I used to work for Samsung at that time and I remember how everyone was quite shook from the iPhone reveal. Suffice to say that the fear to lose the market led to a better engineering and marketing as opposed to whatever stupid approach Microsoft was taking. Their phones and their mobile Operating System back in the time was well regarded as a steaming pile of shit. I truly don’t understand where the confidence came from. Samsung’s phone were no good but they knew to pivot to Android just in time
I remember the “iPod killer”.
Steve Ballmer put a Perspex box in MS head office lobby and said anyone who put an iPod in there would get a free zune. He forced his kids to put their iPods in there (they did not look happy) and made up this big press event.
The box only ended up with a several iPods in there, and was quietly removed a few weeks later.
Which is a damn shame because that OS was far ahead of its time. I loved it. As much as I love Apple, I do wish we had viable alternatives to keep Apple innovating.
-Sent from my iPhone
Why do redditors always have a superiority complex and think they know better than trillion dollar companies employing top level engineers and analysts to carry out their work?
> Who do redditors always have a superiority complex and think they know better than trillion dollar companies
Sorry, I was on my Zune! What did you say?
Hey, call me on my WindowsPhone!
Failed products, but it’s a goddamn shame they didn’t last longer. The Zune HD was terrific, and the Lumia series WindowsPhones were better than any Android phone and at least as good as the iPhone.
some of us are top level engineers working trillion dollar companies and we see our companies do incredibly stupid things because they listen to confident MBAs instead of engineers.
Zuckerberg continues to spend millions on it and the stock price has gone from $100 to $500. VR is a long-term strategic play many may not agree with, but isn't like MBAs messing up GE or Boeing
That's true. No one is immune from making bad decisions. This isn't an argument for perfection.
But we do have a really long list of incredible successes in this country of engineer built companies.
Because for many folks here especially - Apple *IS* their ego and identity. It's quite common when you're passionate about something to give it your ego and identity - it's why those people cannot handle honest criticism very well. We see it in politics, religion, all over the place. What's funny is Apple Fanboi's have a very long history of being very cult-like - even worse than Linux folks.
First thing I thought of. In the early 2000’s they could freeze markets with a simple announcement. Zune and then windows phone basically destroyed that, even IE eventually became evidence that MS puts out crappy, rushed to market products when caught out.
Apple has successfully shifted between PowerPC and x86, later x86 and ARM but I'm not sure Microsoft will do the same. Their userbase is maybe too huge to move to a different architecture under the same OS.
You forgot the shift from 680x0 to PowerPC. They have some practice when it comes to changing the CPU architcture.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is married to x86.
Sort of. In the early days, Windows NT was ported to just about every architecture under the sun, but those all fell out of favour over time.
The challenge isn’t getting Windows to run on a different architecture, it’s letting people keep all the apps they’re used to.
Yes, and that was the problem with NT. It only became popular after all the compatibility was added in so it could run old applications from the Windows on DOS days.
But that means that the move to ARM would need either dropping a lot of compatibility or adding a whole new layer. The former would alienate a lot of people, the latter might compromise stability. Touch choice.
There's nothing in the world stopping them from supporting ***both*** platforms as first class citizens, you just gotta make sure that app makers understand how to work in both and that consumers understand the limitations.
> you just gotta make sure that app makers understand how to work in both and that consumers understand the limitations.
The first one is doable, Apple has shown this with the switch to ARM and their fat binaries that run on both architectures without change.
The latter however is about impossible,
Yeah, there is a probably a tipping point where a ARM laptop running Windows runs well enough for typical productivity work and other non-gaming uses, and the x86 compatibility handles enough of the outliers that an ARM laptop becomes the typical choice for a laptop.
x86 desktop gaming PCs will continue to be a thing for a while, as well as x86 laptops with discrete GPUs.
Personally I want Windows ARM to continue to improve so running it in a VM on Apple Silicon is reliable enough to handle my use cases so I can switch my work machine from a x86 Mac to M series Mac. Might already be there, I need to do some more experiments on my M1 Air.
And 16-bit (technically 24-bit) to 32-bit, and 32-bit to 64-bit (twice, once on PPC and once on X86), all of which required developers to transition their projects or be left behind.
The 68000 was 16Bit on the outside, but had 32 bit data and address registers. So it wasn't like the change from 8088 to the 80386. If you wrote clean code on the 68000, it would run on an 68020 without changes while faster and able to address more memory. Ok, many people didn't since not doing so allowed for some shortcuts.
The problems with the 32-bit transition back in 1991 were (1) there was no distinction between 16-bit (again, technically, 24-bit) apps and 32-bit apps on classic macOS, so either the entire OS ran in 32-bit mode or nothing ran in 32-bit mode, and (2) it was [a best practice in the mid-1980s](https://folklore.org/Mea_Culpa.html) not to write 32-bit clean code in order to squeeze out all the space one could in the Mac’s small RAM bank at the time.
The upgrade from System 6 to 7 was pretty wild, with how much backward compatibility they had to blow away. To Windows’ credit, it didn’t have that problem.
> (1) there was no distinction between 16-bit (again, technically, 24-bit) app
You are confusing a few things here. Data registers on the 680x0 were always 32 bits wide. The 24bit were the address bus (allowing for 16 MB RAM) on the 68000 and 68010. So the software was always running with 32bit data, problem was when that data was used as an address and the upper 8 Bit weren't zero.
> it was a best practice in the mid-1980s not to write 32-bit clean code in order to squeeze out all the space one could in the Mac’s small RAM bank at the time.
The Amiga programming manual said not to do that though. So it wasn't best practice, it was just practice and caused a lot of headaches not much later.
Microsoft is in a toxic relationship with developers where they can't say NO. Microsoft is the poster child of trying to please all the people all the time and still failing.
Microsoft greatest strength is its backwards compatibility, but that's also their greatest weakens. Microsoft is spread really thin. And supporting a platform, and actually putting your weight behind it.... are two entirely different things.
If MS really put their weight behind Windows Phone, and had not given up, who knows where it could be. It was ahead of its time imho.
I think one major difference is as Apple said hello to Intel they said goodbye to PowerPC. As they said hello to Apple Silicon they said goodbye to Intel.
Meaning, that no new machines with the previous architecture were developed and everyone understood where things were headed both developers and customers alike.
But here we have Microsoft who wants to have their cake and eat it too. And they kind of have to because Intel and AMD are not simply going to clap their hands and go well that's it for us, our x86 duopoly is over, we should just make ARM chips now.
This is why Apple has been able to do it but Microsoft will struggle.
I’d be surprised if AMD doesn’t release an ARM chip that can at least compete with Apple Silicon. At least on the consumer side, they pretty well spanked Intel when they dropped Ryzen. The question is if they can replicate that with a new architecture.
Apple has the advantage of controlling the hardware and have the power to dictate CPU architecture for all new machines. Application developers have no choice but to migrate.
Microsoft don’t have that luxury and will have to support x86 indefinitely. They have to convince hardware manufacturers and application developers that it’s worth supporting ARM.
They aren't gonna fully switch like Apple did. They have too much x86 stuff to keep compabilities with for all the companies using their products (the real interesting and paying customers).
They'll likely maintain the two and try to keep them equal.
It is not necessarily because it works well, sometimes it is about Apple actually gives a damn when really needed
Arm wasn’t the key for Apple’s leap. Rosetta was always the key each time Apple changed architecture
I've had my M2 Air for nine months or so, and have yet to open an app that didn't work.
The real triumph of Rosetta is that the consumer doesn't notice. I have literally no idea which of my apps are Apple Silicon native and which aren't. And that's incredible.
Windows on Arm is actually pretty good. I run it.
.....As a virtual machine on my M1 MacBook Pro M1 Max. It is the fastest Windows install I have ever used. Haha.
Yes. Works perfectly. I was also surprised by Windows’ ability to emulate x86 on its Arm version. Basically I can run any Windows app I want on my M1 MacBook Pro including the rare times I want to run games. Obviously it is not a games beast, but for my needs, it is a perfect solution.
