From the Article: "Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that it’s planning a number of demos that will show how these processors will be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation."
It's great news to see competition to Macs. However, we need independent tests on it's efficiency. It doesn't matter if they're faster than Macs if they drain more battery. Also, at the end of the day, these chips will be inside Windows laptops. Windows OEM's ain't stealing Apple customers.
> Microsoft claims, in internal documents seen by The Verge, that these new Windows AI PCs will have “faster app emulation than Rosetta 2”
I'm deeply fascinated by this. Rosetta 2 is crazy impressive. If the Qualcomm/Windows works as well then a Windows ARM laptop could be genuinely interesting.
They are careful to promise better performance without mentioning battery life. And, separately, good battery life without mentioning performance. To me that creates the impression that they cannot do both. You’ll either have good perf but only for a few hours (then just get an AMD CPU), or good battery life but shitty perf (then just get a rockchip-based Chromebook)
The reason everyone is in love with Apple silicon chips is that you get amazing perf and still get twenty hours of battery life.
x86 chips like 7840u can already trade blows with apple on efficiency under load, so I’d be surprised if this couldn’t. With some ‘little’ cores to break through the 3w idle floor of the AMD chip, I reckon the Snapdragon stands a chance.
But it’s down to the OEMs to get idle power draw of everything else low and fit decent sized batteries
And I’m confident I don’t want to use an operating system that forces me to disclose my email address to use the damn computer.
I just bought a Microsoft branded laptop and to my horror it wouldn’t let me even create a local account without giving it an email. I gave it a fake one and now it pesters me every couple minutes to validate it.
This isn't a real world problem when 5 seconds of Googling is all that is needed to bypass it.
FWIW, I installed Linux two days ago and could not decrypt the root volume because of a bug that doesn't load the keyboard driver early enough in the boot process to let you actually type in the password. So you're stuck with a blinking cursor asking for your password and no keyboard input. That's a real problem and why people come crawling back to Windows.
The amount of denial around Linux's abhorrent UX in 2024 is staggering.
There are mailing list reports dating back a few years with many other users experiencing the same issue, the going theory is a bug in GRUB's USB keyboard drivers. No one has any idea why or how to fix it.
GP is complaining about having to supply an email address and the alternative is a system that in some cases is literally unbootable after a fresh install. But it's local accounts only so it's all good.
Seems like there's a fair few other commenters who haven't had that issue as well. I'm also going with bad hardware or user error until you actually link to the issue or even say what distro you were using.
Did you try on different hardware, or on a different USB port, or with a different keyboard? Did you try a different distro? Which Window Manager was it? You mentioned decryption, what encryption was it, and how was that set up? By what method did you install the distro? Did you ever get it working? Could be a weird USB chipset on your motherboard.
It seems like an odd complaint, because most people don't have the problem you experienced.
I bought a Ryzen minipc and the wifi didn't work on it with a "fresh install" of Windows. I didn't just give up, I downloaded the drivers onto a USB stick and fixed it. It'd be nice if everything worked immediately, but unfortunately that's not the world we live in.
I'm defensive of Linux because without Linux we're trapped in whatever monetized and locked-down hell Windows and Apple are generous enough to provide us.
Sure Linux is not perfect but I'd still want it to succeed no matter how much effort it was to get a keyboard working. Also because I actually think Linux works really great for my purposes. I have to mess with it initially to get it working, but once it's working it rarely breaks and happily chugs on forever. No forced updates, no bullshit. I feel like I actually own my PC.
Just how I like it.
No matter what OS or hardware you buy, there's always issues. Blaming Linux overall because you had what I would definitely say is an uncommon issue that may even be due to your particular hardware seems... uncharitable.
It is the usual "Well it works for me" that you see in all Linux forums, since its inception, and when it works and you have to jump through several weekends trying to configure EFI booting, well it is those pesky OEMs not wanting to take the FOSS culture into their money maker.
OP didn't reply on what distro or hardware he's using and mentions years of posts on some mailing list about what would be a completely showstopping bug, but never posts a link or replies to specific questions about the issue.
User error or bad hardware. Move along, nothing to see here.
