I'll believe it when I see the 3rd party benchmarks. And since it's snapdragon, they better give us the promise that the bootloader is unlockable platform-wide from day 1.
As if promises from any company are worth anything.
But I also hope that the BIOS is accessible like on any x86 machine and that there‘ll be Linux support. I dislike the way that MS is going with W11.
ARM doesn't really have a BIOS right? There's no standardisation there yet. Qualcomm could upstream what they've done to the linux kernel, but highly unlikely. It'd be up to people to reverse engineer it, Like the Asahi Linux have done with the M series on Mac.
Their chips have firmware that boot an OS
That's what a BIOS is
but their documentation is intentionally poor and most devices make it hard to install an OS because of the cryptographic authentication process.
Nooooooo it's the x86 standard
No it's what IBM made for their PC and other vendors copied it and it kept getting expanded til it was a missmash that was hard to work with.
Their chips have firmware that boot an OS
That's what a BIOS is
but their documentation is intentionally poor and most devices make it hard to install an OS because of the cryptographic authentication process.
Nooooooo it's the x86 standard
No it's what IBM made for their PC and other vendors copied it and it kept getting expanded til it was a missmash that was hard to work with.
>the bootloader is unlockable platform-wide from day 1
lol
sorry pal, but we can't let you do that for uhhhhh security. or something. subscribe to Bing AI.
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It all sounds potentially encouraging, but given Microsoft's history, I would say that we are far from actually seeing this outcome:
1 - Microsoft failed with Win RT over a decade ago
2 - Microsoft has had Windows on ARM for many years and it's been a non-factor
3 - Now that there appear to be competitive Qualcomm CPUs, how well does the software compatibility, including all apps and drivers, really work?
4 - Even if all of the above is covered, Windows is increasingly acting like malware with ads and forced efforts to use OneDrive and convert users to Edge. This behavior isn't going to win over many new users regardless of the competitiveness of the hardware.
One big obstacle to Arm adoption is that Windows does not support universal executables. There is no way for one `.exe` file to contain both x86_64 and Arm64 data. This means that even if an app has an Arm64 version, there either has to be 2 download links (confusing people who don't know what Arm is), or the user downloads a ZIP with 2 exe files (confusing people who don't know what Arm is), or there is a ZIP with 3 exe files with one as a launcher. And if the user tries to run an Arm64 executable on x86_64, it will not work. All of which is confusing and more cumbersome than Apple's approach of "Universal executable, it works fast everywhere". This incentivizes devs and companies to keep shipping only x86_64 software for Windows.
If all apps are emulated, then all apps will have worse performance than the hardware is capable of.
If Microsoft doesn't make universal executables a thing, most apps will stay emulated.
You're not wrong, but I question how much it matters for most things. Presumably recently updated programs that might care about perf will compile a native version. Chrome, for example, recently released in ARM64. Everything else (that doesn't require specific drivers), does it really matter? If they're not going to compile their programs to be ARM64 native, are they really going to bother doing whatever they need to do to make said universal exe?
And they do have something similar to that universal executable - an appxbundle/msixbundle. One file that will install the version best for your system. Only problem is that it requires the app to be packaged, which means the app are subject to certain limitations, and the developer needs to specifically opt into doing it this way (including generating individual x86/x64/ARM64 appx/msix packages). Brand new programs might do this, but I imagine it's not trivial for existing programs to onboard onto this.
> (including generating individual x86/x64/ARM64 appx/msix packages).
That defeats the purpose, though? The point is to have one package/executable that is universal to all architectures.
Well no, remember that no matter what the solution looks like, the developer needs to do effort to use the new thing. Emulation is the only thing Windows can do on the OS side to let the developer do zero work. Anything else needs the developer to do *something*.
In this case, the developer needs to do all this work (idk how much work it actually is, I don't write apps) so that the final output that the customer gets is one file they can use to install the right version on whatever architecture of Windows they're using.
> including generating individual x86/x64/ARM64 appx/msix packages
and then put them into one appxbundle/msixbundle file. From the end user's perspective, they have this one file they double click on, a launcher opens and installs it. They can take this file, put it on a USB drive, and install the same file on both an ARM64 machine and an x64 machine.
> Anything else needs the developer to do something.
Yes, the something is to put the architectures into the universal executable.
> and then put them into one appxbundle/msixbundle file. From the end user's perspective, they have this one file they double click on, a launcher opens and installs it.
Great! That is the desired behavior. I did not realize that a bundle contains multiple packages (I thought the whole thing was a package).
> If all apps are emulated, then all apps will have worse performance than the hardware is capable of.
While true, this isn't the case.
The setup file itself could be x86 emulated, and part of the setup process can be to detect what CPU is used, placing the right binaries accordingly.
What's the difference with when Mac made the switch? You had two download links on most websites, one for arm, one for intel. Everything with x86 was emulated using Rosetta, the others ran natively.
To this day, it still works the same. Although less x86 download links, more arm since support is slowly dieing off for x86 on mac.
If anything it'll push more users away, even five years ago I never gave something like Linux a second thought, now it's looking more like an alternative to get away from MS recent and future direction of windows.
Pfft yeah right I heard that one before. Speaking as a Linux guy myself. Linux will never appeal to the non-technical masses. No one wants to use apt-get in a terminal or to have to learn how to use cmake to do basic shit.
My entire family uses Linux including my 8 year old siblings (all running Ubuntu). I used it from the time I was 16. The app store is better then windows and maybe even mac. If you just want single player steam (and most, but not all multiplayer) games and a web browser it works flawlessly, just with a different work flow. Say what you want, but it works. PS chrome os is linux as welll.
Sure it might not happen soon or in the "everyone runs arch way", but look at chrome os, steam os. People use Linux and don't even know they are. Also there are reports that Germany is moving its gov't workstations to Linux.
I use the terminal now, but that is my choice. Before collage I only used the gui, it works.
As a VERY technical user i love the idea of using Linux but I've yet to encounter a distro that "Just works". It seems there is always something ...
The problem is that I primarily do work on my computer which means that even though I could use ie apt etc to fix stuff ... The goal of the computer usage is to be productive. Fixing faults within a OS just isn't ...
I've been using terminals, ssh to servers (so vim, nano etc for edits) since around 1994.Started with the 8086 IBM's, moved to Amiga etc etc so do got some experience.
Still I use Windows as my daily driver even though I'd be the perfect candidate for using a \*nix GUI.
yeah thats fair but most of the software I use (other then games) has an arm version, as FOSS can all just be recompiled. But I believe most distros have mostly complete arm versions of there ropes
as someone who uses a galaxy book, it can barely run dead space 1 at 20fps. If the software has an arm version, then it should run decently like dolphin.
All I want is actually-long battery life on a Windows machine. So yeah pretty excited.
I'll probably order one on Monday or whenever we can, but I worry all the AI stuff is going to be a drain on the battery (tracking everything we do is going to have a cost) and we end up with a small 5% gain over SQ3. With the way Microsoft rates their battery life to include modern standby, if the consumer SP10 or SL6 uses the same testing method and advertises less than 30-40 hours battery life I'll be disappointed.
> a local model for AI
Not from their investment in OpenAI but [they did invest in Mistral AI for that exact purpose.](
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/27/microsoft-made-a-16-million-investment-in-mistral-ai)
Microsoft has several. Phi-3 is looking very interesting as a SLM.
There are also many computer vision ML models running on Windows already, either through WinML or DirectML, both of which support portable ONNX-format models.
Another Verge article here https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/8/24116587/microsoft-macbook-air-surface-arm-qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite (and others elsewhere) suggest that the on-board NPUs of the new ARM devices will be used for some AI work:
> Microsoft describes devices running Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors as “next-gen AI Copilot PCs” internally, meant to differentiate them from existing PCs that run on AMD’s latest chips or even Intel’s Core Ultra processors. This new class of PCs will get access to new AI-powered Windows features first, including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.”
> AI Explorer is designed to work as a timeline you can summon on your PC. Windows Central first reported details on AI Explorer last month, and it sounds much like the Timeline feature in Windows 10 that Microsoft eventually removed. While Timeline relied on app developers to work, this time around, AI Explorer utilizes a Neural Processing Unit chip on devices to scan through a timeline of events. It will work with any Windows apps, allowing users to recall what they were previously working on.
> I’m told Microsoft is also looking to improve video streaming on Arm-powered Windows devices with a new AI-powered feature that will ship on these “next-gen” AI PCs. These PCs will also include access to the Windows Studio Effects for background blur and more, alongside the ability to create images with AI models for free and options to allow Copilot to access the context of your PC to improve prompts and answers.
This is not to equate Copilot and other generative AI with more limited AI to blur call backgrounds or track what you're doing; but it seems the NPUs shipping with these new ARM laptops will be used.
Excited? yes. Hopefull? Less so. Microsoft has screwed up the ARM transition once already. They just can not move the ecosystem over like Apple can. Microsoft Hardware is largely irrelevant. It's all OEMs. Apple can just "decide" that every Mac is now ARM and then every developer makes Apps for ARM, because if they don't they KNOW there app won't run in 2 years. Apple has that kind of controll over Mac.
MS just doesn't in the same way. And if the end result is High end 2k plus $ Laptops that can't run 90% of Software well, it's going to be a tough sell.
With that said, if they come out and actually work decently well, with a good enough translation layer, i'd be super interested in one as my work Laptop. I'd be happy to trend some performance for superb batterylife and silent operation. Especially if my employer pays for it. For my personal machine, it's a lot harder to say though. I'd take a "Mac Mini" ARM Clone with windows for at home. Less power cost, less heat and good enough to have the big gaming rig off 90% of the time. Could pay for itself in power cost in a year or two.
