3 ms·

This sounds correct to my knowledge, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a substantive difference between the Microsoft and Apple ARM transitions that’s not

This sounds correct to my knowledge, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a substantive difference between the Microsoft and Apple ARM transitions that’s not obvious to me.

johncolanduoni 6y ago
Apple also already has had widely used ARM64 tooling since the iPhone 5S. Microsoft’s has only been used by people targeting Windows Phone & their half-hearted ARM laptops.
freeone3000 6y ago
Microsoft has a tradition of backwards compatibility. It's entirely likely that ten years from now, you'll still be able to run x86 apps on your arm windows laptop. This is unlikely to be true for MacOSX - ten years ago, Macs ran PowerPC, and support for that got dropped within 2 years.
- eecc 6y ago
  Yup, imagine a world where a Tesla would be so backwards-compatible you could shove coal into its furnace to power a steam turbine that charges its batteries to drive its motors. That’s Windows :D
nxc18 6y ago
Microsoft's offering on ARM is underwhelming to say the least. Or overwhelmingly bad, depending on your perspective. The hardware on offer currently is just as expensive as the x86 alternatives, has worse performance (unlike M1, which has excellent performance), and only offers marginal battery life benefits. Microsoft is also not particularly committed to ARM or willing to competently execute that transition. For years they were trying to hobble their offerings (Windows RT, then later Windows 10S). In their first introduction of ARM, they didn't have optimized compilers, so performance was even worse than it should have been (Surface RT was a real disappointment). Microsoft has also been jerking its development community around for the last 15 years in ways that make targeting Windows unpleasant. Half of Microsoft is trying to tell everyone that UWP is the future, the other half won't even bother supporting it. You might be surprised which half is bigger. The Windows group has spent a lot of time at war with the developer tools group, and it shows. Basically it all sums up to: Apple is a serious trustworthy partner, Microsoft is not. Apple's ARM offering is actually better in several ways than the x86 alternative; Microsoft's ARM offerings offer noticeably less value. M1 is genuinely exciting, Windows on ARM is not.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  The difference in execution is palpable, like comparing an A student to a C-/D+ slacker. I suspect MS exec politics is the problem however, not their engineers.
  - the_lucifer 6y ago
    I’d argue that it’s an culture problem. A complete architectural transition is fundamentally at odds with what MS stands for wrt a very long term backwards compatibility. This means that their ARM -> X86 translation should not just match Rosetta but actually exceed it by a large margin to maintain their compatibility.
quantummkv 6y ago
One more thing is that the Apple chips actually optimized for the mac and perform better or equivalent to their Intel counterparts. Microsoft just used the Snapdragon mobile chips that had bad performance even in their own categories, forget desktops
bengale 6y ago
From my perspective as I weigh up whether to stop buying my staff x86 Macs and get them these new M1s, it's this rosetta layer that really appeals to me. From what I can tell so far not only are they going to be able to run any software that isn't updated for apple silicon, which a lot seems to be, they're going to be able to run it just as fast as before. The idea before that we'd immediately switch over seemed mad, but based on what I'm seeing there is a good chance that's what's going to happen.
rsynnott 6y ago
Microsoft isn't, as far as anyone can see, transitioning to ARM. They've released one rather slow, very expensive device, plus an incremental update. And this has all happened before; they did the same in 2013 and then quietly killed it! Really, I'm not surprised that people are holding off until they show some sign that they mean it this time.

This sounds correct to my knowledge, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a substantive difference between the Microsoft and Apple ARM transitions that’s not obvious to me.

johncolanduoni 6y ago

Apple also already has had widely used ARM64 tooling since the iPhone 5S. Microsoft’s has only been used by people targeting Windows Phone & their half-hearted ARM laptops.

freeone3000 6y ago

Microsoft has a tradition of backwards compatibility. It's entirely likely that ten years from now, you'll still be able to run x86 apps on your arm windows laptop. This is unlikely to be true for MacOSX - ten years ago, Macs ran PowerPC, and support for that got dropped within 2 years.

eecc 6y ago
Yup, imagine a world where a Tesla would be so backwards-compatible you could shove coal into its furnace to power a steam turbine that charges its batteries to drive its motors. That’s Windows :D

nxc18 6y ago

Microsoft's offering on ARM is underwhelming to say the least. Or overwhelmingly bad, depending on your perspective. The hardware on offer currently is just as expensive as the x86 alternatives, has worse performance (unlike M1, which has excellent performance), and only offers marginal battery life benefits. Microsoft is also not particularly committed to ARM or willing to competently execute that transition. For years they were trying to hobble their offerings (Windows RT, then later Windows 10S). In their first introduction of ARM, they didn't have optimized compilers, so performance was even worse than it should have been (Surface RT was a real disappointment). Microsoft has also been jerking its development community around for the last 15 years in ways that make targeting Windows unpleasant. Half of Microsoft is trying to tell everyone that UWP is the future, the other half won't even bother supporting it. You might be surprised which half is bigger. The Windows group has spent a lot of time at war with the developer tools group, and it shows. Basically it all sums up to: Apple is a serious trustworthy partner, Microsoft is not. Apple's ARM offering is actually better in several ways than the x86 alternative; Microsoft's ARM offerings offer noticeably less value. M1 is genuinely exciting, Windows on ARM is not.

mixmastamyk 6y ago
The difference in execution is palpable, like comparing an A student to a C-/D+ slacker. I suspect MS exec politics is the problem however, not their engineers.
- the_lucifer 6y ago
  I’d argue that it’s an culture problem. A complete architectural transition is fundamentally at odds with what MS stands for wrt a very long term backwards compatibility. This means that their ARM -> X86 translation should not just match Rosetta but actually exceed it by a large margin to maintain their compatibility.

quantummkv 6y ago

One more thing is that the Apple chips actually optimized for the mac and perform better or equivalent to their Intel counterparts. Microsoft just used the Snapdragon mobile chips that had bad performance even in their own categories, forget desktops

bengale 6y ago

From my perspective as I weigh up whether to stop buying my staff x86 Macs and get them these new M1s, it's this rosetta layer that really appeals to me. From what I can tell so far not only are they going to be able to run any software that isn't updated for apple silicon, which a lot seems to be, they're going to be able to run it just as fast as before. The idea before that we'd immediately switch over seemed mad, but based on what I'm seeing there is a good chance that's what's going to happen.

rsynnott 6y ago

Microsoft isn't, as far as anyone can see, transitioning to ARM. They've released one rather slow, very expensive device, plus an incremental update. And this has all happened before; they did the same in 2013 and then quietly killed it! Really, I'm not surprised that people are holding off until they show some sign that they mean it this time.