So shift + F10 and OOBE\BYPASSNRO no longer works to skip network setup (and therefore be unable to use a Microsoft account, forcing it to allow a local account)?
What about computers with no network connection available until you install a driver, can you just not use Windows on such computers anymore?
Even so, the greatest issue is getting Windows developer community to actually care to provide ARM binaries, which has been the main pain point from previous Windows on ARM hardware attempts.
Managed languages will do just fine, their dependencies on native libraries, or typical compiled applications and libraries not so much.
Breaking compatibility on Windows has always ended up badly for Microsoft, as it goes against the culture they themselves created on the PC.
So it remains to be seen how much will keep running under emulation.
Not necessarily even for managed languages. Sure, you can in theory just package an ARM runtime, but the devil is in the details.
For example, it's typical that packaging tools only build packages for the platform they run on. So if you run the tool on Windows Intel, you get packages for Windows Intel. Want ARM? You need to run it on Windows ARM. Don't have such a machine? Tough cookies.
This is one of the problems that motivated me to write Hydraulic Conveyor, and so it can build packages for every platform portably including Windows Intel and ARM regardless of what OS or CPU you run it on. It knows how to download all the different runtimes for all the different OS/CPU combinations and make and sign all the packages in parallel, without any native tooling. It knows how to strip out native binaries that appear in managed dependencies, but don't match the target. It makes download pages that detect what CPU you have (on Chrome, Safari lies unfortunately), or for Windows an installer that detects the user's CPU and downloads/installs the right arch for the user. So it handles all these details and lets you release for hardware you don't have. But that's a fairly unique party trick. For every other system you're going to be reliant on multi-platform CI, which may or may not support every target (ARM Macs took a long time to come to GitHub Actions), and in which adding extra platforms increases the cost of every build - sometimes by a lot!
Apple relied not only on Rosetta but also their whole fat binary infrastructure, and they have sticks like notarization and carrots like the App Store to encourage devs to do the work. Also Mac apps tend to be well maintained and gaming is not so common. MS don't have the same advantages, so apps will presumably be running in emulation for a lot longer and have more compatibility warts.
> Breaking compatibility on Windows has always ended up badly for Microsoft, as it goes against the culture they themselves created on the PC.
I would say it was less of a culture and much more of a marketing/lock-in strategy that worked extremely well for decades. Firstly by being the most popular windowing environment that still ran MS-DOS apps, then being the only windowing game in town when they rug-pulled OS/2. That consolidation enabled Office to become dominant and that compatibility took over as the cudgel to keep the world locked to Windows.
Microsoft, for the first time, is betting against their own OS with the web version of Office. I can rent Office on a monthly basis and run whatever OS I please to access it (mostly). But if I no longer absolutely have to have an Intel based Windows machine that lock-in has to shift to Office online.
What processor you have will be irrelevent to them, they'll dump native app development as soon as they can because it's no longer part of their bulwark of defences, it's now an encircling trap they need to break out of.
Office on the web is actually great. They did the hard work of making it work with most of the features you want to use. It's definitely better than Google Docs. It's a daily driver for me.
Yes, sometimes I'll switch over to the corresponding desktop app, especially if I want to copy paste images e.g. select a range of cells in Excel and paste them as a picture in Powerpoint. The switch from web to app is usually seamless. (I'm on a Mac).
It is still quite far behind the native version, every time I think I can do everything on the Web version, as soon as I need some advanced formating on Word/Powerpoint, or more powerfull expressions on Excel, I end up downloading and further editing on the native version.
Google Docs is okayish if all I need is Office 97/Works kind of experience, Office 365 I would probably place it around Office 2013.
My experience with ARM64 Windows (in a VM on a Mac) was that Intel binaries run just fine, including some truly ancient VB6 stuff. Maybe there are performance issues with high-end games, I dunno, but for general use it seemed perfect. I was running Visual Studio back when it would give you warning messages that ARM wasn't supported, but it still worked.
Native code is strictly required for drivers, so I'd imagine the support isn't great for USB audio devices that use custom drivers for fancy features.
Even if they were to match Apple Silicon pound-for-pound, they've been horrible stewards of the Windows OS in terms of nagware, bloat, and user hostile behavior (the default browser nonsense). If they actually made an operating system that respected their users, I'd be more inclined to take a serious look at these devices.