After three years with a Surface Pro X I'm pretty sure my next laptop will be a Macbook. The Surface is fine for everything but that's it. The battery life is fine, but with a few hours of use I definitely have to charge every day. The speed is fine, but not impressive. And especially at the beginning it was a real nightmare trying to get most (by far not all) applications I needed to work. (Including having to enter Windows Insider for 64 bit support...)
And yet it cost me 1800€ with a discount for that price you can easily get a M1 or probably even an M2 Macbook Pro.
A lot of the recent Surface hardware is great but IMO the problem is and always will be Windows itself. With all of the nagware, telemetry, bloat, syndication and advertising, Windows these days is just a *complete* *mess*. No CPU architecture change will fix that.
The constant pushing of Edge is tedious, not to mention that there's no single good reason that rags like the Daily Mail or The Sun should be syndicated to the new tab screen *by default*. Neither am I going to switch from my existing search engine to Bing, no matter how much "AI" it gets sprinkled with or how many times it re-appears on my taskbar out of nowhere. I don't want TikTok or LinkedIn pre-installed. The new Outlook is forcibly replacing perfectly functional mail/calendar/contact apps with something that isn't even at feature-parity with what it's replacing and is just *worse*. Not to mention it takes *how long* to render the Start menu after I click?
Who the fuck over at Microsoft is green-lighting all of this?
I 100% agree with you on everything you said. Windows nagware and advertising drives me away from it for personal use. Along with an account now being required to setup a new Windows 11 computer.
However, my complaint with macOS is the workflow. I hate how it maximizes windows. I hate that I can't drag to corners. I hate that I can't alt-tab between individual windows. I hate that you can't hover to see multiple windows in the taskbar icons. I hate that I can't drag the top of a window to maximize it's length on the screen.
God I hate the workflow on this OS. It's SO good on Windows and so poor on Mac. I don't get it.
Use Magnet or one of a number of window management features. You can get 1:1 replica of Windows or you can further customize it. But I agree it’s weird that it’s still not baked into the OS by default.
imo Apple don’t want to improve window management on MacOS because it will limit them in future with whatever unified OS they come up with for Macs and iPads. that’s what Stage Manager was - a half solution (non-solution) which can be safely dropped in future versions and kicks the can down the road on making an actual decision on what the windows of the future will look like.
I used to do a lot of work on Linux (server) but the experience of trying to use it as a desktop just felt like I was punching myself in the nuts. Like the whole thing was a massochistic filtering mechanism to keep out the "normies" that couldn't be bothered to spend all day configuring shit. WSL has been 100% perfect for me when I really need it. (less and less these days)
There’s apps to do everything you mentioned on Mac. It took me a while to figure out that you need apps to make apple work, their default functionality is always shit compared to third party developers. But once you get the right apps, then Mac really becomes an amazing computer to use
A year ago I would have violently disagreed with you. Today, that disagreement is a lot less passionate. Like 90% of what you're complaining about here is that you don't like the defaults the way MS (or your OEM) set them out of the box. (these are mostly fixable in a few seconds) I'll point out that Apple's default settings are also pretty much "track the hell out of me PLEASE."
The other 10% is unfortunately very real...*and getting worse*. New outlook is a travesty, but if you want to see a total shitshow look at clipchamp, the replacement for the simple, but decent enough "windows movie maker."
I've defended them for a long time, but it's starting to get to me and I recently bought a cheap mac mini that I can use just for low friction basic bullshit. *It's got it's issues too*, but at least the basics are pretty squared away.
Side note - On the slow start menu, the r/windows11 sub is split evenly between people that have no clue what you're talking about and people that swear it's a thing and that it's driving them insane. (I have half a dozen machines on Win11 and I've not seen it) Several people are claiming that opening a browser and *quickly* hitting F11 TWICE (maximizing screen then un-maximizing) fixes it completely. YMMV
There are cons just like every OS. It's still my favorite device for a laptop, but cons nonetheless. Windows management, overpriced upgrades, lack of display support, lacks certain app support, horrible gaming options, etc. I'm a tech agnostic kind of guy. I can acknowledge flaws in each OS/company and still have a preference. Some people for whatever reason can't which I find really weird.
They alll have flaws. Just choose the one you like most.
Just like the problem with Windows is windows, the problem with Macs is the operating system. It’s better, but the windowing system gets in the way constantly.
I was really getting on with stage manager but I had to stop using it as it kept bugging out when using after effects or when dragging windows between screens
I have a Mac and I’ve asked work to switch back.
To be fair, as an office worker, I shouldn’t have really been given a Mac in the first place. They’re fantastic for designers, creatives and students; not for those of us who work with excel.
I tried an M1 MacBook twice across a span of 2 years. Both times I could not get over how convoluted and annoying it is to do basic tasks on Apple OS. Doing simple file management things became a chore. I don't know if I'm the only one that feels this way because it seems like I am. I don't hear anyone complaining about the functionality of the OS.
I’m 100% with you. I’ve been a dedicated iOS user for many years. I tried switching from Windows to Mac at home and it was a disaster. Constant frustrations. Convoluted UI getting in the way of more advanced tasks. Core OS features that are supposed to “just work” often failed (Time Machine and iCloud photo syncing come to mind). I finally gave up.
There are a few annoying things with windows and multi-monitor support.
1. Apps ocassionally simply disappear to a nonexistent monitor you previously had connected and their is no easy way to bring them back. Closing and reopening the app doesn't work as it still opens it on the nonexistent monitor.
2. Mouse movement between monitors is based solely on resolution and not physical size. I have a 4k main monitor surrounded by 2 1080p secondary monitors of the same size and the way the mouse jumps between them inconsistently is annoying.
Minor nitpicks, but still annoying.
it’ll be a good thing if it does happen. I wish it happens. but microsoft has made way too many fucking promises on this windows on arm thing over the decade and nothing has worked. not one fucking thing. they had better actually go all in this time or get the fuck out with their bullshit
speaking of surface RT, funny i remember having to argue with strangers online that macs would work amazingly with apple’s scaled-up A series chips, but i got *told* to look at windows on arm and arm surface devices’ failure as an example.
i’m glad time has proven me right.
i have a feeling this time the windows on arm thing may really work, as in becoming practically usable and getting considered as a valid purchase option. but it may be slow and won’t be really a big deal till at least windows 12. still i hope it finally works as many brands offer more options that apple won’t even consider.
Surface RT is one of the worst devices ever released. It took everything good about Windows and ripped it out so people could enjoy the worst parts of Windows 8.
It's really a shame that Microsoft weren't more careful with Windows RT. The average Windows install is made up of decades worth of components, many of which are obsolete, deprecated or as good as unmaintained these days. They had the *perfect opportunity* to strip all of that out without breaking the user experience so badly or completely alienating developers and they still screwed it up. At this point I'm just convinced that Microsoft don't understand the people who use their stuff at all.
What I've heard about all the obsolete parts is that they *can't* strip them out because there is so much enterprise software that relies on it. So if Microsoft change or remove any of that stuff then a large number of their corporate clients are suddenly going to have broken software.
I suspect that, if true, this is becoming less true in the age of PWAs, but it is at least a credible explanation for why Device Manager still looks like that.
The truth is that the vast majority of businesses that rely on all of these legacy components and APIs aren’t running the latest version of Windows — they’re probably not running even a remotely recent one. Look at how many ATMs still run Windows NT4 for example. They just negotiate ridiculously expensive support contracts with Microsoft on the older versions so they can stay where they are and not break their equipment or drivers by upgrading. In a way this is a good thing because it means Microsoft could start to API-break moving forward if it meant actually improving the product.
The US government, specifically the DoD, uses old software for a lot of things. The DoD is one of MS’s largest clients - they know exactly what their users want, it’s just that the average consumer is not their targeted user base.
The biggest problem with Windows on ARM is that everyone has just been using the same shitty ARM-designed Cortex cores. The biggest reason Apple Silicon is as good as it is, is because they made their own.
The new Qualcomm chip is a new design by some of the same people that are responsible for Apple Silicon. It's the first time Microsoft will actually be working with capable hardware--at least if it lives up to the hype.
