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Surface Pro X is a great hardware device but it is definitely not a great software experience. Same problems with the old Surface RT with the ARM chip, backward

Surface Pro X is a great hardware device but it is definitely not a great software experience. Same problems with the old Surface RT with the ARM chip, backward compat with existing software made the whole experience difficult for almost all folks. As for SPX with Windows 10 on ARM, you can't use any 64bit app and existing x86 32-bit apps were incredibly slow and not reliable (look at photoshop for an example). 64-bit emulation support is coming next year[^1]. Many of their development tools are not native either, some folks are still waiting for MS to ship Visual Studio to ARM [^2], .NET 5 was just shipped a week ago with some basic ARM support but no WPF for ARM until next year. The difference here is Apple has a very fast x86 translation layer called Rosetta 2 that can run almost all Intel apps at 80% or so of the native M1 performance. Most folks don't even notice the difference. Windows 10 on ARM (SPX) had to emulate it at all time, with massive performance regressions. What Apple has done is a complete transition that includes both hardware/software to ARM at the same time. All of their apps including development tools (Xcode) were native, huge number of macOS devs already shipped native support on day 1 or within the first week and Rosetta 2 made waiting for native support okay. And that's just the software. The hardware? Super fast, long battery life, fanless in MBA, very quiet fan in MB and more. For a lot of people, it's a complete experience that worked out for them. Note, not all developers are going to be ready for this, there's no docker support, some tooling will take awhile to update but they're going at much faster pace than MS at this point. [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/30/21495510/microsoft-windows-on-arm-x64-app-emulation https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/30/21495510/microsoft-window... [2]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/visual-studio-on-arm-devices?view=vs-2019#:~:text=Visual%20Studio%20is%20only%20supported%20on%20devices%20using,emulation%20on%20ARM%2C%20which%20Visual%20Studio%20can%20run https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/install/visual....

forgotpwd16 6y ago
I take that it is a superior experience to what was available. My issue was with calling it a "revolution". From what you're saying the most important improvements have been the emulation and that it is better supported. That said, are there any benchmarks on performance hit during emulation for those and other devices? I searched but couldn't find something.
- mikhailt 6y ago
  Here's one from Surface Pro X with Microsoft's SQ2 chip that they customized with Qualcomm: https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-pro-x-sq2-review#bench https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-pro-x-sq2-review#benc... Switch to Geekbench 4 for x86 vs. ARM for emulation on the same device. One of the definitions of revolution is: > a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people's ideas about it. Apple didn't change from a x86 CPU to a ARM CPU, they went from a third party Intel CPU to a complete Apple-designed/customized/built system on a chip (SoC) that includes the following: an Apple CPU (4 high-pref/4 high-effiency cores), Apple GPU that's using Apple's TBDR implementation, Neural engine (ML accelerators), ISP, media en/decoder, disk controller, Secure Enclave, Unified Memory Architecture with memory dies on the same package that allows all of the cores to talk to the same memory space without copying back and forth, and so much more. They did all of this in a familiar package that runs faster, quieter and last much longer without major impact on the customer's experience. A complete package that was executed well on the first try and for some, this is considered to be a game-changer. Especially as it is changing many people's understanding of how a laptop should behave, specifically not having to worry about heat, battery life and having too low of memory as Apple's UMA actually makes swapping to disk a non-issue, there's no difference in the overall experience. SPX isn't a complete package either, it uses Microsoft customizations on top of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx CPU but solely Qualcomm's GPU, Adreno. I don't think there's anything else that MS has customized for SPX. > From what you're saying the most important improvements have been the emulation and that it is better supported. That's just one part. The overall experience matters. You can invent a technology that changes the world but if no one can use it well, it wouldn't matter much until someone take that technology and make it useful. Sadly, it's the latter that matters the most. It's the same thing with iPhone being called one of the most important technological revolutions. iPhone was definitely not the first nor the second touch screen mobile device but it was a complete package that sold it, just like these Macs.
  - mikhailt 6y ago
    Just to clarify, I don't see it as a revolution at the moment but I do think my M1 MBA is a game-changer for me. The biggest change is that I haven't had to worry about battery and heat at all. My old rMBP wouldn't last me half a day (it heats up quickly within the hour) but this one can and have gone for two days before I had to charge it and even then, I only did it during work hours with the dock. I never had to use my charging cable outside of my desk with the dock. Plus, no fan either, god my old rMBP would kick up the fan all the time. (yes, I cleared out the fans every 6 months and had it cleaned by Apple as well).

forgotpwd16 6y ago

I take that it is a superior experience to what was available. My issue was with calling it a "revolution". From what you're saying the most important improvements have been the emulation and that it is better supported. That said, are there any benchmarks on performance hit during emulation for those and other devices? I searched but couldn't find something.

mikhailt 6y ago
Here's one from Surface Pro X with Microsoft's SQ2 chip that they customized with Qualcomm: https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-pro-x-sq2-review#bench https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-pro-x-sq2-review#benc... Switch to Geekbench 4 for x86 vs. ARM for emulation on the same device. One of the definitions of revolution is: > a dramatic and wide-reaching change in the way something works or is organized or in people's ideas about it. Apple didn't change from a x86 CPU to a ARM CPU, they went from a third party Intel CPU to a complete Apple-designed/customized/built system on a chip (SoC) that includes the following: an Apple CPU (4 high-pref/4 high-effiency cores), Apple GPU that's using Apple's TBDR implementation, Neural engine (ML accelerators), ISP, media en/decoder, disk controller, Secure Enclave, Unified Memory Architecture with memory dies on the same package that allows all of the cores to talk to the same memory space without copying back and forth, and so much more. They did all of this in a familiar package that runs faster, quieter and last much longer without major impact on the customer's experience. A complete package that was executed well on the first try and for some, this is considered to be a game-changer. Especially as it is changing many people's understanding of how a laptop should behave, specifically not having to worry about heat, battery life and having too low of memory as Apple's UMA actually makes swapping to disk a non-issue, there's no difference in the overall experience. SPX isn't a complete package either, it uses Microsoft customizations on top of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx CPU but solely Qualcomm's GPU, Adreno. I don't think there's anything else that MS has customized for SPX. > From what you're saying the most important improvements have been the emulation and that it is better supported. That's just one part. The overall experience matters. You can invent a technology that changes the world but if no one can use it well, it wouldn't matter much until someone take that technology and make it useful. Sadly, it's the latter that matters the most. It's the same thing with iPhone being called one of the most important technological revolutions. iPhone was definitely not the first nor the second touch screen mobile device but it was a complete package that sold it, just like these Macs.
- mikhailt 6y ago
  Just to clarify, I don't see it as a revolution at the moment but I do think my M1 MBA is a game-changer for me. The biggest change is that I haven't had to worry about battery and heat at all. My old rMBP wouldn't last me half a day (it heats up quickly within the hour) but this one can and have gone for two days before I had to charge it and even then, I only did it during work hours with the dock. I never had to use my charging cable outside of my desk with the dock. Plus, no fan either, god my old rMBP would kick up the fan all the time. (yes, I cleared out the fans every 6 months and had it cleaned by Apple as well).