I’m excited about the Windows release bringing standardization and solid hardware in this area. Apple Silicon is locked down, so having a traditional bootloader (which Windows Boot is) on ARM will be great for linux adoption in this space — which is really what I see for these devices going forward.
I’m super confused - Microsoft has tried this both in 2012 and 2016 (with Surface RT, and then again with Windows 10 on ARM). Neither of these turned out to be great for Linux adoption in this space (to my knowledge) - what leads you to believe that this time will be different?
The laptops are not planned to be bad. They’re taking aim at Macbook Pros, which means actually decent build quality, significant power, and not the same lockdown restrictions.
I’ve had issues on Windows 10 recently with windows updates not installing properly. After lots of research in their forums I found that I have to run scripts people have come up with to fix the issue, which just does not seem trustworthy or user friendly. I have just let these updates repeatedly fail because I am worried about messing up my installed OS somehow. On top of this drop in quality, I’ve seen more and more anti-competitive / dark pattern behavior with notifications and pop ups trying to push me towards Microsoft software and services. I feel like Microsoft is violating what a general purpose computer is supposed to be.
Are newer Windows versions any better about software quality or these dark patterns? Given that MacOS already is free of such nagging and is already great functionally (like on battery life and performance), I am not sure what motivation there is (other than price?) to take a chance on future Snapdragon Elite laptops.
I’ve been burned by HP in the past. But no, the issue I have (I think) is that some windows update will only work if the recovery partition is resized to give the update enough space, and windows update cannot perform partition changes automatically. Unfortunately it is tied to this serious Bitlocker bypass vulnerability: https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-20...
It’s honestly meaningless until the entire Windows market moves over, which I doubt gaming will anytime soon.
Apples transition worked since they could force it. Developers targeting Mac users had to work on Arm optimized versions or be stuck working through Rosetta.
But if this doesn’t sell well enough for developers to care, why would you buy a device that only runs software through emulation.
I am p sure Valve couldn't care less about Apple. They care about Linux because they aren't at the whims of a corporate entity, which is even worse with Apple than with Microsoft.
You can't install ARM native MacOS games via Steam without Rosetta because of Steam. It's tedious, and suggests they aren't interested in "keeping Apple".
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[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadI'm deeply fascinated by this. Rosetta 2 is crazy impressive. If the Qualcomm/Windows works as well then a Windows ARM laptop could be genuinely interesting.
The reason everyone is in love with Apple silicon chips is that you get amazing perf and still get twenty hours of battery life.
I just bought a Microsoft branded laptop and to my horror it wouldn’t let me even create a local account without giving it an email. I gave it a fake one and now it pesters me every couple minutes to validate it.
FWIW, I installed Linux two days ago and could not decrypt the root volume because of a bug that doesn't load the keyboard driver early enough in the boot process to let you actually type in the password. So you're stuck with a blinking cursor asking for your password and no keyboard input. That's a real problem and why people come crawling back to Windows.
What distro? Is it a known issue?
The amount of denial around Linux's abhorrent UX in 2024 is staggering.
There are mailing list reports dating back a few years with many other users experiencing the same issue, the going theory is a bug in GRUB's USB keyboard drivers. No one has any idea why or how to fix it.
GP is complaining about having to supply an email address and the alternative is a system that in some cases is literally unbootable after a fresh install. But it's local accounts only so it's all good.
Did you try on different hardware, or on a different USB port, or with a different keyboard? Did you try a different distro? Which Window Manager was it? You mentioned decryption, what encryption was it, and how was that set up? By what method did you install the distro? Did you ever get it working? Could be a weird USB chipset on your motherboard.
It seems like an odd complaint, because most people don't have the problem you experienced.
I bought a Ryzen minipc and the wifi didn't work on it with a "fresh install" of Windows. I didn't just give up, I downloaded the drivers onto a USB stick and fixed it. It'd be nice if everything worked immediately, but unfortunately that's not the world we live in.
I'm defensive of Linux because without Linux we're trapped in whatever monetized and locked-down hell Windows and Apple are generous enough to provide us.