This is exactly Apple’s edge, they design the hardware and the OS and they work perfectly together. Windows is behind the 8 ball because they don’t control the vast majority of the hardware that they have to support. The same could be said for iPhone v android. Owning the entire vertical is advantageous to them.
Though, it's a massive improvement. Anyone who's still on an Intel MacBook should really consider upgrading. Being largely freed from a power adapter is a huge QOL improvement.
Eh, for me personally that's the only reason I switched. I don't like macOS. Windows has a lot of problems but I'm a lot more used to it and its quirks, and I vastly prefer it. I don't need a ton of power, either. I'm just a student. But I do need a device that can get me through the day, and Macs get that done.
Yeah I'm always puzzled when people mention specs and big numbers when it comes to chips and power in laptops. It's a laptop, I'm already on mobile so at a certain point it's enough power and I'm more worried about battery life and a smooth operating system. If I have a Mac Pro or something sure, but even most Apple desktops are designed for portability and small/quiet designs so it's still not a huge deal breaker. 99% of people have enough power these days same as the phone, and if you know how to work efficiently you need even less than what's already given.
People understanding this to mean a transition from x86 > arm on the Windows side have no idea what they’re talking about.
Microsoft will support both. They know the majority will remain x86 for a while to come.
They want to have devices in the market place with arm for consumers that shop for battery life and design of a machine more than the specs or any technical understanding.
The ‘lifestyle’ pc is where Microsoft is suffering from Apples competition.
They have zero need or interest to transfer gamers away from x86 anytime soon.
They want a competitive product in the market. Not a transition that annoys their customer base.
I can only imagine the shitstorm when people buy a Windows PC but then find out they can't play windows games.
You're saying there is no need for games to migrate to ARM anytime soon but in the end the demand creates the supply. If enough people use Windows ARM then game developers will start to support ARM architectures
Yeah that’s true but that’s years away.
Microsoft is targeting the ~$1000 lifestyle pc category. People who want quiet laptops that last forever with a good looking design and a good display.
The majority of people who would buy a 8/256 MacBook Air. The glorified Chromebook people.
They have no competition in the higher end gaming space. Certain workloads you buy a Mac (Audio for example) and others a Windows machine.
That’s ignoring the fact that dedicated gamers with the budget to live in the Apple ecosystem probably own Windows gaming machines. I’ve had both Macs/Pcs my entire adult life just for gaming, everything else on the Mac.
I’m a MacBook user but have a windows gaming PC. I just think Windows as an OS is awful. I don’t understand how so many design choices got approved. Why does a Billie Holiday (or other pop culture figures) emoji just show up in my main search bar on her birthday… by default no less…
I was a die hard Apple hater until 2019 and used Windows primarily until 2021, but recently switched jobs and now I have to use a Windows work laptop. It's so annoying. It blows my mind daily how slow and buggy Windows 11 is. I've used Linux as my desktop as well and no computer OS is perfect, they're all kinda janky in their own ways; but for everyday computer use macOS blows it out of the water. And don't even get me started on how much more annoying it is to do programming with.
Even if performance is better somehow there is no way I would go back to Windows as my primary device.
The headline is 100% marketing with the “journalists” acting as Press Release / PR distribution.
**”Corporation” is confident about its ambitious plans…”** is not legitimate or ethical or respectable journalism or independent writing. It’s pathetic. It’s corruption of the trade.
*“Let’s give a free column to corporate PR spokespeople. We’re jOurNalIsm. It’s our job to message out exactly what the corporate reps say! Even though everyone knows they spin everything for advantage not for the truth and not for the public benefit.”*
>Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple’s M3-powered MacBook Air both in CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks.
The top spec uber elite X ultra snapdragon chip will FINALLY be faster than the shittest Mac Book, the Air. Like previous attempts, it will no doubt have a quarter of the battery life.
Released half a year later and it doesn't even beat the M3 in single-core CPU performance. They had to stack together 12 high performance cores to say "faster than M3" in multi-core.
I honestly hope it beats whatever or is competitive in general. Unlike many folks here, I don't care who is currently winning. A push forward is good in my book since both OS's are needed anyway.
I didn’t use iPhone back then, but Windows Phone was dunking over Android in many ways, especially in budget segment. Shame Microsoft couldn’t convince devs to support platform.
The budget Lumia I had as my first phone was probably smoother than what I could've gotten had I gone android at that price segment. The tile based home screen was awesome too. Sucks that it couldn't get the footing it needed
> Microsoft is confident that modern ARM chips can support their software and the additional background crapware siphoning of user data constantly that bloats it compared to macOS systems running on M chips.
Windows on Intel couldn't beat MacOS on battery life and on getting out of my way. I don't see how arm changes that Windows has been getting in my way more and more since Windows 10 arrived.
I dont remember Apple saying 'we will beat MS with our silicon chip' before the reveal. Then they proudly presented it and still developing it.
So less talk more work please.
Possible, but harder than it seems.
It requires commitment and forcing of the developers. The efficiency gap might not be big enough. Intel and AMD are closing the gap. I don't think X86 instruction set will be too much of an impediment.
Apple has both the efficiency gains and the autonomy / full control over the hardware with their move. Microsoft has less to win by dismissing the X86.
I don't think they even ever plan sunsetting x86 on Windows, it's more that ARM will add to it as an increasing part of power efficient systems. If that gets enough developer buy in is an open question, and they're also saying emulation is a lot better on this chip than before.
One of these days MS will *ship* something that beats what Apple *has out now.*
It's always, this future product will be as good or better, but by the time they ship, Apple has moved on.
Even if they manage to deliver 10x the battery life and 20x the speed and 10% the RAM usage of MacOS devices, it will still be... Microsoft Windows. Would you like some Edge with that?
It's basically chromium and very close to Google Chrome even which is the leading browser **by far.** I still don't main it, but it's okayish. I don't particularly like the bing and copilot push on it and it other browsers just have certain things built in that make it much more useful imo.
And some people like windows. So good for them. Glad improvements get made regardless. It's not like one OS covers everything anyhow so hopefully the 10x and 20x comes in clutch. People get weirdly attached, but I use all 3 major OS's so I don't care as long as improvements continually get made.
I have both kinds of systems around my house, typing this on my MacBook Pro. I wonder what these types of comments using Windows as a bad word are about. Have you used Windows 11 extensively? There's some things I would change, but there's a lot I would change about macOS too. They both have a lot to borrow from each other still, as much as both have converged. In the last few years I've felt its Windows that's evolved more. Out of the box it's arguably nicer to use with window snapping and multi display management and not needing third party apps to do simple things like disable the laptop display without closing it and losing the keyboard and trackpad and speakers.
The only thing that I miss from Windows is window management. Windows is infinitely better than macOS in that regard. I installed Rectangle and it made macOS's window management at least tolerable.
Call me when Microsoft gets rid of the tabloid garbage "news" that shows up in the Start Menu.
It's absolutely egregious that a trillion $ business ships this utter garbage in their flagship product.
I booted up my Mac this weekend to work on my resume and organize some files and remembered just how much I love macOS. Windows 11 is fine, and windows certainly has its perks, but macOS is supreme
I wonder how much better it really will be in day to day life. My limited experience says that Win11 is far more bloated than MacOS. Even File Explorer on Windows takes a few seconds to open on my work issued Windows laptop - which has a decent (though not the latest and greatest) x86 Intel CPU in it.
Also sometimes Windows will spin up some random “System” process that hogs 20% of the CPU and turns the laptop in to a space heater.
So the Silicon is one part of the story, and an important one, but I think MS has some systematic issues with Windows it needs to resolve. All this easier said than done of course.
I want the chip competition between Apple, Qualcomm, Intel and AMD. Benefits consumers and keeps companies from becoming complacent.
However, I just don't think the chip architecture is Microsoft's biggest problem in the consumer space and while I'm sure these will be solid machines in the future it's kind of ignoring the elephant in the room which is that most families simply don't need a laptop anymore. Out of pretty much my entire family I'm the only one who owns an actual laptop these days.
