3 ms·

I wish they introduced ARM based laptops with the recent developments of Graviton.

Uehreka 7y ago
My other comment ITT is touting the awesome library compatibility I’ve experienced on ARM, but the problem I see with ARM laptops is that I haven’t seen tons and tons of consumer desktop/laptop apps compiling for ARM (with the sort-of exception of Android apps, many of which rely on Google Play Services). Getting ARM laptops to work is going to require OS-level changes. If Amazon shipped one now, they’d either need to ship a fork of a linux desktop OS with good app compatibility or wait for MS to crack the ARM walnut with one of their ARM compatibility projects. I feel pretty confident that this is a “hardware follows software” situation: laptop manufacturers may be tempted to make ARM laptops right now, but I think they’re probably waiting for MS to ship a version of “Windows for ARM” that is generally seen to be successful.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  iPhone is ARM. Google cross compiles most of its code in the last X years. Windows 10 runs on ARM. Not sure why you think it would be a problem.
  - Uehreka 7y ago
    I’d be more concerned about 3rd party developers. It is true that Windows 10 runs on ARM, but from what I’ve heard it’s still kind of rough trying to get a lot of 3rd party apps to run on those laptops. Not to mention the difficulty of trying to get game developers to support Windows+ARM (as opposed to Android or iOS) in large enough numbers that you can fairly say the sentence “you can game on Windows for ARM”. The distinction of “successfully shipping Windows on ARM” is a subjective one and depends on the needs of each user. Although that being said, I don’t think we can really say “ARM laptops have arrived” until they either have great gaming compatibility or great compatibility with some large group of productivity apps. I think they’ll get there, but they aren’t there in January 2020.

My other comment ITT is touting the awesome library compatibility I’ve experienced on ARM, but the problem I see with ARM laptops is that I haven’t seen tons and tons of consumer desktop/laptop apps compiling for ARM (with the sort-of exception of Android apps, many of which rely on Google Play Services). Getting ARM laptops to work is going to require OS-level changes. If Amazon shipped one now, they’d either need to ship a fork of a linux desktop OS with good app compatibility or wait for MS to crack the ARM walnut with one of their ARM compatibility projects. I feel pretty confident that this is a “hardware follows software” situation: laptop manufacturers may be tempted to make ARM laptops right now, but I think they’re probably waiting for MS to ship a version of “Windows for ARM” that is generally seen to be successful.

StreamBright 7y ago
iPhone is ARM. Google cross compiles most of its code in the last X years. Windows 10 runs on ARM. Not sure why you think it would be a problem.
- Uehreka 7y ago
  I’d be more concerned about 3rd party developers. It is true that Windows 10 runs on ARM, but from what I’ve heard it’s still kind of rough trying to get a lot of 3rd party apps to run on those laptops. Not to mention the difficulty of trying to get game developers to support Windows+ARM (as opposed to Android or iOS) in large enough numbers that you can fairly say the sentence “you can game on Windows for ARM”. The distinction of “successfully shipping Windows on ARM” is a subjective one and depends on the needs of each user. Although that being said, I don’t think we can really say “ARM laptops have arrived” until they either have great gaming compatibility or great compatibility with some large group of productivity apps. I think they’ll get there, but they aren’t there in January 2020.