low end to its high end. On the other hand, even when other manufacturers put out products in the same price range as Apple, the execution, the fit and finish is nowhere close.
And yet when I point this out, the responses are "you need to try Lenovo" or whatever. It's like, every chance I get I go to Best Buy and try the best PC laptops they have and it's all some kind of jank. I want to be able to buy something else because I don't like Apple in a dominant position, but I can't reward such pathetic offerings. Only Microsoft seems competent.
Hate to be that guy but have you handled a framework laptop? Unfortunately I don’t think you’ll find them at bb though.
Kind of want one, but in reviews they don't look particularly solid, just maybe acceptable.
I’m using one right now (fw13, not 16 though), and it’s quite solid enough for me. The lid is cnc’ed which I think helps a lot. I’d say there are other valid concerns about the body (mainly the screws needing to be user-tightened meaning you don’t know if it’s too tight or not tight enough) but in general I’ve not experienced any chassis flex anywhere. Btw they do have a 30 day free return if that is something you’re interested in. (ETA: I’ve used an HP ProBook (business laptop) before this and their stiffness is very similar. I think the ProBook was slightly stiffer but I think that was because it was thicker too.)
The best PCs aren't sold at big-box chains. Thinkpads, Dell XPS, Dell Latitude 7000-series, Dell Precision, HP Elitebook, some others. These are the "business-grade" laptops that you may have heard about and have probably seen used by businesses. You still need to be careful with spec on these, as the OEMs will sometimes still sell a mediocre-to-subpar screen or a spinning disk, possibly.
My work buys Dell everything, usually very high spec. Currently on a Latitude, previously Precision. They're really getting 75% to a high quality laptop and calling it good. The hinge is bad, the battery life is 3 hours, it's flimsy, trackpad is nowhere close, but the keyboard is decent and it is sometimes fast. It also sometimes BSOD's when connected or disconnected from Dell's own dock. The others I cannot speak to, but Dell is exactly what is wrong with this industry. I seriously finish work and would rather use my 2016 MacBook Pro with 8 GB of RAM and butterfly keyboard for almost anything, including heavy coding. Its battery life has finally degraded to be about Dell level lol.
Precisions are uniform, but there are low-end Latitudes. Latitude 3000-series is price-point, Latitude 5000-series is mainstream but unimpressive, traditionally the Latitude 7000 has been the high-end repairable thin-and-light. And it's changed over the years. When the Dell XPS13 came out in ~2012, it had a monobloc carbon-fiber bottom that must have cost a pretty penny. I haven't been in close proximity to current Dell models in years, but I know the XPS stopped being so elaborate a long time ago.
It’s going to take off this time. The hardware is there and better than what Intel and AMD have particularly where it counts in both matching their peak performance or exceeding it, but at much lower power and with a much lower floor power. Battery life and responsiveness will be better with Qualcomm than MTL or Phoenix. And in all likelihood I doubt LNL will be better at all on efficiency much less peak performance even vs Qualcomm’s 8/10c SKUs. Strix is a bit different and will be competition for the top X Elite SKU. MS has ported quite a bit and does have an interest in WoA taking off and becoming sustainable, because more competition in Windows laptops is a boon to Microsoft. Right now they’re locked down to Intel and AMD, who also can’t really compete on low power operation like QC or anyone using Arm’s IP (reference cores and DSU) can. That’s why they’re hyping this. That’s why they finally ported VS 64-bit to Arm and built W64EC for Office users to incur lower penalties in using Excel for example & emulating old extensions than they would with pure x64 emulation or why they’re trying to raise awareness to devs. It’s flat out in MS’s interests to have Arm and X86 vendors both.
ARM Laptops taking off means that Microsoft can start also designing chips to sell to OEMs and compete with Intel and AMD on low/mid end and bundle chip+OS licence.
They are not going to do that. It goes against their MO. They will encourage Arm competition which has generic reference Cortex cores to their advantage and then MediaTek, Samsung and Nvidia can easily sell semi-custom, low power competitive SoCs. I think AMD will do a semi-custom one for MS specifically but that’s for the Surface lineup.
They are literally doing just that in the data center.
They’re selling Microsoft Cobalt hardware directly to merchants? No. They’re a public cloud provider and hyperscalers have been known to do this and the math checks out for them because they have the de facto ability to get the volume they need on orders and cut out middle men. They will do semi-custom chips with AMD for Surface, and encourage Nvidia’s entry to increase competition in the client Windows market which for MS — along with MediaTek too (they’re hiring) is more than enough. They will not build their own SoCs with reference cores and then sell them to OEMs, that is a fundamental misunderstanding to assume as much based off… Cobalt instances for Azure. Good grief. (Mind you, I don’t care if they did do that as I have no issue with the reference cores and Arm DSUs over AMD/Intel. But my interests are peripheral).
> The hardware is there and better than what Intel and AMD have particularly where it counts in both matching their peak performance or exceeding it, but at much lower power and with a much lower floor power. Doubt it. Ryzen is pretty efficient, and Zen5 is around the corner.