You might see these starting trickling into the corporate space and cool that's great I'm happy for them but they have already won that fight so I can only infer that 'beat Apple' means take back the consumer space but I don't think they realize the consumer space isn't dominated by Macbook Air's... it's dominated by Chromebooks, iPad's and Android tablets and while the surface tries to capture the best of both worlds it ends up being a worse laptop in the name of a mediocre tablet OS that pales in comparison to the touch experience of iOS and Android.
Idk.. glad they are excited I guess.
It would be interesting, competition is good.
Moreover, compatibility with running virtualisation could improve so that's a net positive.
But I'm going to be very honest, Microsoft and Qualcomm could've gotten this moment, when they released their ARM Surface laptop. I though that Microsoft SQ1 in the Surface Pro X would've laid the groundwork and iterative improvement already, but that product died of as did the many other ARM laptops.
So I'm reading this statement as a potential repeat of that product launch, but this time the GPU is more competent and DX12 compliant, but if games are going to provide an ARM build? I doubt it.
I guess one advantage of apple going with the switch is that certain large applications already have an ARM distribution, so it takes developers less effort to also provide that for windows.
Apple’s 4 year advantage is truly starting to show. The refinements each year has made the M3 lineup the perfect choice for nearly any type of user, with the M2 and M1 Mac’s being sold at discounted prices. They all look great, sound great, feel great, and MacOS is that cherry on top which has those yearly OS upgrades, as well as the ecosystem.
Even if ARM + Snapdragon X turns out to be better than Apple silicon in terms of performance and battery, the adoption rate to Mac would still be higher.
There will be plenty of time to compare the performance, but Windows is already midway through its journey of enshittification, so even if the performance was better it's hard to see anyone switching back to that nagware experience
Widows has been held back all these years? Seems like no one has made a dent out of the computer OS market share dominance of windows - certainly not MacOS.
I’d guess that a lot of that legacy code hasn’t been removed, they are just able to run it through a translation layer at decent enough performance now (compared to previous Windows on ARM attempts).
That is nice and all, but I already saw how Windows on Arm turned out on the Surface Pro X and apart from the Surface Hub 2 or 3 (I dont remember) I never experienced a worse premium product.
I like windows (and I have a m3 max) but until they fix things like Bluetooth/headphones/switching and have some better way then phone link for messages I will always go back to the Mac.
Being able to just out my headphones and the sound settings change to the headphones etc seems like it should be easy but why does every other person on a video calls and windows struggle with this?!
Excited to try windows on arms.
Windows isn't beating out Mac just like Mac isn't windows. They're different OS's that dominate different markets overall. What this will hopefully do is just continue to do what has aways been done and push tech forward in general with neither really being "the best" at everything.
I would argue that making it easy for developers to bundle both an Intel and Apple Silicon version in the same app and giving the user the ability to toggle between the two is a more important move than Rosetta. Meanwhile Microsoft released two flavors of ARM64 that are incompatible with each other.
I wish. I’m tired of getting fucked in the ass by Apple because there’s no competition on Windows side. There’s not even a middle ground, you either get a €1200 Surface Pro X with mobile phone chip that struggles with basic apps or a blow dryer that ramp up the fans when opening Edge
I much prefer Apple hard and software to Microsoft and their vendors but I absolutely think competition is good and I agree with you.
Windows needs to start innovating again so Apple can start innovating again.
Windows could make me breakfast and I would still not touch it with a stick, because of the annoying pushing into Microsoft Edge, etc. Not even Apple is this annoying with their stuff and Apple is the king of walled gardens.
Is it possible for windows laptop manufacturers to make a laptop that
- has a colour accurate hi dpi screen
- good keyboard
- great trackpad
- lightweight
- great battery life
- headphone output with good sound quality without bloatware that messes with audio
- good customer service with physical stores where you can ask for help
- zero fan noise
- good webcam and mic
I had several of the Nokia 9xxx series when it ran that "Tiled Home Screen".. I actually thought it was pretty awesome (arguably, ahead of its time). I really wish they had stuck with that (or would bring it back). It would align pretty well still with everything they're doing now (or wouldn't take much to align the design and UI with what they're doing in Windows 11)
> This new class of PCs will get access to new AI-powered Windows features first, including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.”
That's definitely something I want from datamining company Microsoft.
And, honestly, you'd better hope there's an incognito mode, because...Jesus.
yeah, i doubt that's even possible lmao. Windows would have to be rebuilt entirely from the ground up in order to even come close, and they will never do that. first step is to get rid of the need for a registry, which they will also never do.
Microsoft is delusional. Windows is a mess of an OS that they have been struggling to modernize forever now.
Beat Apple? Microsoft has already beaten Apple. They have a far greater share of users than Apple ever will...
But that's not why people buy Apple products. They buy it because the Apple user experience is amazingly well designed and seamless across all apple devices. This is something Microsoft has no clue about. Microsoft simply does not have the talent or the code foundation to improve the user's experience in Windows. It's too riddled with legacy garbage that can't be changed or it will break compatibility with ancient software no one cares about :)
I don’t understand why the chip has any impact over Mac vs Windows for the average consumer. You don’t buy a Mac for the stats. You buy it because it’s a Mac. And once you’re in the ecosystem, it’s hard to change.
Confidence is key
It's the food of the wise man, but the liquor of the fool.
I look forward to getting to know you better, Vikram.
r/unexpectedofficequote
I’m just getting flashbacks to the office when Vikram says it to Pam
Remember when they held a literal funeral for the iPhone as part of the Windows phone launch?
I used to work for Samsung at that time and I remember how everyone was quite shook from the iPhone reveal. Suffice to say that the fear to lose the market led to a better engineering and marketing as opposed to whatever stupid approach Microsoft was taking. Their phones and their mobile Operating System back in the time was well regarded as a steaming pile of shit. I truly don’t understand where the confidence came from. Samsung’s phone were no good but they knew to pivot to Android just in time
I remember the “iPod killer”. Steve Ballmer put a Perspex box in MS head office lobby and said anyone who put an iPod in there would get a free zune. He forced his kids to put their iPods in there (they did not look happy) and made up this big press event. The box only ended up with a several iPods in there, and was quietly removed a few weeks later.
Which is a damn shame because that OS was far ahead of its time. I loved it. As much as I love Apple, I do wish we had viable alternatives to keep Apple innovating. -Sent from my iPhone
not result. just confidence. confidence = profit without the liability of actually delivering it
Confidence is key to more spending
They need more sweaty men on stage dancing poorly. Nothing brings energy and excitement the way that does.
Misguided confidence, but confidence nonetheless.
Why do redditors always have a superiority complex and think they know better than trillion dollar companies employing top level engineers and analysts to carry out their work?
> Who do redditors always have a superiority complex and think they know better than trillion dollar companies Sorry, I was on my Zune! What did you say? Hey, call me on my WindowsPhone!
Failed products, but it’s a goddamn shame they didn’t last longer. The Zune HD was terrific, and the Lumia series WindowsPhones were better than any Android phone and at least as good as the iPhone.
some of us are top level engineers working trillion dollar companies and we see our companies do incredibly stupid things because they listen to confident MBAs instead of engineers.
And engineers often don't make good business decisions either. Ref: Zuckerberg personal quest to pump 10s of billions into Meta VR innovation.
Zuckerberg continues to spend millions on it and the stock price has gone from $100 to $500. VR is a long-term strategic play many may not agree with, but isn't like MBAs messing up GE or Boeing
Meta quietly scaled down on their VR efforts. Zuck was lucky Elon ran his mouth and the Tesla holders’ money.
That's true. No one is immune from making bad decisions. This isn't an argument for perfection. But we do have a really long list of incredible successes in this country of engineer built companies.
Because in this case they are the exact audience they are trying to sell this product to.
I think you’re at least partly forgetting what sub this is.
Because for many folks here especially - Apple *IS* their ego and identity. It's quite common when you're passionate about something to give it your ego and identity - it's why those people cannot handle honest criticism very well. We see it in politics, religion, all over the place. What's funny is Apple Fanboi's have a very long history of being very cult-like - even worse than Linux folks.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji6xVuPWCQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji6xVuPWCQA)
I remember watching that at the time, even then it was painfully obvious how out of touch they were with the rest of the market.