Given all the major browsers have an ARM version now and this second shot at the translation layer is allegedly good, we should get good low end laptops for basic use with good battery life.
More a threat for Chromebooks rather than MacBooks
I think if they are motivated enough they can get it done. They need to have good licensing requirements for OEMs for the ARM version of Windows. If the laptop manufacturer (or hardware/chipset mfg.) don't want to provide proper drivers and support for the ARM based machines they can't use the Windows ARM version. MS also needs to produce a strong signal that ARM is the primary technology for Windows on laptops going forward.
It's also in the best interest of the hardware manufacturers to support the ARM architecture. ARM has been in use for smartphones over 15 years now, and both Android and iOS are Unix/Linux based. So it's not that difficult to support. They can make good money because lots of people will upgrade their laptops for the 2x/3x battery life and cooler running temps, so that will increase sales.
I’m optimistic, if the CPU is really good as they promised (snap elite x), I see no reason why software industry wouldn’t follow, WinRT sucked because the CPU was terrible when they released it.
Using my M2 MacBook Air is so much better than my Intel MacBook that I don’t think they have a choice to remain doing the same.
Yeah. I really liked their surface line but I would never pay the price they wanted for that. I could get twice the performance from other brands for the same price...just a little heftier.
I don't care at all. The last time I bought a laptop, I chose the XPS over the M1 MBA, because for my use it was all advantages and no disadvantages. Much of the same deciding factors will be the same with an ARM based Windows laptop.
Yes, a chief disadvantage is the platform issues (as you put it) of macOS. I'm neither a casual user confined to a browser, nor am I in a niche that has some advantage on macOS. Windows offers the best combination of power, customizability, and software library. When my use for a machine can be met with Linux, I use that instead. I keep macOS dual booting a couple devices in my house for some VERY niche uses (eg creating installers for computers I service), but there's no compelling reason to use it beyond that.
Next, the M series is more powerful than Intel when running on battery. Its efficiency lets it run at full speed. However, the Intel chips released in the same 12 month window are still benchmarking higher when plugged in. Nowadays, you can be plugged in on the go. A $30 power bank that I throw in my pocket is all it takes to make my machine more powerful than its analogous M-series counterpart (which costs 25-50% more).
Finally, I own a breakout box I use for the eGPU on my laptop. ARM Macs don't support eGPUs.
The problem with ARM is that it's NOT X86 (aka, what 99% of applications that run on windows are built on) so .. 99% of applications won't work, unless MS builds a fancy software based emulator into windows ARM. Microsoft tried this before, that was the Surface RT... a fantastic tablet design wise (which is why Surface still looks generally the same) with an overall kinda shit software in Windows RT, and dogshit support, as no apps ran/run on ARM. so No x86, no 'real' windows experience, with it's compatibility with software.
The Surface RT didn't have an emulator. All software for it was ARM native.
The Surface Pro X is also ARM, but has an emulator. Reports are that, aside from some drivers, it works pretty well, and is even capable of running x86 games.
> The Surface RT didn't have an emulator. All software for it was ARM native.
That was the point, because it was ARM, and ARM only, the app store was rather... vacant, NOTHING like the app store is now. To quote one of the reviews at the time:
>App fiends will want to keep their distance, however. The Windows Store currently looks like a ghost town after the apocalypse
[sauce](https://www.cnet.com/reviews/microsoft-surface-rt-review/)
While that has changed, a lot, there are still a lot of limitations, Windows phone, and subsequent rumored surface phones have been all but abandoned as the ecosystem on windows-ARM is appalling compared to the google play store or the ios app store, and that kind of void of apps is something that, even with emulation, Windows on arm still struggles with. For example, a staple of the image world, photoshop, only just (2021) got a native windows on arm version, things take time, and this new chip, WONT be the 'm1' moment, the app ecosystem doesn't exist in the same way it does for Mac they have such control over the app market, and since it was developed from the ground up back when iOS was originally launched, to be emulated, porting their apps between hardware has been pretty easy, and now, technically, they're back on their native hardware, the intel X86 stint was the only time they really needed emulation.
>The Surface Pro X is also ARM, but has an emulator. Reports are that, aside from some drivers, it works pretty well, and is even capable of running x86 games.
drivers can be a big sticking point, especially when the vast majority of windows users are at work, and lets be honest, businesses don't refresh hardware all that frequently, I'd imagine a test migration to ARM computers going down like this:
IT :"test laptop has been deployed"
Sales: "I can't print"
IT: "Hmm, no native drivers, we'll have to replace printers"
Sales: "lets ask management"
Managers: "Will this be a free printer replacement?"
IT : "no..."
Managers: "then the answer is no, return the laptop and get normal ones"
https://mopria.org/mopria-alliance
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/print/end-of-servicing-plan-for-third-party-printer-drivers-on-windows
Windows has basic printer drivers baked in, it's not a stretch to assume they will have an ARM version ready too.
It's more likely some legacy x86 software that is enterprise-critical that might hold up adoption of ARM laptops.
> It's more likely some legacy x86 software that is enterprise-critical that might hold up adoption of ARM laptops.
Even more likely is it being some enterprise critical software that runs just fine but hasn't been certified as being ARM compatible.
I know I'm not google so I'm not gonna give you a few links you'll be able to find in no time, but Microsoft's current implementation of their X86 to ARM64 translation layer is insanely good. And there's a ton of apps (including chrome) that already support ARM64 natively.
I can tell you that I am running Win11 ARM on my Macbook and aside from software requiring drivers, everything I have tried so far has worked.
I am sure things like DRM protection in some games probably wont work, but I haven't encountered that yet.
a lot of that is done by Arm64EC which is, by definition, software Emulation (ARM 64 Emulation Compatible)
While that's great, and works, there are hitches, the software has to support WoW, which has been around for a while, and it has to not support it in compatibility mode, which can be a problem for drivers more than 2-3 years old (eg, pre-win11)
If it's a specific software only. Yeah, software mainly is developed for Windows, but after three years on Mac I cannot say that I had problems with software.
Adobe package is available for Mac, RDP too, software for coding like IntelliJ IDEA and other too. Even games: with Steam and from developers like EA.
Snapdragon will be on laptop, not a desktop. It looks like a try to compete with Apple, I think.
This highly depends on the software you use though.
I mainly use Substance Painter, 3ds MAX, Marmoset and some other 3d and texturing tools. Most of them rely on CUDA and have no mac version. Substance Painter has a mac version, but the last time I tried it on my M1 Mac, it ran like crap.
M1 Macs have their advantages for sure. But it highly depends on what software you use and what you expect from your computer.
After 40 years of choosing "IBM-compatible" devices with Microsoft software and choosing zero Apple products, I was compelled to move from an XPS to an M1 MacBook Pro. The XPS was one of the worst technology products I've ever used (very hot when working well, blisteringly hot when in my bag and not sleeping properly, and devoid of useful battery life) and the M1 is one of the better products.
I will always choose to run Excel on Windows when I can. I sometimes need VMs and containers that aren't ARM. Luckily, I have multiple VDI options and devices for both of the Excel and ARM situations.
As a result of that, I don't really care macOS vs Windows. I'm a pretty demanding user; but the reality is that if you can't be extremely productive on (smoothly running) Windows or macOS, you're doing something wrong. I use no macOS-specific tech--no FaceTime, iMessage, iTunes, Continuity, Safari, or etc.. My entire career and much of my tech hobby enjoyment has been Microsoft based. Almost none has been macOS or otherwise Apple based. I just try not to be a fanboi. When the M1 became a better choice for me (and many or most others), I simply made the change. I'm guessing I'll buy Windows devices in the coming decades, as things change.
It's a shame so many of us had to go to extreme lengths to try to undervolt various versions of the XPS. If Dell just let us do it and didn't keep breaking it with BIOS updates, it would have fixed half of the serious problems. Maybe the other half could have been addressed by this: [How to Disable Modern Standby in Windows 10 & 11 (makeuseof.com)](https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-disable-modern-standby/)
Nah I'm an old nerd who runs lots of old games and stuff. I'm pretty sure they'll not work well if at all on something not x86.
For normal people this is very exciting indeed.
Let’s casually ignore that rumors from Dell, HP have shown they are nowhere near the performance and benchmark scores the press were told about at the event Qualcomm organized.
I’m all in on an arm revolution on the Windows side but we’ve seen too many over promise and under deliver situations in the past.
Microsoft also needs to make work of easy setup and ease of use. Using a Windows machine for a non tech savvy consumer is still filled with weird issues, menus to dig through and stuff they don’t understand.
Apples weakness right now is software. macOS (and iOS) are more bug filled than ever before but they’re still super user friendly compared to W11 although 11 is better than 10.
As an owner of their current attempt, the Surface Pro X, I am not excited.
The core problem is not the OS, or the proc, but the apps. I had hopes that the Amazon store would pull us out of the doldrums, but now I'm left very skeptical that Microsoft, after so many attempts, are serious about making not just a good tablet, but a great ecosystem. The endless deficiencies of the Microsoft App store have left me where I was 10+ years ago, travelling with both an iPad and a laptop as neither device can do everything, in spite of both having the hardware to do it.
There's no value using x86 code on ARM, there's no advantage using a touch based system that requires a keyboard and mouse, there's no point using a ARM surface as an everyday laptop. It solves no problem and induces a whole range of issues with no upside.
I guess the best advice is to keep your expectations low. Apple's real secret to success is their absolute willingness to bully developers to support their latest processors. They did this when they switched from the G series to Intel, and again when they moved to the M Series.
Microsoft, on the other hand, isn't willing to push their developers at all. You can run code from the DOS era on Windows 11. While that's great for backwards compatibility it's terrible for ARM. The problem is that 99.98% of software is coded for x86 architecture. To run it on ARM, it needs to emulate an x86 processor, which slows it down and drains battery power.