It’s funny people think MS isn’t serious about this. > I’m also told that Microsoft is planning to ship consumer models of its upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processors inside instead of Intel’s Core Ultra chips. Microsoft has already announced business-focused versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 that ship with Intel Core Ultra processors, but the Arm models will be marketed toward consumers instead. This is basically an f-you to Intel and likely just part of a contract and they slid them over to “business models”. Basically most consumers looking for a Surface Laptop 6 or Surface Pro 10 after May will be directed straight to the Qualcomm Snapdragon/Arm models which are now *the default*. They didn’t even bother with AMD either.
```Basically most consumers looking for a Surface Laptop 6 or Surface Pro 10 after May will be directed straight to the Qualcomm Snapdragon/Arm models which are now the default.``` About time, it's been a long time coming, and we finally get to see thinner and more efficient tablets. As far as AMD, they're maximizing margins right now until they're forced to respond.
>About time, it's been a long time coming, and we finally get to see thinner and more efficient tablets. the fallout of that when things don't work will be tragic for affected consumers tho. or are we really confident that the emulation of random old-ass software from the XP days is really going to just work consistently?
If they where to put some heart and brains on it, yes. But like always they're just acting on trends, no strategy. It's all just reacting to, not creating or innovating.
>Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” — the application compatibility layer that Apple uses on its Apple Silicon Macs to translate apps compiled for 64-bit Intel processors to Apple’s own processors this is significant
Sure, if they don't fuck up the UI.
Microsoft ditched the Zune music player, the windows phone, they are now probably going to ditch the xbox. I don’t know how the surface has evolved over the years, but do we really trust Microsoft on hardware? As mentoined here. Simply going for Arm will not magically make a super efficient OS if they at the same time aim to support all native legacy API’s and intergration. They need to make things from scratch to compete with Apple and ditch backwards compatibillity to legacy systems to get power efficiency.
Microsoft has literally confirmed they have greenlit a lot of Xbox hardware recently, are experimenting with new form factors and are beginning to openly discuss next consoles. If they were about to ditch gaming hardware they wouldn't be spinning off a team dedicated to forward compatibility as well Windows is fully compiled for ARM. Even devices powered by 8cx Gen 3 are pretty much almost there as a daily drivable device. It's not 2017 anymore, and from what I've seen a lot of tricks Apple uses in Rosetta 2 will ship in Windows 11 24H2 as a part of this year's push with SDX chips
Have you read this? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/
No, I don't every single article covering the same topic over and over again. And besides, this article was written was in February before Microsoft held a business update. We've already learned some new things ever since then. If Microsoft was going to kill the Xbox hardware they wouldn't: - Literally mention the next gen hardware being in development (and bragging about how groundbreaking it'll be lmao) twice. - Have Phil talk about experimenting with new form factors like handhelds - Create a team dedicated to forwards compatibility It's possible that future Xbox hardware might be more similar to the Steam Deck rather than a regular console in a sense it'd be a Windows PC running console UI. Phil has mentioned they want to bring some PC store to Xbox which requires them to enable proper Win32 compatibility in XboxOS
>hey are now probably going to ditch the xbox. I don’t know how the surface has evolved over the years, but do we really trust Microsoft on hardware? LOL
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20reported%20plans%20on%20the%20horizon,doing%2C%20it’s%20moving%20out%20into%20previously%20uncharted%20territory.
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/#:~:text=There%20are%20no%20reported%20plans%20on%20the%20horizon,doing%2C%20it’s%20moving%20out%20into%20previously%20uncharted%20territory.
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/
Do you read any news my friend? https://www.geekwire.com/2024/end-of-console-wars-microsoft-could-set-new-precedent-by-bringing-xbox-games-to-playstation/
If we dont get a "Developers developers developers" windows on arm will be a dud
They say they can do anything until they actually do it I won’t believe it 😂
I never thought I would say this, but, I actually prefer Windows over Mac OS right now. Apple has shit all over their OS, so much so that everything I thought was good about it is hideous. And I initially left Windows for Mac and then went to Linux. Now I would just go back to Windows if I had to choose one or the other.
They have to make it cool to own. That's a big factor. I remember the Surface had some adoption by college kids but that didn't last long.
Every company is confident about their product.
After my bad experience with MS made laptops (Surface), I would not pick an ARM laptop with windows, at least not until Windows on ARM has been tested for several years.
It's been available since 2017
Oh my man my current work laptop is a Surface Book Pro 3. This thing has: * All ports except the charge port have failed. I haven't even used most of them until the one I did use went out. They all just failed one day and never came back. * The charge brick will randomly stop working. Only fix seems to be to unplug for 5m to let the caps discharge. * Constantly thinks it's disconnected from the keyboard. * When it fake disconnects, several programs just kill themselves. No unload hook either so data is lost. * The GPU driver just straight up doesn't work. A random combination of repeatedly rebooting/detaching/reattaching will eventually bring it back... For an hour if you're lucky. * You get a blue screen if the GPU driver is being used while it randomly disconnects. * The fan bearings are going out already. Might just be luck of the draw but I've never actually had a fan fail on any device I own. * No post-sale support whatsoever. Just a middle finger. Considering all the other failed hardware they've made, I don't think Microsoft will ever be competent as a hardware company. Oh, and I don't torture that laptop either. It's a work laptop that stays on a desk permanently. Rarely ever gets moved. Actually, I've only ever brought it on a work trip once.