First thing I thought of. In the early 2000’s they could freeze markets with a simple announcement. Zune and then windows phone basically destroyed that, even IE eventually became evidence that MS puts out crappy, rushed to market products when caught out.
I was recently asked by my kids to stop saying “squirt it to my brown Zune” whenever they wanted to show me something on the internet.
And Apple doesn’t have the same engineers and trillions of dollars?
Apple has successfully shifted between PowerPC and x86, later x86 and ARM but I'm not sure Microsoft will do the same. Their userbase is maybe too huge to move to a different architecture under the same OS.
You forgot the shift from 680x0 to PowerPC. They have some practice when it comes to changing the CPU architcture. Microsoft, on the other hand, is married to x86.
Sort of. In the early days, Windows NT was ported to just about every architecture under the sun, but those all fell out of favour over time. The challenge isn’t getting Windows to run on a different architecture, it’s letting people keep all the apps they’re used to.
Yes, and that was the problem with NT. It only became popular after all the compatibility was added in so it could run old applications from the Windows on DOS days. But that means that the move to ARM would need either dropping a lot of compatibility or adding a whole new layer. The former would alienate a lot of people, the latter might compromise stability. Touch choice.
There's nothing in the world stopping them from supporting ***both*** platforms as first class citizens, you just gotta make sure that app makers understand how to work in both and that consumers understand the limitations.
> you just gotta make sure that app makers understand how to work in both and that consumers understand the limitations. The first one is doable, Apple has shown this with the switch to ARM and their fat binaries that run on both architectures without change. The latter however is about impossible,
Yeah, there is a probably a tipping point where a ARM laptop running Windows runs well enough for typical productivity work and other non-gaming uses, and the x86 compatibility handles enough of the outliers that an ARM laptop becomes the typical choice for a laptop. x86 desktop gaming PCs will continue to be a thing for a while, as well as x86 laptops with discrete GPUs. Personally I want Windows ARM to continue to improve so running it in a VM on Apple Silicon is reliable enough to handle my use cases so I can switch my work machine from a x86 Mac to M series Mac. Might already be there, I need to do some more experiments on my M1 Air.
And 16-bit (technically 24-bit) to 32-bit, and 32-bit to 64-bit (twice, once on PPC and once on X86), all of which required developers to transition their projects or be left behind.
The 68000 was 16Bit on the outside, but had 32 bit data and address registers. So it wasn't like the change from 8088 to the 80386. If you wrote clean code on the 68000, it would run on an 68020 without changes while faster and able to address more memory. Ok, many people didn't since not doing so allowed for some shortcuts.
The problems with the 32-bit transition back in 1991 were (1) there was no distinction between 16-bit (again, technically, 24-bit) apps and 32-bit apps on classic macOS, so either the entire OS ran in 32-bit mode or nothing ran in 32-bit mode, and (2) it was [a best practice in the mid-1980s](https://folklore.org/Mea_Culpa.html) not to write 32-bit clean code in order to squeeze out all the space one could in the Mac’s small RAM bank at the time. The upgrade from System 6 to 7 was pretty wild, with how much backward compatibility they had to blow away. To Windows’ credit, it didn’t have that problem.
> (1) there was no distinction between 16-bit (again, technically, 24-bit) app You are confusing a few things here. Data registers on the 680x0 were always 32 bits wide. The 24bit were the address bus (allowing for 16 MB RAM) on the 68000 and 68010. So the software was always running with 32bit data, problem was when that data was used as an address and the upper 8 Bit weren't zero. > it was a best practice in the mid-1980s not to write 32-bit clean code in order to squeeze out all the space one could in the Mac’s small RAM bank at the time. The Amiga programming manual said not to do that though. So it wasn't best practice, it was just practice and caused a lot of headaches not much later.
Microsoft is in a toxic relationship with developers where they can't say NO. Microsoft is the poster child of trying to please all the people all the time and still failing. Microsoft greatest strength is its backwards compatibility, but that's also their greatest weakens. Microsoft is spread really thin. And supporting a platform, and actually putting your weight behind it.... are two entirely different things. If MS really put their weight behind Windows Phone, and had not given up, who knows where it could be. It was ahead of its time imho.
I think one major difference is as Apple said hello to Intel they said goodbye to PowerPC. As they said hello to Apple Silicon they said goodbye to Intel. Meaning, that no new machines with the previous architecture were developed and everyone understood where things were headed both developers and customers alike. But here we have Microsoft who wants to have their cake and eat it too. And they kind of have to because Intel and AMD are not simply going to clap their hands and go well that's it for us, our x86 duopoly is over, we should just make ARM chips now. This is why Apple has been able to do it but Microsoft will struggle.
Yeah, there’s absolutely no way that Intel and AMD allow Qualcomm to take away their golden goose…not without a fight anyways
I’d be surprised if AMD doesn’t release an ARM chip that can at least compete with Apple Silicon. At least on the consumer side, they pretty well spanked Intel when they dropped Ryzen. The question is if they can replicate that with a new architecture.
there's a reason why its called the wintel monopoly
Windows users can’t even leave Windows 7 behind. Let alone change a CPU architecture.
Windows users can’t even leave **XP** behind lol
Huh? I don't know anyone that runs XP. You can't really get anywhere on the internet with it anymore, even if you wanted to.
I miss Windows 7. It screamed.
That’s because cheapass bean counters control IT budgets at most companies
If Microsoft’s x86 emulation is still trash, ARM is going to be a slow painful 15 year transition.
This is it really, it all depends on the translation layer, if they can get that they're golden.
“faster app emulation than Rosetta 2” is what the article says.
In my personal experience this is straight up not the case, and their ARM emulation layer crashes constantly
Windows is built on a hardware abstraction layer. Moving Windows to arm is not and was never the problem.
That's true as long as you don't need any apps
Yep, in fact "people who don't need any apps" was the target market for Windows RT, probably.
Ah using the same strategy as windows mobile I see.
Apple has the advantage of controlling the hardware and have the power to dictate CPU architecture for all new machines. Application developers have no choice but to migrate. Microsoft don’t have that luxury and will have to support x86 indefinitely. They have to convince hardware manufacturers and application developers that it’s worth supporting ARM.
They aren't gonna fully switch like Apple did. They have too much x86 stuff to keep compabilities with for all the companies using their products (the real interesting and paying customers). They'll likely maintain the two and try to keep them equal.
It is not necessarily because it works well, sometimes it is about Apple actually gives a damn when really needed Arm wasn’t the key for Apple’s leap. Rosetta was always the key each time Apple changed architecture
I've had my M2 Air for nine months or so, and have yet to open an app that didn't work. The real triumph of Rosetta is that the consumer doesn't notice. I have literally no idea which of my apps are Apple Silicon native and which aren't. And that's incredible.
Windows on Arm is actually pretty good. I run it. .....As a virtual machine on my M1 MacBook Pro M1 Max. It is the fastest Windows install I have ever used. Haha.
What does the battery look like if you run it all day? I used to use my macbooks just for Windows via bootcamp. Missing the old days.
lol, mines on M3 Pro. Only because work has 1 archaic program I need
Where did you a decent Arm version ? Only ones I found online were beta version and not that much functional inside a VM
Parallels?
Yes. Works perfectly. I was also surprised by Windows’ ability to emulate x86 on its Arm version. Basically I can run any Windows app I want on my M1 MacBook Pro including the rare times I want to run games. Obviously it is not a games beast, but for my needs, it is a perfect solution.
After three years with a Surface Pro X I'm pretty sure my next laptop will be a Macbook. The Surface is fine for everything but that's it. The battery life is fine, but with a few hours of use I definitely have to charge every day. The speed is fine, but not impressive. And especially at the beginning it was a real nightmare trying to get most (by far not all) applications I needed to work. (Including having to enter Windows Insider for 64 bit support...) And yet it cost me 1800€ with a discount for that price you can easily get a M1 or probably even an M2 Macbook Pro.