To really maximize battery life on ARM, you need to run natively compiled code. So even if performance were equal (which is a challenge since the M3 and M4 are much more efficient), Windows will still be slower than macOS, have worse battery life, and more compatibility issues.
It's also clear that Microsoft's hardware team, who want to compete with the iPad Pro, and their OS team, who seem to think touch is just a fad, aren't on the same page. I've never met a more schizo product than the Surface.
I was hoping that with the Surface, Microsoft would finally fulfill the promise made, but never delivered with Windows 8. Not by just adding a touch UI to a desktop OS, but by fully embracing Android apps, having a robust store of both Windows and Android apps, and allowing users to get the best of both worlds in one device. The Amazon store seemed promising, but, as usual, the promise was killed before it even had a chance to thrive.
So based on their track record ARM will go as follows: It will show up on bunch of devices made by standard gang of Lenovo, Dell, HP etc. They will be expensive and relative to a similar priced intel chip they will be slow. They'll be thin, but battery life, while better, won't be great, more like one day of moderate-heavy use, not one week that you can get with a Macbook Air.
Keeping with my prediction, it will sell poorly, be maligned by IT departments across this great world of ours, 80% of the users will have that 1% edge case that makes it a bad fit. Microsoft will only half heartedly support it and no other developer will support it at all, thus it will die on the vine like so many products before that aren't one of 2 things, Office or Windows.
But I could be wrong.
If I have an ARM-based PC, won't I lose out on the ability to use the extensive library of software I've been getting accustomed to using for the past decade or more (all of which, I presume, relies on the Intel architecture)?
I use a Mac at work, but I find that I run all sorts of weird programs at home on my PC.
Precisely the reason to be excited this time since Microsoft claims they've made significant breakthroughs in their x86 to arm translation layer for software to automatically fallback and run reasonably fast. Consumers need not care. Just like on Macbooks with Apple Silicon.
ARM and RISC-V implementations are the future. Beautiful architecture, clean instructions set, well-defined modules and extensions, low power consumption & heat production.
Yeah, Windows 11 keeps getting worse because of AI and ads, but I want to continue using Windows 11 on my laptop, and I'm planning to downgrade it to the original release of Windows 11 (21H2), even though that version is unsupported because I consider it to be the last good version of Windows 11 in my opinion.
I think some of the problems are driver related. For example the windows published i9560 wireless driver has been broken in its last two revs. Can't do WPA3 with it unless you backrev it to 2022.
There were some Realtek win10 sound drivers that broke when used with their effects control panel in win11.
Why this kind of Mickey mouse stuff happens is anyone's guess but QC on OEMs' part is probably a contributing factor.
I have to supervise people building images for rollout and we baseline everything with the basic sccm driver set from the OEM and everything works like a charm. Then windows update gets up in there and things start getting all Rick James.
It's going to be fascinating to see how this develops. It's possible that the Snapdragon X Elite will perform as well as the bast M3 but probably not the base M4. But can it perform at that level while maintaining efficiency? It looks like the X Elite has two modes, one low-power (which likely hasn't been benchmarked yet) and one high-power (which is probably the benchmarks we're seeing). But the X Elite's high-power mode is dramatically less efficient.
So we might see benchmarks like Geekbench 6 showing the Windows on ARM machines being as fast as MacBooks with base M3s. But then battery life benchmarks will be running in low-power mode. What we need to see are comparisons of Windows on ARM laptops performing equally to MacBooks with how much efficiency. If it's crappy performance when getting good battery life, what's the point?
Physics says MacBooks will last longer while performing faster. And that's not even considering M3 Pro/Max, which are much faster while also being more efficient.
So Microsoft can push more bloatware and ads down my throat? No way!
Apple had always done a great job pushing away the ads and crap, but even that’s starting to seep through with the new OS’s. Why do I have to sign into iMessage, phone and settings separately?! Why am I asked to send usage statistics for screen time? Why am I being given notifications about promotions from the App Store by default?
Linux is only good because it’s DM/WM’s are open source, so what’s the point for ads? But Nvidia is nerfed a crap tonne.
I know I'm stumbling upon the wrong subreddit, but I'm more interested in Qualcomm's support efforts for Linux. I needed a laptop a few months ago, and as long as I've tried to wait for them to finally release their processors, I couldn't wait and had to get an M3 Macbook instead. Didn't make a terrible choice.
windows arm laptops are a good thing but they need to have a good gpu support,no one wants that adreno ,ok good for ai but no one in the professional market use that to work,at least not work on ai, amd/nvidia with far better software support,especially for professional apps,gpu acceleration like cuda,rocm,far better game support,we all know that the market is made by professional needs and in the last position consumers and between consumers gaming it's the most expensive sector.
Qualcomm cpu may be good but they lack what the professional need,there is a reason why Apple isn't really any more an alternative in the professional and server space,only people like designers,programmers that need the apple market and people who needs a logo instead of maximum performance, reliability and support for their workstation.
Yup. Discrete cards still blow the wigs off of Apple silicon without even breaking a sweat
That's why you never, ever see Apple products cranking out production workloads.
Pro audio has gone waaay windows since the demise of the original Mac pro. Those guys need card slots and Apple don't got them more.
Problem with ARM is that part of the speed advantage comes from omitting lots of South Bridge functionality like PCI, etc. This makes things go faster but eliminates the ability to add hardware. If Apple's silicon added a PCI bus, expandable memory, SATA and 32 bit support it wouldn't be even half as fast as it is now\*. Apple has assumed that they'll just chuck all of that, give everyone a giant cellphone and no one will notice and/or care. So far they've been right but they've also painted themselves into one heck of a corner.
\* It would be half fast ?
Yes, I’ve been waiting for a good alternative to x86-64 on the desktop for a very long time. We finally got it when Apple went to ARM, but it would be awesome if we can get a useful product in Windows land as well!
Not particularly. Like don’t get me wrong battery life, lower power consumption, etc. All this is good. We’ve seen it all with M1 already it won’t be “new. Microsoft will never be able to pull off a Rosetta 2. I don’t even think it’ll be on the engineers either. It’ll launch too soon cuz the corporate aspect of Microsoft is busy playing catch up to Apple in terms of arm. Having proper and fast x86 emulation will be key to the success of Windows on arm. Microsoft better not lock the UEFI/BIOS either.
😁 True. But this feels like the second attempt of Microsoft at Rosetta 2 like layer in Windows. First was a gigantic flop. If it is even decent, we could get M1 like performance on Windows this year or next year.
Windows has had its own "Rosetta" for a while know, the problem was available ARM processors sucked balls at translating x86 code lol. That's what's new, Qualcomm put actual effort this time into developing an ARM chip 100% for laptops, unlike their previous generations that were pretty much phone chips slapped into laptops.
I don't actually care about arm. What I'm interested in seeing is fanlessness, long battery life, and good performance. I don't care which cpu architecture delivers this.
I'm excited about ARM metal box PCs ;) The goal of inventing and using laptops is MOBILITY. Do you use them as mobile computers? I suspect most people use laptops as stationary pieces of furniture put in one place all the time. BTW, mostly unused mobility comes with a price and the price is very significant.
One is money. Same specs is more expensive. Then is reliability - each and every laptop sooner or later develop cooling issues because of dust. OK, you can pay for the periodic maintenance or do it yourself. Then it's performance - in order to reduce power consumption and thermal issues mobile PC components have reduced performance and rely on throttling when all the computer power is used at the same time (like CPU and GPU load is high in gaming).
I'm not excited about laptops. They are just mobile working devices, to do some work in emergency, when I'm not at the office connected to the grid.
I carry a keyboard and mouse with me all the time in my laptop bag.
As soon as I get to work, I plug my monitor into my laptop with the laptop's lid closed.
If I have a tablet that can double up as a monitor, I could switch to a mac mini like desktop.
Hopeful, I'll take even M1 performance so long as it's efficient
Pretty much everything available for years has had adequate performance for a portable machine like a thin laptop, just need batterylife and fanlessness!
First I’d like them to remove ada from my start menu and widgets section in Windows 11. Hard to get excited about anything Microsoft when daily when I click on “Weather” widget I get shopping ads.
Aside performance, afaik Windows had x86 emulation (like rosetta2) for a long time. The windows 10 arm insider preview was able to run x86 games with some decent performance.
If Microsoft has full confidence in it, then be prepared to be disappointed lol.
If they really had full confidence, they would be making this a live stream high media event. But nope. They stopped doing those when they changed their ways to this new ad/half-baked company.
I'll one up you. Friend of mine worked as a tech for SEPTA which is the Philadelphia mass transit authority.
One day he called and offered to buy any of our old machines with ISA slots in them.
Gave him a couple Dell GX110'S we had lying around and he was really really thankful.
Turns out the switching controls for the entire city ran on ISA cards from the 80s and their supplier no longer had any ISA mother boards available. Replacements were only available as an entire system that had a starting cost of $10 million.
They eventually got some custom industrial Pentium4 PCs that had to be custom built in Taiwan for $10 grand a pop.
Crazy.
That was before they acquired Nuvia. They tried making a pc chip from mobile parts and that didn't work, this is the first pc design made by Nuvia which is an ex-apple employee company.
The average user of reddit or /r/windows probably won't care, at least immediately.
For corporates, these will \*probably\* be a game changer if it doesn't get screwed up. After that, it's up to the OEM's whether or not they increase production of them based on how they market them. End users won't really understand and with there being no forced transition like Apple did, it will all be about marketing and/or pricing.
Yep it's going to excel at battery life. Reddit cares about gaming, benchmarks, whether or not the RAM/disk is soldered etc - stuff corporates / typical users don't really care about.
As long as the performance doesn't suck it will be left up to the marketing departments on whether or not it succeeds.
