Some competition for Apple in this space and competition for Intel and AMD is great.

But I really do question how well Windows on Arm is really going to work out long term.

For Apple it worked because they were able to force the issue. If you wanted a new Mac it was going to be Arm and we all knew eventually (this year or is it next year?) Intel support would drop. Over time we have seen M series exclusive features.

Developers were forced to update or abandon Mac which gave users a great experience (with some early growing pains).

This is something that Windows will never be able too do. They will always be stuck maintaining an emulator and a likely large subset of apps only supporting one over the other. (also does this work the other way around with an Arm only app working on x86?)

This seems like a repeat of when it was not uncommon for games to only support Intel or AMD or NVIDIA or AMD. But worse since they are not both x86. Sure at least we have emulation but just like with Rosetta2 it shouldn't ever be the long term solution.

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kllrnohj 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

For Apple it worked because they waited until they had a really, really good ARM ISA CPU (combined with arguably sandbagging their x86 offering for a few years prior but I digress).

Qualcomm is also working on a really good ARM ISA CPU with their acquisition of NuVia and subsequent Oryon architecture.

Meanwhile this is just using off-the-shelf ARM CPUs in a MediaTek SoC with blackwell bolted to the side of it. ARM's CPUs so far have been subpar for laptop-class chips. Hence why neither Apple nor Qualcomm are using them.

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dijit 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> arguably sandbagging their x86 offering

tbh, I always read this as Intel doing some sales magic here.

Apple: "Hey, we're making a product that has a 15w thermal envelope, do you have anything?"

Intel: "Yes!"

(Unspoken: their products will throttle down to fit, in fact, they will try to run always at 99ºC so you always get the best performance! FEATURE!)

Apple: "uhhhh..."

Consumers: "HEH IS IT EVEN A PRO DEVICE IF IT DOESN"T HAVE <INTEL MARKETING BRAND TERM>?"

Apple: "UHHHH... Guess we'll do it ourselves"

	▲	kllrnohj 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> tbh, I always read this as Intel doing some sales magic here. Possibly, but Apple choosing a new, thicker chassis the same generation that they introduce their more power efficient replacement is certainly a thing. Even if Intel failed to achieve the TDP they told Apple, Apple also seems to no longer believe the thinness they were doing was viable for that TDP anyway. Intel's product offering certainly wasn't as compelling towards the end there, but it also looked almost uniquely bad in Apple's chassis vs everyone else's

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rickdeckard 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's surely one thing, Apple went all-in on ARM, for Microsoft it's still a kinda "reduced experience".

But the bigger problem in my opinion: How much of the Windows userbase actually sticks to Windows because of its backwards-compatibility?

--> What would happen if they break this model and the OS is only judged based on its user experience and available applications...?

I'm not sure it would stand any chance to compete in the B2C space. If I think about it, there's not a single new feature in Windows of the last ~20 years I particularly care about.

Without backwards compatibility, there's barely any ecosystem. MacOS on the other hand is full of ecosystem features, improving collaboration, connectivity, handoff across devices, etc.

	▲	brailsafe 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> MacOS on the other hand is full of ecosystem features, improving collaboration, connectivity, handoff across devices, etc. True, but if you're only in the ecosystem as a mac user, in many ways it's felt like a mixed bag. I still wildly prefer mac over other operating systems, but if upgrades had a price, I think those sales would mostly go to iPhone users. Even at free, I'm yet to find a compelling reason to install Tahoe, and will probably just continue waiting until the next one.

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crims0n 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I feel like making universal binaries a thing, and pushing for it to be standard is one viable path.

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pjmlp 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They already kind of are with ARM64EC, however Windows ecosystem isn't macOS, unless there is market pressure, most shops will keep doing x86/x64.

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MagicMoonlight 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Microslop doesn’t want people to be able to run their binaries elsewhere, it’s the only reason people buy their product.

	▲	pjmlp 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They also buy it, because to this day most people cannot buy GNU/Linux powered laptops on the stores they usually buy their computers from. They only know Apple, Windows and Chromebooks.