5 ms·

Simply getting functional Windows on ARM would be helpful. The last surface ARM attempt went poorly.

zerkten 4y ago
Do you mean the Surface X?
kyleplum 4y ago
I have faith in MS software development - I believe they can get windows on ARM working - but as far as I can tell, all non-Apple ARM hardware implementations are significantly lacking in the laptop space. There are vendors making decent phone chips, but I've seen no indication of the ability to scale up to a laptop in the way Apple Silicon has.
- MBCook 4y ago
  Yeah, my impression is that the arm windows laptops were basically using cell phone chips. And if you consider that arm cellphone chips are already behind Apple cellphone chips (which the M1/2 improved on)… not great performance for windows.
- cowtools 4y ago
  even if they can get windows on ARM working, they still need to get vendors to distribute ARM versions of their software. This is another leg up for apple and the humble penguin.
  - mwcampbell 4y ago
    How is this an advantage for desktop Linux? Yes, open-source software can simply be recompiled, but desktop Linux-based platforms (particularly GNU/Linux) have never been great for proprietary app developers, and adding ARM to the mix doesn't make this any better.
- macintux 4y ago
  Apple’s key advantage here, though, is one Microsoft would never voluntarily embrace: abandoning x86-64 in favor of ARM. Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind. Microsoft would never do that, so Windows on ARM will presumably languish in application support indefinitely.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yes Apple is walking on familiar ground here. They abandoned M68K, then PPC, now Intel. They know they can do it, as they have done it before, and their customers will follow along, as they have done before.
  - Shadonototra 4y ago
    x86 is dead, full of security issues and is energy-intensive smartphones, even embedded devices, including cars nowadays are all on ARM, servers are building momentum too, not because it is shiny, but because of tangible gains on many aspects > Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind. That's not true at all, the chip doesn't matter when you sell software, hardware and services It's like changing the internals of your Camera to provide a better experience and quality, why do you care about it? in fact you don't! You want a better Camera, company will pick what's best for the better Camera Apple provide a transparent translation layer to accompany the transition with Rosetta, it's effortless for the users That's the problem of Microsoft, they are incapable of designing proper UX solution to accompany their customers to better solutions, instead they force their customers to be stuck with inefficient solution, Microsoft don't even care nor dare cleaning their OS to provide up-to-date solutions It's a bloaty mess of 5 generations of different UI/UX Choosing Windows prevents you from having a seamless experience from your Watch -> Phone -> Desktop -> Car That's what Microsoft fanboy don't understand, they protect their poor decision making, their inefficient products and ultimately, it leads to the death of their products Microsoft Windows consumers are stuck That's why Windows Mobile, Metro, UWP, WinUI all flopped, the platform is no longer up to date And it's not just a chip issue, it's the whole ecosystem and culture, always too late to make changes, and here, incapable of providing a transition path, hence they are failing behind apple
jjtheblunt 4y ago
i use surface pro x on arm as a daily driver and it's excellent (on the beta release train anyway), and i use linux and osx too daily.
speedgoose 4y ago
I use a windows 11 arm vm on my m1 MacBook with parallel and the experience is pretty good.
- mwcampbell 4y ago
  Did you have to do anything legally dubious to get that Windows ARM VM running? I thought that Windows for ARM wasn't officially available except on Qualcomm devices.
  - speedgoose 4y ago
    No, it was extremely easy and I was surprised about it. Just install Parallel, select windows 11, wait a bit and it’s done.
aseipp 4y ago
Windows on ARM is basically completely different at this point, it's perfectly functional; they have x64 emulation as of recently and it just uses normal UEFI for booting, just like most other normal laptops. Honestly the emulation is pretty good even if it's not as fast as Rosetta2, and they even now have a new 64-bit Windows ABI and calling convention that allows developers to incrementally port their applications to AArch64 on an individual DLL-by-DLL basis (so the emulator can handle transitioning between an x64 app and an AArch64 DLL, or the other way around.) They aren't just doing nothing. The biggest problem is the hardware: you're basically just buying a poorly performing laptop with probably lagging Linux support if you get tired of Windows, and you could just buy an M1 Macbook and get superior performance and battery life for the same cost, and you can even just run Windows on that using Parallels and still get good performance. The AArch64 laptop market is mostly just Qualcomm processors and Apple, and if you actually care about the performance profile, there's basically no comparison between the two right now with current offerings; the Mac is the winner, and you can even run Linux on it.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  None of the major manufacturers are going to ship Linux to consumers. Having a version of Windows that actually has apps that they can ship means now building the hardware is worth it.
- MikusR 4y ago
  It's not as fast as Rosetta2 because M1 is about 2-3 times faster than the Qualcomm Microsoft is using

Do you mean the Surface X?