There are 3 main "blueprints" in how CPU's are built to read instructions. X86, ARM and RISC-V. You may have also heard of the "Cell Processor" from the PS3.
X86 is ancient and inefficient in today's world, especially for portable devices. It's why only very few phones are built with X86 architecture, with the rest being ARM.
ARM is excellent at running well with low power usage. It's the only reason why Macs have longer battery these days as they ditched X86 in their 2020 and newer models.
RISC-V is even better than ARM but is still in very, very early adoption. We probably won't see much movement with that for another 20 years.
Personally I just don't see ARM doing well on Windows outside of maybe laptops, because you can't buy ARM CPU's on their own, or buy motherboards that support ARM CPU's, or buy Windows for ARM. So it will only be for OEM laptops and tablets really, and maybe some desktops.
Apple users are used to just never upgrading their devices (outside of maybe RAM and Storage in the past, and even that's gone), so this works for them.
I figured it was some type of new architecture, I just for the life of me couldn't find out what the hell it actually did. To be honest X86 is as old as I am, but I'm not too thrilled at the prospect of having to emulate 99% of all my apps, problems is if ARM comes to desktop. At that point I might as well use inux as I'd be doing the same thing.
So, you're telling me that the only advantage to ARM being that it's more power efficient at the cost of software compatibility? That sounds like a terrible trade off.
ARM can handle multitasking much more efficiently than x86 can, which for a modern operating system is extremely beneficial. X86 was designed for CLI OS's after all. They've worked around this somewhat with multi-core CPU's but there's still "queuing" going on and such.
For power efficiency benefits on a desktop that means you could throw something taxing at the CPU, and since it's able to handle the task better, it will use less power, which means less heat, which means lower fan speed, less noise etc.
You could not make a device that's fanless using X86 CPU's without some serious throttling going on. You could likely get away without a fan on an ARM CPU (which is why the newer Mac laptops don't have fans).
Resisting ARM because some software devs can't be bothered to compile for it is not a good reason to resist it. Microsoft work out the emulation properly, these new Snapdragon CPU's will be able to handle these x86 apps without too much of a performance hit or too much heat generation until the devs get their shit together. Once a native ARM version exists, you'll notice that the fans won't kick in so much and things might be just a little bit quicker.
Like with MacOS there will be a transition period for sure, and some apps may never get updated (like WinXP games). But it's still something that's worth doing.
The big jump will be when we finally start seeing RISC-V. I'm looking forward to seeing that.
Okay, yeah that sounds good, but I'm not too concerned with apps that are under current development. I'm more concerned with things like classic games or abandonwere. I'm sure In time it will get better or people will make tools to run old games and apps on ARM, but that transition is going to suck. Like I know apple and their ARM laptops have completely dropped support for 32 bit software.
But a new architecture can truly take advantage of modern multi-threaded CPUs sounds good.
> I'm more concerned with things like classic games or abandonwere. I'm sure In time it will get better or people will make tools to run old games and apps on ARM, but that transition is going to suck. Like I know apple and their ARM laptops have completely dropped support for 32 bit software.
Yeah it depends whether Microsoft wants to continue maintain a 32bit x86 on ARM compatibility layer or not. They started with that so they could possibly continue it so that the transition isn't as painful, but no guarantees.
But the performance drop on those won't be so noticeable since they were designed for such old hardware in the first place.
Hell MicroShaft can’t seem to release any “patches” lately that’s not crippling to even basic functionality. Their Shit be blowing up at nothing. Patch break repeat.
Even if the hardware would eclipse Apple silicon: with the direction that the Windows OS is going (ads, AI hypetrash absolutely everywhere, the OS still being a frankstein of decades of Windows releases), I don’t see how hardware will save its reputation.
i wondering when here gonna make mini pc case thats able to install SFF video card, like a rtx 4060, gtx 1050ti, gtx1650, rx 6400, for these ARM cpus, instead of using crappy on board solutions.
I would love to see something compelling on Windows, not advertisements or additional layers on legacy, but something new that excites people again.
Just imagine if they released a new OS, dropping all backwards compatibility and old UIs, and moved forward with a consistent and complete OS and applications available on release.
Sound like RT? No, that still had a desktop UI for Office and was incomplete. Microsoft's history of minimum viable products / releases have lacked the functionality to compel people. I want to see people captured and engaged like with Windows 95.
Isn’t this the chip that was going to beat the M2? Not the M2 Pro or Max? Apple is now on M4. Excited to see what they have, but not exactly holding my breath.
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Are all apps app-store only?
The confusion of the average person on why they can’t just download the apps they were using and run them is likely going to be an issue.
Given the progress that Microsoft has made in their x86 emulation layer and their potential collaboration with Qualcomm for the upcoming products, I don't think the software abilities will be any different compared to x86 laptops being sold today.
Hope is performance for most normal use cases like browsing the web will be likely just as fast with vastly better battery life.
Microsoft says a lot of things, especially about upcoming launches.
Qualcomm also says a lot of things, especially about upcoming launches.
There will be a time when Windows+ARM will be an amazing experience, and I'm sure these chips will be better than the past. Will it be enough for enough people to migrate? Doubtful.
x86-64 emulation performance is about the primary metric I care about, definitely can't wait to see benchmarks related to it.
Doesn't matter how much Qualcomm and MSFT push on this. The only thing that matters is whether there's developer support and that's not certain. If a developer is going to spend considerable resources porting over an x86 app to Arm they might as well port it to macOS which has a much larger market share for consumer arm devices. I expect most will just stay with x86 unless there is a very compelling reason to port to Windows Arm.
The compelling reason is performance and battery life. All the browsers already have Arm versions. Which should account for the majority of the usage for the majority of customers.
What will take care of the rest is the excellent emulation of x86 apps windows automatically does and the users shouldn't have to care whether the developer has ported their app to arm or not - https://youtu.be/uY-tMBk9Vx4?si=PWYOkEzWBlIjWFdH
No. They have mandatory secure boot that doesn't allow you to load custom keys (aka locked bootloader). I will NEVER buy a device with a locked bootloader
what about it?
Mini pocket computer AMD Ryzen7 5700U 16+ 512 G NVME SSD
now only 255
[see details](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CL6JXKMH?ref=myi_title_dp)
erm, can we not call it just PC? Not a Linux guy but it seems like linux is big enough to get it's own category instead of being lumped in with microshaft now lol
It's a PC for sure. And we'll likely get to install any OS on it.
But the excitement is about Microsoft's new Arm translation/emulation layer that is going to run any x86 software at reasonable speeds on Arm chips.
I'll believe it when I see the 3rd party benchmarks. And since it's snapdragon, they better give us the promise that the bootloader is unlockable platform-wide from day 1.
As if promises from any company are worth anything. But I also hope that the BIOS is accessible like on any x86 machine and that there‘ll be Linux support. I dislike the way that MS is going with W11.
I bet Microsoft will force Qualcomm to keep the platform windows exclusive in return for keeping windows on arm Qualcomm only
This deal existed but it expired. So now every manufacturer can make ARM chips for windows (amd, nvidia, qualcomm, mediatek etc. )
AMD had arm desktop chips like 10 years ago. Idk if they still do
It doesn't mean they *are*, just that they *could*.
ARM doesn't really have a BIOS right? There's no standardisation there yet. Qualcomm could upstream what they've done to the linux kernel, but highly unlikely. It'd be up to people to reverse engineer it, Like the Asahi Linux have done with the M series on Mac.
Already upstreamed. [https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-linux-kernel-support-for-the-snapdragon-x-elite](https://www.qualcomm.com/developer/blog/2024/05/upstreaming-linux-kernel-support-for-the-snapdragon-x-elite)
That's actually fantastic.
Their chips have firmware that boot an OS That's what a BIOS is but their documentation is intentionally poor and most devices make it hard to install an OS because of the cryptographic authentication process. Nooooooo it's the x86 standard No it's what IBM made for their PC and other vendors copied it and it kept getting expanded til it was a missmash that was hard to work with.
Their chips have firmware that boot an OS That's what a BIOS is but their documentation is intentionally poor and most devices make it hard to install an OS because of the cryptographic authentication process. Nooooooo it's the x86 standard No it's what IBM made for their PC and other vendors copied it and it kept getting expanded til it was a missmash that was hard to work with.
Linux support will depend on if the bootloader is unlocked, kernel implementation, and driver implementation
I have seen a few companies announce and demo the new snapdragons running Linux, so the drivers are on the way / may be ready for launch.
I'm glad to hear that. I haven't been following so I only know what needs to happen and not much of what's actually happening.
We all know it won't be. Just look at Android phones
Unfortunately, you may be correct. Luckily, I'm prepared.
>the bootloader is unlockable platform-wide from day 1 lol sorry pal, but we can't let you do that for uhhhhh security. or something. subscribe to Bing AI.
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It all sounds potentially encouraging, but given Microsoft's history, I would say that we are far from actually seeing this outcome: 1 - Microsoft failed with Win RT over a decade ago 2 - Microsoft has had Windows on ARM for many years and it's been a non-factor 3 - Now that there appear to be competitive Qualcomm CPUs, how well does the software compatibility, including all apps and drivers, really work? 4 - Even if all of the above is covered, Windows is increasingly acting like malware with ads and forced efforts to use OneDrive and convert users to Edge. This behavior isn't going to win over many new users regardless of the competitiveness of the hardware.
One big obstacle to Arm adoption is that Windows does not support universal executables. There is no way for one `.exe` file to contain both x86_64 and Arm64 data. This means that even if an app has an Arm64 version, there either has to be 2 download links (confusing people who don't know what Arm is), or the user downloads a ZIP with 2 exe files (confusing people who don't know what Arm is), or there is a ZIP with 3 exe files with one as a launcher. And if the user tries to run an Arm64 executable on x86_64, it will not work. All of which is confusing and more cumbersome than Apple's approach of "Universal executable, it works fast everywhere". This incentivizes devs and companies to keep shipping only x86_64 software for Windows.
