Qualcomm predicts 2024 is the year Windows on Arm goes large Qualcomm CEO and president Cristiano Amon has tipped 2024 as the year in which PCs using his company’s Snapdragon silicon make a mark. "We expect to see an inflection point in Windows on Snapdragon PCs in 2024 based on a significant number of design wins to date," he said on the company's Q4 2022 earnings call. Amon made that …
Exactly. I'm tired of saying it, but
"It's the Apps, stupid"
No user applications, who cares WHAT your OS and / or hardware promises.
Computers are supposed to be a tool used to help solve problems. If you can't get an app that solves your problem, this thing is nothing but a useless paperweight.
Bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario there.
If we're talking about hyper-performing silicon that delivers a massive bang per watt and dollar, then apps *will* come. And Qualcomm can help by poking the proverbial tiger and sending some of that hypothetical silicon to devs (a la Apple Development Kits and Microsoft's new Windows Dev Kit 2023 / Project Volterra computer)
TL;DR: not the apps per se, but rather how to get the hardware adopted by users to give devs a reason to port apps, who will then incentivize users to further invest in said hardware.
The apps won't just "come" just because the hardware is appealing. That is the constant geek fanboi DREAM.
Windows Phone, anyone??
There needs to be *some* level of application support available at rollout in order to even gain traction with buyers. If buyers don't see some of their problems as having available solutions at purchase time - no apps at rollout - they stay away. THEN you'll get the chicken-and-egg: not enough buyers, therefore not worthy of developer investment, meaning buyers don't get interested in the stunted ecosystem. Rinse, repeat.
But will Microsoft learn from their own Windows Phone fiasco? Not a chance. Big Corp are too stubborn, too self-assured in their own superiority, to learn from mistakes - it was the *users* fault for not understanding how great our product was!
I’m running Windows 11 for ARM on an M1Pro MacBook (via Parallels). Just install the x64 binary - it’ll run. Microsoft have done a surprisingly good job. Not quite Rosetta 2 levels, but genuinely good. I’m running loads of non ARM native binaries without issue, and without much overhead. And that’s on a VM.
That's ARM32 and the failed Surface RT write-off.
But since then, they've tried again with ARM64 on the Surface Pro X, this time with x86 application translation.
You can even get it on old Nokia Lumias, or even your Android phone if it had a Snapdragon 845 and is supported by Renegade Project.
If I am forced onto ARM, I will not be using Windows. The idiots in charge of Microsoft cannot go a full year without several updates that break things and the UI keeps changing for the worse. The only reason any of us put with all that is because of legacy and gaming. You take that away, and many of us will not put with Microsoft.
I am hopeful that Steam may be solving the gaming on Windows problem, then I can kick Microsoft to the curb.
The only reason many people buy PCs over Macs is because of games and legacy software support... which WinARM isn't good at. And if you just want to do web stuff and emails, a Chromebook will do.
So, given a choice of Wintel, WinARM, Chromebook or Mac, the case for WinARM today is hard to make.
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