Sure Linux is not perfect but I'd still want it to succeed no matter how much effort it was to get a keyboard working. Also because I actually think Linux works really great for my purposes. I have to mess with it initially to get it working, but once it's working it rarely breaks and happily chugs on forever. No forced updates, no bullshit. I feel like I actually own my PC.
Just how I like it.
No matter what OS or hardware you buy, there's always issues. Blaming Linux overall because you had what I would definitely say is an uncommon issue that may even be due to your particular hardware seems... uncharitable.
User error or bad hardware. Move along, nothing to see here.
What about computers with no network connection available until you install a driver, can you just not use Windows on such computers anymore?
Although all of this isn’t necessarily worth using such a hostile OS. I work at an MSP and unfortunately Windows is the thing.
Not to mention they are clearly forcing email so they can key it against the MUID ads cookie.
Managed languages will do just fine, their dependencies on native libraries, or typical compiled applications and libraries not so much.
Breaking compatibility on Windows has always ended up badly for Microsoft, as it goes against the culture they themselves created on the PC.
So it remains to be seen how much will keep running under emulation.
For example, it's typical that packaging tools only build packages for the platform they run on. So if you run the tool on Windows Intel, you get packages for Windows Intel. Want ARM? You need to run it on Windows ARM. Don't have such a machine? Tough cookies.
This is one of the problems that motivated me to write Hydraulic Conveyor, and so it can build packages for every platform portably including Windows Intel and ARM regardless of what OS or CPU you run it on. It knows how to download all the different runtimes for all the different OS/CPU combinations and make and sign all the packages in parallel, without any native tooling. It knows how to strip out native binaries that appear in managed dependencies, but don't match the target. It makes download pages that detect what CPU you have (on Chrome, Safari lies unfortunately), or for Windows an installer that detects the user's CPU and downloads/installs the right arch for the user. So it handles all these details and lets you release for hardware you don't have. But that's a fairly unique party trick. For every other system you're going to be reliant on multi-platform CI, which may or may not support every target (ARM Macs took a long time to come to GitHub Actions), and in which adding extra platforms increases the cost of every build - sometimes by a lot!
Apple relied not only on Rosetta but also their whole fat binary infrastructure, and they have sticks like notarization and carrots like the App Store to encourage devs to do the work. Also Mac apps tend to be well maintained and gaming is not so common. MS don't have the same advantages, so apps will presumably be running in emulation for a lot longer and have more compatibility warts.
I would say it was less of a culture and much more of a marketing/lock-in strategy that worked extremely well for decades. Firstly by being the most popular windowing environment that still ran MS-DOS apps, then being the only windowing game in town when they rug-pulled OS/2. That consolidation enabled Office to become dominant and that compatibility took over as the cudgel to keep the world locked to Windows.
Microsoft, for the first time, is betting against their own OS with the web version of Office. I can rent Office on a monthly basis and run whatever OS I please to access it (mostly). But if I no longer absolutely have to have an Intel based Windows machine that lock-in has to shift to Office online.
What processor you have will be irrelevent to them, they'll dump native app development as soon as they can because it's no longer part of their bulwark of defences, it's now an encircling trap they need to break out of.
Google Docs is okayish if all I need is Office 97/Works kind of experience, Office 365 I would probably place it around Office 2013.
Native code is strictly required for drivers, so I'd imagine the support isn't great for USB audio devices that use custom drivers for fancy features.
Are newer Windows versions any better about software quality or these dark patterns? Given that MacOS already is free of such nagging and is already great functionally (like on battery life and performance), I am not sure what motivation there is (other than price?) to take a chance on future Snapdragon Elite laptops.
Apples transition worked since they could force it. Developers targeting Mac users had to work on Arm optimized versions or be stuck working through Rosetta.
But if this doesn’t sell well enough for developers to care, why would you buy a device that only runs software through emulation.
And I imagine an arm steam deck is a pretty tantalizing product they'd love to make
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
But Valve could ditch Mac and it would barely be noticeable. Plus apple showed off tech similar to proton for Mac last year.
An ARM steam deck sounds interesting, but it would likely have to be after enough of the gaming market moved over.
Barf
RISC-V, perhaps.