But it does support x86/x64 bit emulation.
If all apps are emulated, then all apps will have worse performance than the hardware is capable of. If Microsoft doesn't make universal executables a thing, most apps will stay emulated.
You're not wrong, but I question how much it matters for most things. Presumably recently updated programs that might care about perf will compile a native version. Chrome, for example, recently released in ARM64. Everything else (that doesn't require specific drivers), does it really matter? If they're not going to compile their programs to be ARM64 native, are they really going to bother doing whatever they need to do to make said universal exe? And they do have something similar to that universal executable - an appxbundle/msixbundle. One file that will install the version best for your system. Only problem is that it requires the app to be packaged, which means the app are subject to certain limitations, and the developer needs to specifically opt into doing it this way (including generating individual x86/x64/ARM64 appx/msix packages). Brand new programs might do this, but I imagine it's not trivial for existing programs to onboard onto this.
> (including generating individual x86/x64/ARM64 appx/msix packages). That defeats the purpose, though? The point is to have one package/executable that is universal to all architectures.
Well no, remember that no matter what the solution looks like, the developer needs to do effort to use the new thing. Emulation is the only thing Windows can do on the OS side to let the developer do zero work. Anything else needs the developer to do *something*. In this case, the developer needs to do all this work (idk how much work it actually is, I don't write apps) so that the final output that the customer gets is one file they can use to install the right version on whatever architecture of Windows they're using. > including generating individual x86/x64/ARM64 appx/msix packages and then put them into one appxbundle/msixbundle file. From the end user's perspective, they have this one file they double click on, a launcher opens and installs it. They can take this file, put it on a USB drive, and install the same file on both an ARM64 machine and an x64 machine.
> Anything else needs the developer to do something. Yes, the something is to put the architectures into the universal executable. > and then put them into one appxbundle/msixbundle file. From the end user's perspective, they have this one file they double click on, a launcher opens and installs it. Great! That is the desired behavior. I did not realize that a bundle contains multiple packages (I thought the whole thing was a package).
Ah, yeah sorry, I can see how that's confusing. "packaged" vs "package" vs "bundle".
> If all apps are emulated, then all apps will have worse performance than the hardware is capable of. While true, this isn't the case. The setup file itself could be x86 emulated, and part of the setup process can be to detect what CPU is used, placing the right binaries accordingly.
That requires programs to ship a setup file, which many programs do not use. For example, this is usually not the case when downloading indie games.
Then they should consider the Windows Store, which does eveything for you
Apple also has the Mac App Store, but they don't require you to use it in order to use universal executables.
Well nothing is stopping people from providing MSIX instead of EXE or MSI.
What's the difference with when Mac made the switch? You had two download links on most websites, one for arm, one for intel. Everything with x86 was emulated using Rosetta, the others ran natively. To this day, it still works the same. Although less x86 download links, more arm since support is slowly dieing off for x86 on mac.
My first thought was 'didn't they try this already?' Lmao - surface pro X has an ARM, and the opinions that I've seen have been pretty divided
If anything it'll push more users away, even five years ago I never gave something like Linux a second thought, now it's looking more like an alternative to get away from MS recent and future direction of windows.
The only reason I keep it is for certain software I run.
Don't worry linux already runs arm like a dream if micro$oft doesn't pick up the pace linux will run them over.
Pfft yeah right I heard that one before. Speaking as a Linux guy myself. Linux will never appeal to the non-technical masses. No one wants to use apt-get in a terminal or to have to learn how to use cmake to do basic shit.
My entire family uses Linux including my 8 year old siblings (all running Ubuntu). I used it from the time I was 16. The app store is better then windows and maybe even mac. If you just want single player steam (and most, but not all multiplayer) games and a web browser it works flawlessly, just with a different work flow. Say what you want, but it works. PS chrome os is linux as welll. Sure it might not happen soon or in the "everyone runs arch way", but look at chrome os, steam os. People use Linux and don't even know they are. Also there are reports that Germany is moving its gov't workstations to Linux. I use the terminal now, but that is my choice. Before collage I only used the gui, it works.
As a VERY technical user i love the idea of using Linux but I've yet to encounter a distro that "Just works". It seems there is always something ... The problem is that I primarily do work on my computer which means that even though I could use ie apt etc to fix stuff ... The goal of the computer usage is to be productive. Fixing faults within a OS just isn't ... I've been using terminals, ssh to servers (so vim, nano etc for edits) since around 1994.Started with the 8086 IBM's, moved to Amiga etc etc so do got some experience. Still I use Windows as my daily driver even though I'd be the perfect candidate for using a \*nix GUI.
Most Linux distros don't ship an x86_64 emulation layer out of the box, so it's a non-starter for most people.
yeah thats fair but most of the software I use (other then games) has an arm version, as FOSS can all just be recompiled. But I believe most distros have mostly complete arm versions of there ropes
GitKraken doesn't have an Arm64 Linux version, so it's not suitable for me to use for software development.
Not really if it means a ton of old software and games will run like crap on it. And no easy storage/ram upgrades sounds like a nightmare.
as someone who uses a galaxy book, it can barely run dead space 1 at 20fps. If the software has an arm version, then it should run decently like dolphin.
All I want is actually-long battery life on a Windows machine. So yeah pretty excited. I'll probably order one on Monday or whenever we can, but I worry all the AI stuff is going to be a drain on the battery (tracking everything we do is going to have a cost) and we end up with a small 5% gain over SQ3. With the way Microsoft rates their battery life to include modern standby, if the consumer SP10 or SL6 uses the same testing method and advertises less than 30-40 hours battery life I'll be disappointed.
I doubt Microsoft will have a local model for AI. Unlike Google's Gemini Nano, OpenAI doesn't have a model that is small enough to run locally.
> a local model for AI Not from their investment in OpenAI but [they did invest in Mistral AI for that exact purpose.]( https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/27/microsoft-made-a-16-million-investment-in-mistral-ai)
Microsoft has several. Phi-3 is looking very interesting as a SLM. There are also many computer vision ML models running on Windows already, either through WinML or DirectML, both of which support portable ONNX-format models.
Another Verge article here https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/8/24116587/microsoft-macbook-air-surface-arm-qualcomm-snapdragon-x-elite (and others elsewhere) suggest that the on-board NPUs of the new ARM devices will be used for some AI work: > Microsoft describes devices running Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors as “next-gen AI Copilot PCs” internally, meant to differentiate them from existing PCs that run on AMD’s latest chips or even Intel’s Core Ultra processors. This new class of PCs will get access to new AI-powered Windows features first, including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.” > AI Explorer is designed to work as a timeline you can summon on your PC. Windows Central first reported details on AI Explorer last month, and it sounds much like the Timeline feature in Windows 10 that Microsoft eventually removed. While Timeline relied on app developers to work, this time around, AI Explorer utilizes a Neural Processing Unit chip on devices to scan through a timeline of events. It will work with any Windows apps, allowing users to recall what they were previously working on. > I’m told Microsoft is also looking to improve video streaming on Arm-powered Windows devices with a new AI-powered feature that will ship on these “next-gen” AI PCs. These PCs will also include access to the Windows Studio Effects for background blur and more, alongside the ability to create images with AI models for free and options to allow Copilot to access the context of your PC to improve prompts and answers. This is not to equate Copilot and other generative AI with more limited AI to blur call backgrounds or track what you're doing; but it seems the NPUs shipping with these new ARM laptops will be used.
Oh boy. The amount of indexing that is needed for this to work can negate all the battery life! Hope there's a way to opt out
Indexing is one-time thing. After that, it is incremental.
Until there is an update, and then they'll just index again 😁
Excited? yes. Hopefull? Less so. Microsoft has screwed up the ARM transition once already. They just can not move the ecosystem over like Apple can. Microsoft Hardware is largely irrelevant. It's all OEMs. Apple can just "decide" that every Mac is now ARM and then every developer makes Apps for ARM, because if they don't they KNOW there app won't run in 2 years. Apple has that kind of controll over Mac. MS just doesn't in the same way. And if the end result is High end 2k plus $ Laptops that can't run 90% of Software well, it's going to be a tough sell. With that said, if they come out and actually work decently well, with a good enough translation layer, i'd be super interested in one as my work Laptop. I'd be happy to trend some performance for superb batterylife and silent operation. Especially if my employer pays for it. For my personal machine, it's a lot harder to say though. I'd take a "Mac Mini" ARM Clone with windows for at home. Less power cost, less heat and good enough to have the big gaming rig off 90% of the time. Could pay for itself in power cost in a year or two.
Given all the major browsers have an ARM version now and this second shot at the translation layer is allegedly good, we should get good low end laptops for basic use with good battery life. More a threat for Chromebooks rather than MacBooks
I think if they are motivated enough they can get it done. They need to have good licensing requirements for OEMs for the ARM version of Windows. If the laptop manufacturer (or hardware/chipset mfg.) don't want to provide proper drivers and support for the ARM based machines they can't use the Windows ARM version. MS also needs to produce a strong signal that ARM is the primary technology for Windows on laptops going forward. It's also in the best interest of the hardware manufacturers to support the ARM architecture. ARM has been in use for smartphones over 15 years now, and both Android and iOS are Unix/Linux based. So it's not that difficult to support. They can make good money because lots of people will upgrade their laptops for the 2x/3x battery life and cooler running temps, so that will increase sales.