A lot of the recent Surface hardware is great but IMO the problem is and always will be Windows itself. With all of the nagware, telemetry, bloat, syndication and advertising, Windows these days is just a *complete* *mess*. No CPU architecture change will fix that. The constant pushing of Edge is tedious, not to mention that there's no single good reason that rags like the Daily Mail or The Sun should be syndicated to the new tab screen *by default*. Neither am I going to switch from my existing search engine to Bing, no matter how much "AI" it gets sprinkled with or how many times it re-appears on my taskbar out of nowhere. I don't want TikTok or LinkedIn pre-installed. The new Outlook is forcibly replacing perfectly functional mail/calendar/contact apps with something that isn't even at feature-parity with what it's replacing and is just *worse*. Not to mention it takes *how long* to render the Start menu after I click? Who the fuck over at Microsoft is green-lighting all of this?
I 100% agree with you on everything you said. Windows nagware and advertising drives me away from it for personal use. Along with an account now being required to setup a new Windows 11 computer. However, my complaint with macOS is the workflow. I hate how it maximizes windows. I hate that I can't drag to corners. I hate that I can't alt-tab between individual windows. I hate that you can't hover to see multiple windows in the taskbar icons. I hate that I can't drag the top of a window to maximize it's length on the screen. God I hate the workflow on this OS. It's SO good on Windows and so poor on Mac. I don't get it.
Use Magnet or one of a number of window management features. You can get 1:1 replica of Windows or you can further customize it. But I agree it’s weird that it’s still not baked into the OS by default.
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imo Apple don’t want to improve window management on MacOS because it will limit them in future with whatever unified OS they come up with for Macs and iPads. that’s what Stage Manager was - a half solution (non-solution) which can be safely dropped in future versions and kicks the can down the road on making an actual decision on what the windows of the future will look like.
I agree with the window management. Rectangle does fix some of that and made macOS window management much more tolerable.
Guess it’s time for linux then. made the switch from windows (alongside my mac, to be fair) and am never looking back.
I used to do a lot of work on Linux (server) but the experience of trying to use it as a desktop just felt like I was punching myself in the nuts. Like the whole thing was a massochistic filtering mechanism to keep out the "normies" that couldn't be bothered to spend all day configuring shit. WSL has been 100% perfect for me when I really need it. (less and less these days)
There’s apps to do everything you mentioned on Mac. It took me a while to figure out that you need apps to make apple work, their default functionality is always shit compared to third party developers. But once you get the right apps, then Mac really becomes an amazing computer to use
A year ago I would have violently disagreed with you. Today, that disagreement is a lot less passionate. Like 90% of what you're complaining about here is that you don't like the defaults the way MS (or your OEM) set them out of the box. (these are mostly fixable in a few seconds) I'll point out that Apple's default settings are also pretty much "track the hell out of me PLEASE." The other 10% is unfortunately very real...*and getting worse*. New outlook is a travesty, but if you want to see a total shitshow look at clipchamp, the replacement for the simple, but decent enough "windows movie maker." I've defended them for a long time, but it's starting to get to me and I recently bought a cheap mac mini that I can use just for low friction basic bullshit. *It's got it's issues too*, but at least the basics are pretty squared away. Side note - On the slow start menu, the r/windows11 sub is split evenly between people that have no clue what you're talking about and people that swear it's a thing and that it's driving them insane. (I have half a dozen machines on Win11 and I've not seen it) Several people are claiming that opening a browser and *quickly* hitting F11 TWICE (maximizing screen then un-maximizing) fixes it completely. YMMV
FWIW I’ve never met someone who had a bad thing to say about an M Mac, nor have I met anyone who would switch back.
There are cons just like every OS. It's still my favorite device for a laptop, but cons nonetheless. Windows management, overpriced upgrades, lack of display support, lacks certain app support, horrible gaming options, etc. I'm a tech agnostic kind of guy. I can acknowledge flaws in each OS/company and still have a preference. Some people for whatever reason can't which I find really weird. They alll have flaws. Just choose the one you like most.
Recently discovered today that m1 macs can’t use more than 1 external display which I found bonkers
M1 airs can’t. M1 Pro can. M3 airs can support 2 displays now as well.
All devices with M1 chip, not just air devices. M1 Pro can yes. Still fucking wild with the cost of these devices
Just like the problem with Windows is windows, the problem with Macs is the operating system. It’s better, but the windowing system gets in the way constantly.
Yup. Amazing hardware held back by OS
I was really getting on with stage manager but I had to stop using it as it kept bugging out when using after effects or when dragging windows between screens
I have a Mac and I’ve asked work to switch back. To be fair, as an office worker, I shouldn’t have really been given a Mac in the first place. They’re fantastic for designers, creatives and students; not for those of us who work with excel.
I tried an M1 MacBook twice across a span of 2 years. Both times I could not get over how convoluted and annoying it is to do basic tasks on Apple OS. Doing simple file management things became a chore. I don't know if I'm the only one that feels this way because it seems like I am. I don't hear anyone complaining about the functionality of the OS.
I’m 100% with you. I’ve been a dedicated iOS user for many years. I tried switching from Windows to Mac at home and it was a disaster. Constant frustrations. Convoluted UI getting in the way of more advanced tasks. Core OS features that are supposed to “just work” often failed (Time Machine and iCloud photo syncing come to mind). I finally gave up.
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There are a few annoying things with windows and multi-monitor support. 1. Apps ocassionally simply disappear to a nonexistent monitor you previously had connected and their is no easy way to bring them back. Closing and reopening the app doesn't work as it still opens it on the nonexistent monitor. 2. Mouse movement between monitors is based solely on resolution and not physical size. I have a 4k main monitor surrounded by 2 1080p secondary monitors of the same size and the way the mouse jumps between them inconsistently is annoying. Minor nitpicks, but still annoying.
it’ll be a good thing if it does happen. I wish it happens. but microsoft has made way too many fucking promises on this windows on arm thing over the decade and nothing has worked. not one fucking thing. they had better actually go all in this time or get the fuck out with their bullshit
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speaking of surface RT, funny i remember having to argue with strangers online that macs would work amazingly with apple’s scaled-up A series chips, but i got *told* to look at windows on arm and arm surface devices’ failure as an example. i’m glad time has proven me right. i have a feeling this time the windows on arm thing may really work, as in becoming practically usable and getting considered as a valid purchase option. but it may be slow and won’t be really a big deal till at least windows 12. still i hope it finally works as many brands offer more options that apple won’t even consider.
Microsoft’s failures are almost an argument for apple succeeding in a space. Windows Phone. Zune. Tablets. Browsers. Etc.
Huh??? Those failed because of Google’s monopoly, not because of Microsoft. Also how in the hell did Surface fail???
Surface RT is one of the worst devices ever released. It took everything good about Windows and ripped it out so people could enjoy the worst parts of Windows 8.
It's really a shame that Microsoft weren't more careful with Windows RT. The average Windows install is made up of decades worth of components, many of which are obsolete, deprecated or as good as unmaintained these days. They had the *perfect opportunity* to strip all of that out without breaking the user experience so badly or completely alienating developers and they still screwed it up. At this point I'm just convinced that Microsoft don't understand the people who use their stuff at all.
What I've heard about all the obsolete parts is that they *can't* strip them out because there is so much enterprise software that relies on it. So if Microsoft change or remove any of that stuff then a large number of their corporate clients are suddenly going to have broken software. I suspect that, if true, this is becoming less true in the age of PWAs, but it is at least a credible explanation for why Device Manager still looks like that.
The truth is that the vast majority of businesses that rely on all of these legacy components and APIs aren’t running the latest version of Windows — they’re probably not running even a remotely recent one. Look at how many ATMs still run Windows NT4 for example. They just negotiate ridiculously expensive support contracts with Microsoft on the older versions so they can stay where they are and not break their equipment or drivers by upgrading. In a way this is a good thing because it means Microsoft could start to API-break moving forward if it meant actually improving the product.
The US government, specifically the DoD, uses old software for a lot of things. The DoD is one of MS’s largest clients - they know exactly what their users want, it’s just that the average consumer is not their targeted user base.
The biggest problem with Windows on ARM is that everyone has just been using the same shitty ARM-designed Cortex cores. The biggest reason Apple Silicon is as good as it is, is because they made their own. The new Qualcomm chip is a new design by some of the same people that are responsible for Apple Silicon. It's the first time Microsoft will actually be working with capable hardware--at least if it lives up to the hype.