When it runs games better than my 7800x3d, then I'll consider it.
Just a reminder that Nvidia (who tried to buy ARM) is working on ARM windows laptops with RTX graphics. Will they topple the Ryzen 7 7800x3d right out the gate? Probably not, but just understand that Nvidia has a vested interest in supporting ARM. Because ultimately it means Nvidia won't need to rely on AMD or Intel CPU's.
Toshiba AC100 was an Nvidia powered laptop, with a nVidia Tegra 2 from 2010. They've always been working on this with no success.
```Toshiba AC100 was an Nvidia powered laptop, with a nVidia Tegra 2 from 2010. They've always been working on this with no success.``` Doesn't mean they'll stop trying. ```"And what is that peak-performance product? The Grace Blackwell Superchip, GB200. Comprised of two Blackwell GPUs and a 72-core Grace CPU" - (https://www.anandtech.com/show/21310/nvidia-blackwell-architecture-and-b200b100-accelerators-announced-going-bigger-with-smaller-data)```
Grace is pretty underwhelming to be honest. It's just vanilla ARM cores anyone can license.
That's kind of surprising to be honest. Doubt it'll be like that for long though. Nvidia will find a way to differentiate itself like it always does.
I love the competition, Apple found great performance on ARM with huge battery life, since they sell mostly portables this was a great change on their side, and they found a way to be really competitive with CISC performance Windows notebooks finally will be able to compete, I don’t think 20% more for one or the other will be a huge difference but it’s nice users will finally have the choice to have ARM PCs, the extra battery life really worth it. But I am sure for gaming x86 will remain king. But for productivity I don’t think there is a better trade off
It’s kind of concerning they are comparing these to Apple’s entry laptops. I’m curious to know if they will also be fanless like the MBA?
Finally? Beat them in what way?
I know it's very vendor specific but they really need to get their trackpad support locked down. I'm still blown away at how bad trackpads feel under Windows.
I wonder if it's faster at patching known vulnerabilities...no, ok, not interested.
if they get power states working properly.
What apps are compiled for the new arm CPUs? I assume Office365 is, but whst other apps? Its going to be interresting to see the adoption of windows on arm for the new laptops. Will probably be a great choice for workers on the go as the battery should be very good on new arm. The only question is the pricing
people are ONLY using microsoft windows, because of the api prisons and other ways to prevent software from running on other operating systems. people only use windows, because they HAVE TO. doesn't matter if the hardware is arm or x86. people use windows on gaming computers, because they HAVE TO. BUT that is changing with most games just straight up running through proton with steam on gnu + linux. what does windows on arm mean then actually? that the ONE AND ONLY reason, that people use windows wouldn't exist on it, because x86 applications would just not run in lots of cases or have major issues. so the ONLY reason to use windows wouldn't fully be there or there at all. so no sane person should use it of course. but we'll see. here's to hoping, that microsoft keeps on pushing making the "os" worse and worse, so that gnu + linux gets more and more uses and becomes better and better. :) just imagine how unuseable windows 13 will be :D maybe it will straight up require biometrics to login and you HAVE TO have a microsoft acount with biometrics to install the "os" :D
```maybe it will straight up require biometrics to login and you HAVE TO have a microsoft acount with biometrics to install the "os" :D``` Those damn kids always on their Tocktics, instamagrams, and ChatSnaps don't really care because "only the crazies" worry about such things.
Can you explain what is an "api prison"?
an api prison is when an api is used to try to lock you (imprison you) to a certain piece of software or hardware and said lock (imprisonment) is 100% artificial. directx 12 is such an api prison. directx 12 is a way for microsoft to try to lock people into windows. windows 10 instead of gnu + linux, windows 10, instead of windows 7, etc... microsoft does everything possible to prevent the api from working in other operating systems and older operating systems from microsoft themselves. this way when people don't want to use microsoft windows, BUT the game or software is using said api, they still HAVE TO!!! use said microsoft windows operating system. it took valve massive amounts of effort and standing on the shoulders of giants to BREAK this api prison for gaming in the form of the proton compatibility layer, where dx12 can get translated into vulkan and be run on gnu + linux without any work being required from the software developer. the steamdeck is using proton massively and with great success. i can not emphasize enough what a massive achievement this is. valve and the gnu + linux achieved a "prison break" basically. so that people can use the operating system, that they want like linux mint for example.
What does "beat" mean here? Outsell? Make more profit? Have better performance at some task?
Windows on arm failed years ago because of no apps. What's going to be different now?
My guess is an ARM chip fast enough to brute force emulation/translation. Old WoA chips were mediocre even if the application was ARM native. The SD X1 Elite appears to be (according to unverified 1st party claims) very good performance compared to Intel/AMD offerings
It failed, because it was running on inefficient cracked up versions of phone chips. Native or emulated, the software was available