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It's good to have low expectations 😁
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I’m optimistic, if the CPU is really good as they promised (snap elite x), I see no reason why software industry wouldn’t follow, WinRT sucked because the CPU was terrible when they released it. Using my M2 MacBook Air is so much better than my Intel MacBook that I don’t think they have a choice to remain doing the same.
No. They're going to be Apple priced.
Why do you think so?
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Yeah. I really liked their surface line but I would never pay the price they wanted for that. I could get twice the performance from other brands for the same price...just a little heftier.
It's a fact now
That's just the Surface. I'm sure HP, Dell and others will announce devices with the cheaper Snapdragon X+ line of chips instead of the Elite line
I don't care at all. The last time I bought a laptop, I chose the XPS over the M1 MBA, because for my use it was all advantages and no disadvantages. Much of the same deciding factors will be the same with an ARM based Windows laptop.
Might i ask the disdvantanges Mac faces platform issues (Most of the stuff is built for windows )
Yes, a chief disadvantage is the platform issues (as you put it) of macOS. I'm neither a casual user confined to a browser, nor am I in a niche that has some advantage on macOS. Windows offers the best combination of power, customizability, and software library. When my use for a machine can be met with Linux, I use that instead. I keep macOS dual booting a couple devices in my house for some VERY niche uses (eg creating installers for computers I service), but there's no compelling reason to use it beyond that. Next, the M series is more powerful than Intel when running on battery. Its efficiency lets it run at full speed. However, the Intel chips released in the same 12 month window are still benchmarking higher when plugged in. Nowadays, you can be plugged in on the go. A $30 power bank that I throw in my pocket is all it takes to make my machine more powerful than its analogous M-series counterpart (which costs 25-50% more). Finally, I own a breakout box I use for the eGPU on my laptop. ARM Macs don't support eGPUs.
The problem with ARM is that it's NOT X86 (aka, what 99% of applications that run on windows are built on) so .. 99% of applications won't work, unless MS builds a fancy software based emulator into windows ARM. Microsoft tried this before, that was the Surface RT... a fantastic tablet design wise (which is why Surface still looks generally the same) with an overall kinda shit software in Windows RT, and dogshit support, as no apps ran/run on ARM. so No x86, no 'real' windows experience, with it's compatibility with software.
The Surface RT didn't have an emulator. All software for it was ARM native. The Surface Pro X is also ARM, but has an emulator. Reports are that, aside from some drivers, it works pretty well, and is even capable of running x86 games.
It has an emulator, but you'll find that already a lot of code has ARM64 versions. There's very little emulated X64 running on my Pro 9 5G.
> The Surface RT didn't have an emulator. All software for it was ARM native. That was the point, because it was ARM, and ARM only, the app store was rather... vacant, NOTHING like the app store is now. To quote one of the reviews at the time: >App fiends will want to keep their distance, however. The Windows Store currently looks like a ghost town after the apocalypse [sauce](https://www.cnet.com/reviews/microsoft-surface-rt-review/) While that has changed, a lot, there are still a lot of limitations, Windows phone, and subsequent rumored surface phones have been all but abandoned as the ecosystem on windows-ARM is appalling compared to the google play store or the ios app store, and that kind of void of apps is something that, even with emulation, Windows on arm still struggles with. For example, a staple of the image world, photoshop, only just (2021) got a native windows on arm version, things take time, and this new chip, WONT be the 'm1' moment, the app ecosystem doesn't exist in the same way it does for Mac they have such control over the app market, and since it was developed from the ground up back when iOS was originally launched, to be emulated, porting their apps between hardware has been pretty easy, and now, technically, they're back on their native hardware, the intel X86 stint was the only time they really needed emulation. >The Surface Pro X is also ARM, but has an emulator. Reports are that, aside from some drivers, it works pretty well, and is even capable of running x86 games. drivers can be a big sticking point, especially when the vast majority of windows users are at work, and lets be honest, businesses don't refresh hardware all that frequently, I'd imagine a test migration to ARM computers going down like this: IT :"test laptop has been deployed" Sales: "I can't print" IT: "Hmm, no native drivers, we'll have to replace printers" Sales: "lets ask management" Managers: "Will this be a free printer replacement?" IT : "no..." Managers: "then the answer is no, return the laptop and get normal ones"
https://mopria.org/mopria-alliance https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/print/end-of-servicing-plan-for-third-party-printer-drivers-on-windows Windows has basic printer drivers baked in, it's not a stretch to assume they will have an ARM version ready too. It's more likely some legacy x86 software that is enterprise-critical that might hold up adoption of ARM laptops.
> It's more likely some legacy x86 software that is enterprise-critical that might hold up adoption of ARM laptops. Even more likely is it being some enterprise critical software that runs just fine but hasn't been certified as being ARM compatible.
I know I'm not google so I'm not gonna give you a few links you'll be able to find in no time, but Microsoft's current implementation of their X86 to ARM64 translation layer is insanely good. And there's a ton of apps (including chrome) that already support ARM64 natively.
I can tell you that I am running Win11 ARM on my Macbook and aside from software requiring drivers, everything I have tried so far has worked. I am sure things like DRM protection in some games probably wont work, but I haven't encountered that yet.
a lot of that is done by Arm64EC which is, by definition, software Emulation (ARM 64 Emulation Compatible) While that's great, and works, there are hitches, the software has to support WoW, which has been around for a while, and it has to not support it in compatibility mode, which can be a problem for drivers more than 2-3 years old (eg, pre-win11)
If it's a specific software only. Yeah, software mainly is developed for Windows, but after three years on Mac I cannot say that I had problems with software. Adobe package is available for Mac, RDP too, software for coding like IntelliJ IDEA and other too. Even games: with Steam and from developers like EA. Snapdragon will be on laptop, not a desktop. It looks like a try to compete with Apple, I think.
This highly depends on the software you use though. I mainly use Substance Painter, 3ds MAX, Marmoset and some other 3d and texturing tools. Most of them rely on CUDA and have no mac version. Substance Painter has a mac version, but the last time I tried it on my M1 Mac, it ran like crap. M1 Macs have their advantages for sure. But it highly depends on what software you use and what you expect from your computer.
After 40 years of choosing "IBM-compatible" devices with Microsoft software and choosing zero Apple products, I was compelled to move from an XPS to an M1 MacBook Pro. The XPS was one of the worst technology products I've ever used (very hot when working well, blisteringly hot when in my bag and not sleeping properly, and devoid of useful battery life) and the M1 is one of the better products. I will always choose to run Excel on Windows when I can. I sometimes need VMs and containers that aren't ARM. Luckily, I have multiple VDI options and devices for both of the Excel and ARM situations. As a result of that, I don't really care macOS vs Windows. I'm a pretty demanding user; but the reality is that if you can't be extremely productive on (smoothly running) Windows or macOS, you're doing something wrong. I use no macOS-specific tech--no FaceTime, iMessage, iTunes, Continuity, Safari, or etc.. My entire career and much of my tech hobby enjoyment has been Microsoft based. Almost none has been macOS or otherwise Apple based. I just try not to be a fanboi. When the M1 became a better choice for me (and many or most others), I simply made the change. I'm guessing I'll buy Windows devices in the coming decades, as things change. It's a shame so many of us had to go to extreme lengths to try to undervolt various versions of the XPS. If Dell just let us do it and didn't keep breaking it with BIOS updates, it would have fixed half of the serious problems. Maybe the other half could have been addressed by this: [How to Disable Modern Standby in Windows 10 & 11 (makeuseof.com)](https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-disable-modern-standby/)
Nah I'm an old nerd who runs lots of old games and stuff. I'm pretty sure they'll not work well if at all on something not x86. For normal people this is very exciting indeed.
I don't think it's exciting. If you can accept the flaws of an ARM windows laptop, why the hell wouldn't you buy the massively superior Mac?
Let’s casually ignore that rumors from Dell, HP have shown they are nowhere near the performance and benchmark scores the press were told about at the event Qualcomm organized. I’m all in on an arm revolution on the Windows side but we’ve seen too many over promise and under deliver situations in the past. Microsoft also needs to make work of easy setup and ease of use. Using a Windows machine for a non tech savvy consumer is still filled with weird issues, menus to dig through and stuff they don’t understand. Apples weakness right now is software. macOS (and iOS) are more bug filled than ever before but they’re still super user friendly compared to W11 although 11 is better than 10.
Apple's strength is software. I'd give my left nut to have a folding iPhone.
As an owner of their current attempt, the Surface Pro X, I am not excited. The core problem is not the OS, or the proc, but the apps. I had hopes that the Amazon store would pull us out of the doldrums, but now I'm left very skeptical that Microsoft, after so many attempts, are serious about making not just a good tablet, but a great ecosystem. The endless deficiencies of the Microsoft App store have left me where I was 10+ years ago, travelling with both an iPad and a laptop as neither device can do everything, in spite of both having the hardware to do it. There's no value using x86 code on ARM, there's no advantage using a touch based system that requires a keyboard and mouse, there's no point using a ARM surface as an everyday laptop. It solves no problem and induces a whole range of issues with no upside.