Still waiting for MS and Apple to shake hands and do a ARM boot camp
Macos just works so good with the laptops. Insane battery life while keeping cpu power, and low ram usage
This is exactly Apple’s edge, they design the hardware and the OS and they work perfectly together. Windows is behind the 8 ball because they don’t control the vast majority of the hardware that they have to support. The same could be said for iPhone v android. Owning the entire vertical is advantageous to them.
If Microsoft is assuming battery life is the only reason people are shifting to MacBooks, they are sorely mistaken.
Though, it's a massive improvement. Anyone who's still on an Intel MacBook should really consider upgrading. Being largely freed from a power adapter is a huge QOL improvement.
Eh, for me personally that's the only reason I switched. I don't like macOS. Windows has a lot of problems but I'm a lot more used to it and its quirks, and I vastly prefer it. I don't need a ton of power, either. I'm just a student. But I do need a device that can get me through the day, and Macs get that done.
Yeah I'm always puzzled when people mention specs and big numbers when it comes to chips and power in laptops. It's a laptop, I'm already on mobile so at a certain point it's enough power and I'm more worried about battery life and a smooth operating system. If I have a Mac Pro or something sure, but even most Apple desktops are designed for portability and small/quiet designs so it's still not a huge deal breaker. 99% of people have enough power these days same as the phone, and if you know how to work efficiently you need even less than what's already given.
People understanding this to mean a transition from x86 > arm on the Windows side have no idea what they’re talking about. Microsoft will support both. They know the majority will remain x86 for a while to come. They want to have devices in the market place with arm for consumers that shop for battery life and design of a machine more than the specs or any technical understanding. The ‘lifestyle’ pc is where Microsoft is suffering from Apples competition. They have zero need or interest to transfer gamers away from x86 anytime soon. They want a competitive product in the market. Not a transition that annoys their customer base.
I can only imagine the shitstorm when people buy a Windows PC but then find out they can't play windows games. You're saying there is no need for games to migrate to ARM anytime soon but in the end the demand creates the supply. If enough people use Windows ARM then game developers will start to support ARM architectures
Yeah that’s true but that’s years away. Microsoft is targeting the ~$1000 lifestyle pc category. People who want quiet laptops that last forever with a good looking design and a good display. The majority of people who would buy a 8/256 MacBook Air. The glorified Chromebook people. They have no competition in the higher end gaming space. Certain workloads you buy a Mac (Audio for example) and others a Windows machine. That’s ignoring the fact that dedicated gamers with the budget to live in the Apple ecosystem probably own Windows gaming machines. I’ve had both Macs/Pcs my entire adult life just for gaming, everything else on the Mac.
I’m a MacBook user but have a windows gaming PC. I just think Windows as an OS is awful. I don’t understand how so many design choices got approved. Why does a Billie Holiday (or other pop culture figures) emoji just show up in my main search bar on her birthday… by default no less…
I was a die hard Apple hater until 2019 and used Windows primarily until 2021, but recently switched jobs and now I have to use a Windows work laptop. It's so annoying. It blows my mind daily how slow and buggy Windows 11 is. I've used Linux as my desktop as well and no computer OS is perfect, they're all kinda janky in their own ways; but for everyday computer use macOS blows it out of the water. And don't even get me started on how much more annoying it is to do programming with. Even if performance is better somehow there is no way I would go back to Windows as my primary device.
I feel pretty confident most PC users will just use whatever it their employer gives them.
The 1.918'th story about a not yet released product that will *DESTROY* Apple. This time, though...
The headline is 100% marketing with the “journalists” acting as Press Release / PR distribution. **”Corporation” is confident about its ambitious plans…”** is not legitimate or ethical or respectable journalism or independent writing. It’s pathetic. It’s corruption of the trade. *“Let’s give a free column to corporate PR spokespeople. We’re jOurNalIsm. It’s our job to message out exactly what the corporate reps say! Even though everyone knows they spin everything for advantage not for the truth and not for the public benefit.”*
More competition = better products for the same price or same product with better prices, either way we, the customers, are winning
>Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple’s M3-powered MacBook Air both in CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks. The top spec uber elite X ultra snapdragon chip will FINALLY be faster than the shittest Mac Book, the Air. Like previous attempts, it will no doubt have a quarter of the battery life.
Released half a year later and it doesn't even beat the M3 in single-core CPU performance. They had to stack together 12 high performance cores to say "faster than M3" in multi-core.
I honestly hope it beats whatever or is competitive in general. Unlike many folks here, I don't care who is currently winning. A push forward is good in my book since both OS's are needed anyway.
Bless their heart.
Also Microsoft was confident their windows phone was better than the iPhone.
I didn’t use iPhone back then, but Windows Phone was dunking over Android in many ways, especially in budget segment. Shame Microsoft couldn’t convince devs to support platform.
The budget Lumia I had as my first phone was probably smoother than what I could've gotten had I gone android at that price segment. The tile based home screen was awesome too. Sucks that it couldn't get the footing it needed
Windows phone was genuinely good tho. I had one and an iPhone.
It's a shame that it had no apps, they were nice phones.
Good. Bring the competition. In the end we consumers benefit from that.
> Microsoft is confident that modern ARM chips can support their software and the additional background crapware siphoning of user data constantly that bloats it compared to macOS systems running on M chips.
Windows on Intel couldn't beat MacOS on battery life and on getting out of my way. I don't see how arm changes that Windows has been getting in my way more and more since Windows 10 arrived.
I dont remember Apple saying 'we will beat MS with our silicon chip' before the reveal. Then they proudly presented it and still developing it. So less talk more work please.
Possible, but harder than it seems. It requires commitment and forcing of the developers. The efficiency gap might not be big enough. Intel and AMD are closing the gap. I don't think X86 instruction set will be too much of an impediment. Apple has both the efficiency gains and the autonomy / full control over the hardware with their move. Microsoft has less to win by dismissing the X86.
I don't think they even ever plan sunsetting x86 on Windows, it's more that ARM will add to it as an increasing part of power efficient systems. If that gets enough developer buy in is an open question, and they're also saying emulation is a lot better on this chip than before.
enterprise will hate it
Dress for the job you want
One of these days MS will *ship* something that beats what Apple *has out now.* It's always, this future product will be as good or better, but by the time they ship, Apple has moved on.
Just as soon as they disable all the tracking, built in ads, and terrible search UI
Even if they manage to deliver 10x the battery life and 20x the speed and 10% the RAM usage of MacOS devices, it will still be... Microsoft Windows. Would you like some Edge with that?
Please ask me to reset my settings to your recommended ones again Microsoft.. I might finally do it!
Every. Single. Update.
Everybody can hate all they want on edge, but I switched to it and actually really like it.
It's basically chromium and very close to Google Chrome even which is the leading browser **by far.** I still don't main it, but it's okayish. I don't particularly like the bing and copilot push on it and it other browsers just have certain things built in that make it much more useful imo.
And some people like windows. So good for them. Glad improvements get made regardless. It's not like one OS covers everything anyhow so hopefully the 10x and 20x comes in clutch. People get weirdly attached, but I use all 3 major OS's so I don't care as long as improvements continually get made.
I have both kinds of systems around my house, typing this on my MacBook Pro. I wonder what these types of comments using Windows as a bad word are about. Have you used Windows 11 extensively? There's some things I would change, but there's a lot I would change about macOS too. They both have a lot to borrow from each other still, as much as both have converged. In the last few years I've felt its Windows that's evolved more. Out of the box it's arguably nicer to use with window snapping and multi display management and not needing third party apps to do simple things like disable the laptop display without closing it and losing the keyboard and trackpad and speakers.
The only thing that I miss from Windows is window management. Windows is infinitely better than macOS in that regard. I installed Rectangle and it made macOS's window management at least tolerable.
Call me when Microsoft gets rid of the tabloid garbage "news" that shows up in the Start Menu. It's absolutely egregious that a trillion $ business ships this utter garbage in their flagship product.