I have faith in MS software development - I believe they can get windows on ARM working - but as far as I can tell, all non-Apple ARM hardware implementations are significantly lacking in the laptop space. There are vendors making decent phone chips, but I've seen no indication of the ability to scale up to a laptop in the way Apple Silicon has.

MBCook 4y ago
Yeah, my impression is that the arm windows laptops were basically using cell phone chips. And if you consider that arm cellphone chips are already behind Apple cellphone chips (which the M1/2 improved on)… not great performance for windows.
cowtools 4y ago
even if they can get windows on ARM working, they still need to get vendors to distribute ARM versions of their software. This is another leg up for apple and the humble penguin.
- mwcampbell 4y ago
  How is this an advantage for desktop Linux? Yes, open-source software can simply be recompiled, but desktop Linux-based platforms (particularly GNU/Linux) have never been great for proprietary app developers, and adding ARM to the mix doesn't make this any better.
macintux 4y ago
Apple’s key advantage here, though, is one Microsoft would never voluntarily embrace: abandoning x86-64 in favor of ARM. Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind. Microsoft would never do that, so Windows on ARM will presumably languish in application support indefinitely.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Yes Apple is walking on familiar ground here. They abandoned M68K, then PPC, now Intel. They know they can do it, as they have done it before, and their customers will follow along, as they have done before.
- Shadonototra 4y ago
  x86 is dead, full of security issues and is energy-intensive smartphones, even embedded devices, including cars nowadays are all on ARM, servers are building momentum too, not because it is shiny, but because of tangible gains on many aspects > Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind. That's not true at all, the chip doesn't matter when you sell software, hardware and services It's like changing the internals of your Camera to provide a better experience and quality, why do you care about it? in fact you don't! You want a better Camera, company will pick what's best for the better Camera Apple provide a transparent translation layer to accompany the transition with Rosetta, it's effortless for the users That's the problem of Microsoft, they are incapable of designing proper UX solution to accompany their customers to better solutions, instead they force their customers to be stuck with inefficient solution, Microsoft don't even care nor dare cleaning their OS to provide up-to-date solutions It's a bloaty mess of 5 generations of different UI/UX Choosing Windows prevents you from having a seamless experience from your Watch -> Phone -> Desktop -> Car That's what Microsoft fanboy don't understand, they protect their poor decision making, their inefficient products and ultimately, it leads to the death of their products Microsoft Windows consumers are stuck That's why Windows Mobile, Metro, UWP, WinUI all flopped, the platform is no longer up to date And it's not just a chip issue, it's the whole ecosystem and culture, always too late to make changes, and here, incapable of providing a transition path, hence they are failing behind apple

jjtheblunt 4y ago

i use surface pro x on arm as a daily driver and it's excellent (on the beta release train anyway), and i use linux and osx too daily.

speedgoose 4y ago

I use a windows 11 arm vm on my m1 MacBook with parallel and the experience is pretty good.

mwcampbell 4y ago
Did you have to do anything legally dubious to get that Windows ARM VM running? I thought that Windows for ARM wasn't officially available except on Qualcomm devices.
- speedgoose 4y ago
  No, it was extremely easy and I was surprised about it. Just install Parallel, select windows 11, wait a bit and it’s done.

aseipp 4y ago

Windows on ARM is basically completely different at this point, it's perfectly functional; they have x64 emulation as of recently and it just uses normal UEFI for booting, just like most other normal laptops. Honestly the emulation is pretty good even if it's not as fast as Rosetta2, and they even now have a new 64-bit Windows ABI and calling convention that allows developers to incrementally port their applications to AArch64 on an individual DLL-by-DLL basis (so the emulator can handle transitioning between an x64 app and an AArch64 DLL, or the other way around.) They aren't just doing nothing. The biggest problem is the hardware: you're basically just buying a poorly performing laptop with probably lagging Linux support if you get tired of Windows, and you could just buy an M1 Macbook and get superior performance and battery life for the same cost, and you can even just run Windows on that using Parallels and still get good performance. The AArch64 laptop market is mostly just Qualcomm processors and Apple, and if you actually care about the performance profile, there's basically no comparison between the two right now with current offerings; the Mac is the winner, and you can even run Linux on it.

vorpalhex 4y ago
None of the major manufacturers are going to ship Linux to consumers. Having a version of Windows that actually has apps that they can ship means now building the hardware is worth it.
MikusR 4y ago
It's not as fast as Rosetta2 because M1 is about 2-3 times faster than the Qualcomm Microsoft is using