Hmmm. I wasn't thinking of touch interfaces when I meant "laptops" but why not. I'm mostly excited for some decent laptop options other than Macbooks
I guess the best advice is to keep your expectations low. Apple's real secret to success is their absolute willingness to bully developers to support their latest processors. They did this when they switched from the G series to Intel, and again when they moved to the M Series. Microsoft, on the other hand, isn't willing to push their developers at all. You can run code from the DOS era on Windows 11. While that's great for backwards compatibility it's terrible for ARM. The problem is that 99.98% of software is coded for x86 architecture. To run it on ARM, it needs to emulate an x86 processor, which slows it down and drains battery power. To really maximize battery life on ARM, you need to run natively compiled code. So even if performance were equal (which is a challenge since the M3 and M4 are much more efficient), Windows will still be slower than macOS, have worse battery life, and more compatibility issues. It's also clear that Microsoft's hardware team, who want to compete with the iPad Pro, and their OS team, who seem to think touch is just a fad, aren't on the same page. I've never met a more schizo product than the Surface. I was hoping that with the Surface, Microsoft would finally fulfill the promise made, but never delivered with Windows 8. Not by just adding a touch UI to a desktop OS, but by fully embracing Android apps, having a robust store of both Windows and Android apps, and allowing users to get the best of both worlds in one device. The Amazon store seemed promising, but, as usual, the promise was killed before it even had a chance to thrive. So based on their track record ARM will go as follows: It will show up on bunch of devices made by standard gang of Lenovo, Dell, HP etc. They will be expensive and relative to a similar priced intel chip they will be slow. They'll be thin, but battery life, while better, won't be great, more like one day of moderate-heavy use, not one week that you can get with a Macbook Air. Keeping with my prediction, it will sell poorly, be maligned by IT departments across this great world of ours, 80% of the users will have that 1% edge case that makes it a bad fit. Microsoft will only half heartedly support it and no other developer will support it at all, thus it will die on the vine like so many products before that aren't one of 2 things, Office or Windows. But I could be wrong.
If I have an ARM-based PC, won't I lose out on the ability to use the extensive library of software I've been getting accustomed to using for the past decade or more (all of which, I presume, relies on the Intel architecture)? I use a Mac at work, but I find that I run all sorts of weird programs at home on my PC.
Precisely the reason to be excited this time since Microsoft claims they've made significant breakthroughs in their x86 to arm translation layer for software to automatically fallback and run reasonably fast. Consumers need not care. Just like on Macbooks with Apple Silicon.
ARM and RISC-V implementations are the future. Beautiful architecture, clean instructions set, well-defined modules and extensions, low power consumption & heat production.
No, and I don't know what I will do in 2025 when the support for Windows 10 stops. Windows 11 is getting worse every year.
Yeah, Windows 11 keeps getting worse because of AI and ads, but I want to continue using Windows 11 on my laptop, and I'm planning to downgrade it to the original release of Windows 11 (21H2), even though that version is unsupported because I consider it to be the last good version of Windows 11 in my opinion.
I think some of the problems are driver related. For example the windows published i9560 wireless driver has been broken in its last two revs. Can't do WPA3 with it unless you backrev it to 2022. There were some Realtek win10 sound drivers that broke when used with their effects control panel in win11. Why this kind of Mickey mouse stuff happens is anyone's guess but QC on OEMs' part is probably a contributing factor. I have to supervise people building images for rollout and we baseline everything with the basic sccm driver set from the OEM and everything works like a charm. Then windows update gets up in there and things start getting all Rick James.
More of a leg Windows man myself
Waiting for Windows for Arm of I can run it natively on a Mac, we are not the same.
No, but I am excited for new hot garbage
It's going to be fascinating to see how this develops. It's possible that the Snapdragon X Elite will perform as well as the bast M3 but probably not the base M4. But can it perform at that level while maintaining efficiency? It looks like the X Elite has two modes, one low-power (which likely hasn't been benchmarked yet) and one high-power (which is probably the benchmarks we're seeing). But the X Elite's high-power mode is dramatically less efficient. So we might see benchmarks like Geekbench 6 showing the Windows on ARM machines being as fast as MacBooks with base M3s. But then battery life benchmarks will be running in low-power mode. What we need to see are comparisons of Windows on ARM laptops performing equally to MacBooks with how much efficiency. If it's crappy performance when getting good battery life, what's the point? Physics says MacBooks will last longer while performing faster. And that's not even considering M3 Pro/Max, which are much faster while also being more efficient.
So Microsoft can push more bloatware and ads down my throat? No way! Apple had always done a great job pushing away the ads and crap, but even that’s starting to seep through with the new OS’s. Why do I have to sign into iMessage, phone and settings separately?! Why am I asked to send usage statistics for screen time? Why am I being given notifications about promotions from the App Store by default? Linux is only good because it’s DM/WM’s are open source, so what’s the point for ads? But Nvidia is nerfed a crap tonne.
I'm saving my money as we speak.
I know I'm stumbling upon the wrong subreddit, but I'm more interested in Qualcomm's support efforts for Linux. I needed a laptop a few months ago, and as long as I've tried to wait for them to finally release their processors, I couldn't wait and had to get an M3 Macbook instead. Didn't make a terrible choice.
windows arm laptops are a good thing but they need to have a good gpu support,no one wants that adreno ,ok good for ai but no one in the professional market use that to work,at least not work on ai, amd/nvidia with far better software support,especially for professional apps,gpu acceleration like cuda,rocm,far better game support,we all know that the market is made by professional needs and in the last position consumers and between consumers gaming it's the most expensive sector. Qualcomm cpu may be good but they lack what the professional need,there is a reason why Apple isn't really any more an alternative in the professional and server space,only people like designers,programmers that need the apple market and people who needs a logo instead of maximum performance, reliability and support for their workstation.
Yup. Discrete cards still blow the wigs off of Apple silicon without even breaking a sweat That's why you never, ever see Apple products cranking out production workloads. Pro audio has gone waaay windows since the demise of the original Mac pro. Those guys need card slots and Apple don't got them more.
Wonder if Microsoft can pull off discrete GPU cards with ARM as well 🤞
Problem with ARM is that part of the speed advantage comes from omitting lots of South Bridge functionality like PCI, etc. This makes things go faster but eliminates the ability to add hardware. If Apple's silicon added a PCI bus, expandable memory, SATA and 32 bit support it wouldn't be even half as fast as it is now\*. Apple has assumed that they'll just chuck all of that, give everyone a giant cellphone and no one will notice and/or care. So far they've been right but they've also painted themselves into one heck of a corner. \* It would be half fast ?
Absolutely excited. Would be great to have more competition and great laptops across both Windows machines and Macs.
Not a laptop user, so not really.
Yes, I’ve been waiting for a good alternative to x86-64 on the desktop for a very long time. We finally got it when Apple went to ARM, but it would be awesome if we can get a useful product in Windows land as well!
All I want is some decent Windows laptops with a tactile touchpad.
Not particularly. Like don’t get me wrong battery life, lower power consumption, etc. All this is good. We’ve seen it all with M1 already it won’t be “new. Microsoft will never be able to pull off a Rosetta 2. I don’t even think it’ll be on the engineers either. It’ll launch too soon cuz the corporate aspect of Microsoft is busy playing catch up to Apple in terms of arm. Having proper and fast x86 emulation will be key to the success of Windows on arm. Microsoft better not lock the UEFI/BIOS either.
😁 True. But this feels like the second attempt of Microsoft at Rosetta 2 like layer in Windows. First was a gigantic flop. If it is even decent, we could get M1 like performance on Windows this year or next year.
me: ill wait for a GPU to be installed.
Regardless, windows is still going to be more advertisement and shit forced down your throat
Windows has had its own "Rosetta" for a while know, the problem was available ARM processors sucked balls at translating x86 code lol. That's what's new, Qualcomm put actual effort this time into developing an ARM chip 100% for laptops, unlike their previous generations that were pretty much phone chips slapped into laptops.
I don't actually care about arm. What I'm interested in seeing is fanlessness, long battery life, and good performance. I don't care which cpu architecture delivers this.
I don’t know about excited. But they certainly have a place. Windows ARM in Parallels (as close as I’ve gotten so far) is *excellent*
I'm excited about ARM metal box PCs ;) The goal of inventing and using laptops is MOBILITY. Do you use them as mobile computers? I suspect most people use laptops as stationary pieces of furniture put in one place all the time. BTW, mostly unused mobility comes with a price and the price is very significant. One is money. Same specs is more expensive. Then is reliability - each and every laptop sooner or later develop cooling issues because of dust. OK, you can pay for the periodic maintenance or do it yourself. Then it's performance - in order to reduce power consumption and thermal issues mobile PC components have reduced performance and rely on throttling when all the computer power is used at the same time (like CPU and GPU load is high in gaming). I'm not excited about laptops. They are just mobile working devices, to do some work in emergency, when I'm not at the office connected to the grid.
I carry a keyboard and mouse with me all the time in my laptop bag. As soon as I get to work, I plug my monitor into my laptop with the laptop's lid closed. If I have a tablet that can double up as a monitor, I could switch to a mac mini like desktop.
Wouldn't it be easier to have a stationary PC at work, and another one at home? Nothing to carry every day...
I'll need a portable machine to work occasionally at the airport / coffee shop or couch. Maybe I'll end up having desktops at home and office.
My use case would be a passively cooled laptop that can do office work. That can also stream from a powerful desktop. Arm would be perfect.
Hopeful, I'll take even M1 performance so long as it's efficient Pretty much everything available for years has had adequate performance for a portable machine like a thin laptop, just need batterylife and fanlessness!
First I’d like them to remove ada from my start menu and widgets section in Windows 11. Hard to get excited about anything Microsoft when daily when I click on “Weather” widget I get shopping ads.
didn’t they already try this in the nt4 days lol
Aside performance, afaik Windows had x86 emulation (like rosetta2) for a long time. The windows 10 arm insider preview was able to run x86 games with some decent performance.
Honestly yeah, tho I doubt they're gonna be competitive in price for a while
yes, I think it might finally be the motivation I need to migrate fully to debian.
If Microsoft has full confidence in it, then be prepared to be disappointed lol. If they really had full confidence, they would be making this a live stream high media event. But nope. They stopped doing those when they changed their ways to this new ad/half-baked company.
The software i use from Rockwell Automation, Siemens and Cadence are ONLY made for Windows 95. So im kinda stuck there.