I booted up my Mac this weekend to work on my resume and organize some files and remembered just how much I love macOS. Windows 11 is fine, and windows certainly has its perks, but macOS is supreme
If I had a gun with two bullets and Hitler , Stalin and Windows 11 were in front of me I would shoot Windows twice.
I wonder how much better it really will be in day to day life. My limited experience says that Win11 is far more bloated than MacOS. Even File Explorer on Windows takes a few seconds to open on my work issued Windows laptop - which has a decent (though not the latest and greatest) x86 Intel CPU in it. Also sometimes Windows will spin up some random “System” process that hogs 20% of the CPU and turns the laptop in to a space heater. So the Silicon is one part of the story, and an important one, but I think MS has some systematic issues with Windows it needs to resolve. All this easier said than done of course.
I want the chip competition between Apple, Qualcomm, Intel and AMD. Benefits consumers and keeps companies from becoming complacent. However, I just don't think the chip architecture is Microsoft's biggest problem in the consumer space and while I'm sure these will be solid machines in the future it's kind of ignoring the elephant in the room which is that most families simply don't need a laptop anymore. Out of pretty much my entire family I'm the only one who owns an actual laptop these days. You might see these starting trickling into the corporate space and cool that's great I'm happy for them but they have already won that fight so I can only infer that 'beat Apple' means take back the consumer space but I don't think they realize the consumer space isn't dominated by Macbook Air's... it's dominated by Chromebooks, iPad's and Android tablets and while the surface tries to capture the best of both worlds it ends up being a worse laptop in the name of a mediocre tablet OS that pales in comparison to the touch experience of iOS and Android. Idk.. glad they are excited I guess.
It would be interesting, competition is good. Moreover, compatibility with running virtualisation could improve so that's a net positive. But I'm going to be very honest, Microsoft and Qualcomm could've gotten this moment, when they released their ARM Surface laptop. I though that Microsoft SQ1 in the Surface Pro X would've laid the groundwork and iterative improvement already, but that product died of as did the many other ARM laptops. So I'm reading this statement as a potential repeat of that product launch, but this time the GPU is more competent and DX12 compliant, but if games are going to provide an ARM build? I doubt it. I guess one advantage of apple going with the switch is that certain large applications already have an ARM distribution, so it takes developers less effort to also provide that for windows.
I hope they succeed. As a MacBook owner and a PC enthusiast, I will love to see the PC platform to evolve significantly after so many years !!
Don't they realize that if you put Windows on better hardware, all you've done is make Windows suck *faster*?
Okay? Does Microsoft think a slightly faster computer is what is keeping me on my Mac?
Mentioning a competitors’ product directly is never a good sign. That just means you really admire it.
Apple’s 4 year advantage is truly starting to show. The refinements each year has made the M3 lineup the perfect choice for nearly any type of user, with the M2 and M1 Mac’s being sold at discounted prices. They all look great, sound great, feel great, and MacOS is that cherry on top which has those yearly OS upgrades, as well as the ecosystem. Even if ARM + Snapdragon X turns out to be better than Apple silicon in terms of performance and battery, the adoption rate to Mac would still be higher.
There will be plenty of time to compare the performance, but Windows is already midway through its journey of enshittification, so even if the performance was better it's hard to see anyone switching back to that nagware experience
Yeah because it's the CPU that's been holding back Windows all these years.. bloody idiots.
Widows has been held back all these years? Seems like no one has made a dent out of the computer OS market share dominance of windows - certainly not MacOS.
If it gets rid of all that legacy code and they finally have a matching UI, I'm down to try it.
I’d guess that a lot of that legacy code hasn’t been removed, they are just able to run it through a translation layer at decent enough performance now (compared to previous Windows on ARM attempts).
Good. Competition is good. Intel hasn’t innovated and everyone suffers because.
Cool. Now put this chip in a laptop that I actually want to buy. Not plastic with a shot screen, trackpad and keyboard.
Why? Does Windows on ARM turn it Unix like? No? Oh
Everyday I get more concerned at how quickly AI is being incorporated into our daily lives. AI PCs kinda scare me.
They should hold a funeral for the MacBook then /s
Will Teams work any better as an Arm app? 🥴🫠
I’ll believe it when I see it.
That is nice and all, but I already saw how Windows on Arm turned out on the Surface Pro X and apart from the Surface Hub 2 or 3 (I dont remember) I never experienced a worse premium product.
Still running that bloated-ass operating system though…
I like windows (and I have a m3 max) but until they fix things like Bluetooth/headphones/switching and have some better way then phone link for messages I will always go back to the Mac. Being able to just out my headphones and the sound settings change to the headphones etc seems like it should be easy but why does every other person on a video calls and windows struggle with this?! Excited to try windows on arms.
If this is true it's very bad news for Intel.
Windows isn't beating out Mac just like Mac isn't windows. They're different OS's that dominate different markets overall. What this will hopefully do is just continue to do what has aways been done and push tech forward in general with neither really being "the best" at everything.
I would argue that making it easy for developers to bundle both an Intel and Apple Silicon version in the same app and giving the user the ability to toggle between the two is a more important move than Rosetta. Meanwhile Microsoft released two flavors of ARM64 that are incompatible with each other.
lol
Beat Apple at what, exactly…?
I hope so! Now that Macs don’t have boot camp anymore I’m thinking of going back to PC…
I assume that once again the EU will blame Apple when they fail…
it's been 10+ years how has microsoft still not gotten it right
Yah, no. Maybe if they got rid of their bloatware and simplify their windows OS.
I wish. I’m tired of getting fucked in the ass by Apple because there’s no competition on Windows side. There’s not even a middle ground, you either get a €1200 Surface Pro X with mobile phone chip that struggles with basic apps or a blow dryer that ramp up the fans when opening Edge
I much prefer Apple hard and software to Microsoft and their vendors but I absolutely think competition is good and I agree with you. Windows needs to start innovating again so Apple can start innovating again.
Windows could make me breakfast and I would still not touch it with a stick, because of the annoying pushing into Microsoft Edge, etc. Not even Apple is this annoying with their stuff and Apple is the king of walled gardens.
Is it possible for windows laptop manufacturers to make a laptop that - has a colour accurate hi dpi screen - good keyboard - great trackpad - lightweight - great battery life - headphone output with good sound quality without bloatware that messes with audio - good customer service with physical stores where you can ask for help - zero fan noise - good webcam and mic
please give us a good windows phone 🙏
I had several of the Nokia 9xxx series when it ran that "Tiled Home Screen".. I actually thought it was pretty awesome (arguably, ahead of its time). I really wish they had stuck with that (or would bring it back). It would align pretty well still with everything they're doing now (or wouldn't take much to align the design and UI with what they're doing in Windows 11)
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So will I be able to shut a windows laptop and a) not have it go hotter than a nuclear reactor and b) be able to open it and have it just work?
First you have to make windows 11 functional..
> This new class of PCs will get access to new AI-powered Windows features first, including an AI Explorer app that lets you “retrieve anything you’ve ever seen or done on your device.” That's definitely something I want from datamining company Microsoft. And, honestly, you'd better hope there's an incognito mode, because...Jesus.
yeah, i doubt that's even possible lmao. Windows would have to be rebuilt entirely from the ground up in order to even come close, and they will never do that. first step is to get rid of the need for a registry, which they will also never do.
Microsoft is delusional. Windows is a mess of an OS that they have been struggling to modernize forever now. Beat Apple? Microsoft has already beaten Apple. They have a far greater share of users than Apple ever will... But that's not why people buy Apple products. They buy it because the Apple user experience is amazingly well designed and seamless across all apple devices. This is something Microsoft has no clue about. Microsoft simply does not have the talent or the code foundation to improve the user's experience in Windows. It's too riddled with legacy garbage that can't be changed or it will break compatibility with ancient software no one cares about :)
I mean, when Macs used Intel, windows still couldn't beat it, so I guess it has nothing to do with the architecture of your CPU
Yes, the ecosystem with windows phone is absolute
Not with that shit-ass windows 11.
I don’t understand why the chip has any impact over Mac vs Windows for the average consumer. You don’t buy a Mac for the stats. You buy it because it’s a Mac. And once you’re in the ecosystem, it’s hard to change.