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There have been a few attempts to sell ARM-based laptops, including Smartbooks (1) and the Microsoft Surface. They've all flopped horribly. This doesn't mean th
by scholia 11y ago
There have been a few attempts to sell ARM-based laptops, including Smartbooks (1) and the Microsoft Surface. They've all flopped horribly. This doesn't mean they can never be successful, but it does make PC manufacturers less likely to take the risk again.
Of course, users can always buy an ARM tablet and add a cheap keyboard/case combo.
They needn't necessarily be slow -- see the Apple iPad Pro, for example. However, most buyers are probably looking for something that costs less than a Windows 10 laptop, and you can now get Windows laptops or 2-in-1s for $199 or less. These also have almost-instant on and can run sandboxed smartphone-style apps, albeit only a few hundred thousand of them.
In sum, it could be tough to launch an ARM-format laptop (much more expensive than launching yet another Windows 10 laptop), and the margins would most likely be thin or negative.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook
- mtgx 11y agoI'm aware of the shortcomings of the ARM-based Windows notebooks. But they mostly failed because there are no great "universal" apps. Chromebooks have no such issue, because for one they are "browser-based" so ISA-agnostic, and two, Android apps are also ISA-agnostic for the most part. In fact the majority of native apps were optimized for ARM, not x86, last I checked, so if anything it's Intel's hardware that could cause some issues with some apps on Play Store-enabled Chromebooks. As for performance, Apple's A9X can beat Core M on many workloads. A9X is probably no more than $35. That Core M was $280 (that's what the OEMs pay when they bundle them in their devices, possibly with some light negotiation). http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-head-to-head-against-intels-core-m-in-arm-x86-grudge-match http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/221881-apples-a9x-goes-hea...
- DanielDent 11y agoActually they aren't only browser based. You can run native code: Behold: https://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/introduction-to-portable-native-client https://www.chromium.org/nativeclient/pnacl/introduction-to-... It's an amazing & beautiful feat of engineering. I'm unclear about it's feature - I suspect webassembly may become a standards-based equivalent that makes NaCL and PNaCL unnecessary.
- scholia 11y ago> I'm aware of the shortcomings of the ARM-based Windows notebooks. But they mostly failed because there are no great "universal" apps. Smartbooks were not Windows notebooks. They still failed. Why the Surface RT failed is another matter, but the major reasons included (a) price and (b) the inability to run traditional Windows 32 software. > That Core M was $280 (that's what the OEMs pay when they bundle them in their devices, possibly with some light negotiation). Hard to know what OEMs pay for Intel chips, and unless you work for one, you probably don't. (Even if you do work for one, you probably don't.) However, it's not going to be $280 on a $599 selling price. In fact, Intel listed the Core M with a "Recommended Customer Price" of $281. Selling them by the thousand to OEMs, I'd guess it might get half that, though I'd be interested in hard evidence to the contrary. Looking on amazon.com, most Core M laptops seem to be heavily discounted, possibly because they don't seem to offer particularly good performance for the money. The Lenovo Core M Yoga that hit the UK market first (at the end of 2014) roughly halved in price within months....