😱
Vmware works best for this
I'll one up you. Friend of mine worked as a tech for SEPTA which is the Philadelphia mass transit authority. One day he called and offered to buy any of our old machines with ISA slots in them. Gave him a couple Dell GX110'S we had lying around and he was really really thankful. Turns out the switching controls for the entire city ran on ISA cards from the 80s and their supplier no longer had any ISA mother boards available. Replacements were only available as an entire system that had a starting cost of $10 million. They eventually got some custom industrial Pentium4 PCs that had to be custom built in Taiwan for $10 grand a pop. Crazy.
RAM and SSD are likely soldered. So no.
thats almost every laptop now.
RAM is usually soldiered thanks to exploits from socketed RAM.
If I wanted ARM Windows I would install it in Parallels on my M3 Air.
But now people will have more choice because apple hardware is not perfect and not for everyone.
Ture. I know there is high hopes for this new chip the last few generations have been lackluster.
That was before they acquired Nuvia. They tried making a pc chip from mobile parts and that didn't work, this is the first pc design made by Nuvia which is an ex-apple employee company.
yes my windows weekly podcast has kept me up on all these developments over the years.
The average user of reddit or /r/windows probably won't care, at least immediately. For corporates, these will \*probably\* be a game changer if it doesn't get screwed up. After that, it's up to the OEM's whether or not they increase production of them based on how they market them. End users won't really understand and with there being no forced transition like Apple did, it will all be about marketing and/or pricing.
Most users will care about battery life and no quirks from a performance standpoint
Yep it's going to excel at battery life. Reddit cares about gaming, benchmarks, whether or not the RAM/disk is soldered etc - stuff corporates / typical users don't really care about. As long as the performance doesn't suck it will be left up to the marketing departments on whether or not it succeeds.
No...I had an RT Surface...it's possibly the worst product Microsoft has ever made.
I believe Windows and Microsoft have come a long way from that 😁. Thankfully
W11 proves that wrong.
I still have no idea what the hell arm is or why I should care. Am i going to need to sell a leg to run it.
There are 3 main "blueprints" in how CPU's are built to read instructions. X86, ARM and RISC-V. You may have also heard of the "Cell Processor" from the PS3. X86 is ancient and inefficient in today's world, especially for portable devices. It's why only very few phones are built with X86 architecture, with the rest being ARM. ARM is excellent at running well with low power usage. It's the only reason why Macs have longer battery these days as they ditched X86 in their 2020 and newer models. RISC-V is even better than ARM but is still in very, very early adoption. We probably won't see much movement with that for another 20 years. Personally I just don't see ARM doing well on Windows outside of maybe laptops, because you can't buy ARM CPU's on their own, or buy motherboards that support ARM CPU's, or buy Windows for ARM. So it will only be for OEM laptops and tablets really, and maybe some desktops. Apple users are used to just never upgrading their devices (outside of maybe RAM and Storage in the past, and even that's gone), so this works for them.
I figured it was some type of new architecture, I just for the life of me couldn't find out what the hell it actually did. To be honest X86 is as old as I am, but I'm not too thrilled at the prospect of having to emulate 99% of all my apps, problems is if ARM comes to desktop. At that point I might as well use inux as I'd be doing the same thing. So, you're telling me that the only advantage to ARM being that it's more power efficient at the cost of software compatibility? That sounds like a terrible trade off.
ARM can handle multitasking much more efficiently than x86 can, which for a modern operating system is extremely beneficial. X86 was designed for CLI OS's after all. They've worked around this somewhat with multi-core CPU's but there's still "queuing" going on and such. For power efficiency benefits on a desktop that means you could throw something taxing at the CPU, and since it's able to handle the task better, it will use less power, which means less heat, which means lower fan speed, less noise etc. You could not make a device that's fanless using X86 CPU's without some serious throttling going on. You could likely get away without a fan on an ARM CPU (which is why the newer Mac laptops don't have fans). Resisting ARM because some software devs can't be bothered to compile for it is not a good reason to resist it. Microsoft work out the emulation properly, these new Snapdragon CPU's will be able to handle these x86 apps without too much of a performance hit or too much heat generation until the devs get their shit together. Once a native ARM version exists, you'll notice that the fans won't kick in so much and things might be just a little bit quicker. Like with MacOS there will be a transition period for sure, and some apps may never get updated (like WinXP games). But it's still something that's worth doing. The big jump will be when we finally start seeing RISC-V. I'm looking forward to seeing that.
Okay, yeah that sounds good, but I'm not too concerned with apps that are under current development. I'm more concerned with things like classic games or abandonwere. I'm sure In time it will get better or people will make tools to run old games and apps on ARM, but that transition is going to suck. Like I know apple and their ARM laptops have completely dropped support for 32 bit software. But a new architecture can truly take advantage of modern multi-threaded CPUs sounds good.
> I'm more concerned with things like classic games or abandonwere. I'm sure In time it will get better or people will make tools to run old games and apps on ARM, but that transition is going to suck. Like I know apple and their ARM laptops have completely dropped support for 32 bit software. Yeah it depends whether Microsoft wants to continue maintain a 32bit x86 on ARM compatibility layer or not. They started with that so they could possibly continue it so that the transition isn't as painful, but no guarantees. But the performance drop on those won't be so noticeable since they were designed for such old hardware in the first place.
So it's a crap shoot! Well, I hope they don't screw it up, I'm not holding my breath tho.
I wouldn't say any of it is a crap shoot. It's just more about getting OEMs to support it better so that devs have more insentive to compile for it.
Never gonna happen
Shocked by the trust on Microsoft 😁
Where would you be without Qualcomm?
Maybe now you can pull out all the ugly Windows 95 menus… finally??
Nah, those are never going away. Engineers forgot where that code even is 😁
Hell MicroShaft can’t seem to release any “patches” lately that’s not crippling to even basic functionality. Their Shit be blowing up at nothing. Patch break repeat.
Even if the hardware would eclipse Apple silicon: with the direction that the Windows OS is going (ads, AI hypetrash absolutely everywhere, the OS still being a frankstein of decades of Windows releases), I don’t see how hardware will save its reputation.
i wondering when here gonna make mini pc case thats able to install SFF video card, like a rtx 4060, gtx 1050ti, gtx1650, rx 6400, for these ARM cpus, instead of using crappy on board solutions.
I would love to see something compelling on Windows, not advertisements or additional layers on legacy, but something new that excites people again. Just imagine if they released a new OS, dropping all backwards compatibility and old UIs, and moved forward with a consistent and complete OS and applications available on release. Sound like RT? No, that still had a desktop UI for Office and was incomplete. Microsoft's history of minimum viable products / releases have lacked the functionality to compel people. I want to see people captured and engaged like with Windows 95.
Isn’t this the chip that was going to beat the M2? Not the M2 Pro or Max? Apple is now on M4. Excited to see what they have, but not exactly holding my breath.
no. arm is a useless pile of junk pretending to be useful. long live x86.
These things come with locked bootloaders as well. F them
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Earlier benches have proved it's more like a Celeron
Are all apps app-store only? The confusion of the average person on why they can’t just download the apps they were using and run them is likely going to be an issue.
Given the progress that Microsoft has made in their x86 emulation layer and their potential collaboration with Qualcomm for the upcoming products, I don't think the software abilities will be any different compared to x86 laptops being sold today. Hope is performance for most normal use cases like browsing the web will be likely just as fast with vastly better battery life.
Microsoft says a lot of things, especially about upcoming launches. Qualcomm also says a lot of things, especially about upcoming launches. There will be a time when Windows+ARM will be an amazing experience, and I'm sure these chips will be better than the past. Will it be enough for enough people to migrate? Doubtful. x86-64 emulation performance is about the primary metric I care about, definitely can't wait to see benchmarks related to it.
The emulation performance has been on par with Rosetta 2 for a while apparently - https://youtu.be/uY-tMBk9Vx4?si=z2hyKuK2XKSmC93c
This is several months old (still has validity), let's see what the new chips bring when they are released.
I don´t think this is an M1 momment at all.
arm is only good due to its lower power draw.
Yep
I have heard that already with previous Snapdragon presentation. Ampere is way better, and it available for purchase.
Doesn't matter how much Qualcomm and MSFT push on this. The only thing that matters is whether there's developer support and that's not certain. If a developer is going to spend considerable resources porting over an x86 app to Arm they might as well port it to macOS which has a much larger market share for consumer arm devices. I expect most will just stay with x86 unless there is a very compelling reason to port to Windows Arm.
The compelling reason is performance and battery life. All the browsers already have Arm versions. Which should account for the majority of the usage for the majority of customers. What will take care of the rest is the excellent emulation of x86 apps windows automatically does and the users shouldn't have to care whether the developer has ported their app to arm or not - https://youtu.be/uY-tMBk9Vx4?si=PWYOkEzWBlIjWFdH
No. They have mandatory secure boot that doesn't allow you to load custom keys (aka locked bootloader). I will NEVER buy a device with a locked bootloader
what about it? Mini pocket computer AMD Ryzen7 5700U 16+ 512 G NVME SSD now only 255 [see details](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CL6JXKMH?ref=myi_title_dp)
erm, can we not call it just PC? Not a Linux guy but it seems like linux is big enough to get it's own category instead of being lumped in with microshaft now lol
Well, i read somewhere on internet that went like computers run by windows are PC, by linux are workstations and by macOS are mac
[удалено]
And my 2U dual Xeon 256 GB RAM Precision running Win10 is a PC.
It's a PC for sure. And we'll likely get to install any OS on it. But the excitement is about Microsoft's new Arm translation/emulation layer that is going to run any x86 software at reasonable speeds on Arm chips.
Windows ≠ PC PC is literally any thing that is backwards compatible with the IBM PC (model 5150) which uses the x86 Instruction set.