Copilot+ PCs software compatibility issues left to you to sort out, with help from crowdsourcers

Buyers worried a Copilot+ PC based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X SoCs might not run software that matters to them are being directed to two community-run sites that crowdsource lists of incompatible code - because no official list of problematic programs exists. "Copilot+ PC" is a term invented by Microsoft to describe PCs …

[Joe W]

nice measure...

'And it isn't helped by Microsoft using the measure "87 percent of the total app minutes people spend in apps today have a native Arm version"'

Ok, I guess that's browser use, mostly. And, since it is the internet we are talking about, people browsing for porn (hey, I'm not judging). Too bad the remaining 13% are what I shall refer to as "getting actual work done". Or maybe the 87% are mobile phones? So, basically everything that can be done on a mobile phone can be done on some form of Arm chip?

(I know I am being unfair - not to those browsing porn[*] - email clients and word processing can be done on Arm).

[*] callback!

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: nice measure...

MS Office is ARM-native, too, and for general business use, Office plus a browser is pretty much 100% of usage these days.

I'm very much liking my Surface Pro 11, but there is some caution required if you use older or niche software. Google Drive is a particular problem, and I confess I have no idea why they aren't releasing an ARM-native version, or at least fixing the initial architecture check in the code so it will run under emulation. I hate conspiracy theories, but the only thing I've heard that makes sense is that Google see WoA PCs as a threat to Chromebooks, and want to slow down its adoption.

GJC

[Joe W]

Re: nice measure...

About Office: yeah, I thought I mentioned that one. The number [*] is weird and does not really add up (to me). Browser, Mail, Word/Excel covers quite a lot of ground as you wrote. I am really not sure if old business apps and new games stretch to those 13 percent of "app use time" that don't run on Arm (and not even have an ARM alternative!). I'm also not sure if Samsung is supporting Google, they do have the know how to make Arm-powered devices, and should not give a ... about the OS it runs. Additionally, WoA should be really good for them, as doing AI stuff locally would mean lots of storage and RAM, and Samsung makes those, right?

I'm also sure that MS cannot pull off the same feat as Apple did when they changed the processor type. Twice in the last 20 years or so. Both because it is MS and because Apple has a tighter grip on their ecosystem. MS still has way to many compatibility requirements it fulfils, and to be honest, I would be glad if they just stopped supporting ancient shite...

[*] I guess the measure is SIJMU - stats I just made up

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: nice measure...

I've been using a Surface Pro X with Windows on ARM for my travelling machine for five years now, and for that sort of basic Office-and-browsing need it worked very well, but the new Snapdragon version is definitely a step up from there.

You're quite right, Microsoft won't do the same as Apple, but then they aren't really trying to, for the reasons that you state plus others, too. I think this is a good move forward and the first step in trying to divorce some of the legacy stuff from modern requirements, which is good. Previous attempts to release a pure modern Windows with no legacy were stillborn, sadly, which I think was a real missed opportunity.

I was having a chat with a friend over the weekend, who raised an interesting point in amongst all his normal anti-Microsoft ranting - it would be very nice to be able to turn off the Intel emulation stuff in WoA, and run purely ARM-native. That would give a great environment to work in, and some excellent first-line protection against about 95% of malware, too.

I agree on the 87% figure. It's a pretty meaningless statistic anyway, it could be measured in so many different ways, so I suspect they've just plucked a figure out of the air as a placeholder for "lots".

GJC

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: nice measure...

office doesn't even run properly on intel.

it's broken as fuck, random window blanking, menu's vanishing.

parts of it disable it's own teams plugins as they aren't trusted, or slow startup so badly it recommends disabling them.

[Wade Burchette]

Re: nice measure...

The real question is: How does Microsoft know how many app minutes people are using to begin with? What I do on my computer is none of their business! How long I play a game is none of their business! Which program I install is none of their business! My personal information is none of their business!

[TheWeetabix]

Re: nice measure...

As true as that should be, when you install that OS you can see all of the attempts to send telemetry home and in some cases, all you can do is make it anonymous, not actually turn it off. That’s where this comes from.

[chris9465]

Re: nice measure...

Weak

[Henry Wertz 1]

antivirus is no surprise

antivirus is no surprise. that hooks into things (to scan files on open etc.), scan processes in memory. etc.

Games? A few with anticheat aside you'd hope they run. Apparently they do with box86, box64 and wine if you're running ARM Linux.

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

"Microsoft has nothing to share at this time"

In other words, go away - we're not going to do anything about this and so long as people keep paying us, we couldn't care less.

[Howard Sway]

All repeat the claim that Copilot+ PCs are awesome

When it seems that the architecture they have chosen is a shim built on top of another shim, which doesn't actually work as claimed.

What did you expect when it's Microsoft, rushing out software as usual to jump on a hype, and shamelessly marketing it as awesome when in reality it's half-baked?

[Yorick Hunt]

PowerShell to the rescue!

Get-AppxPackage -Name "Copilot" | Remove-AppxPackage

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PowerShell to the rescue!

one of the first things I did after testing Copilot for a few days.

It's not terrible to use, but it is breathtakingly inaccurate and can be persuaded, in a lot of the questions, to answer as you want it to. Copilot is not vanilla ChatGpT either.

[NoneSuch]

Re: PowerShell to the rescue!

"Get-AppxPackage -Name "Copilot" | Remove-AppxPackage"

Do that and a nameless MS engineer will chuck in a piece of code on a future patch to reinstall it, because "You didn't REALLY mean to uninstall that brilliant piece of software, did you? We'll just put that back for you without actually telling you about it.

Install Windows today and you no longer own your PC. You just lease it from Microsoft and use it subject to their good graces.

Welcome to CoPilot and the Azure Cloud, the Tar-Babies of the Br'er Rabbit adventures. All you can hope for is to be shoved into the Briar patch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: PowerShell to the rescue!

I had this with the gamebar. Removed it with powershell and then noticed there was a cog next to it in some setting menu somewhere else. As soon as I clicked the cog it reinstalled, no confirmation prompt just straight up install and restart.

[FlippingGerman]

Disparity

Reviews of the new ARM laptops have mostly been pretty happy - performance in general decent enough and battery life is better than x86.

Then there’s this article, and notably a video from Level1Techs that points out that sure, the above is true, but the user experience is somewhat crappy - again - and MS really isn’t doing enough to support developers in changing that.

Contrast Apple’s transition to ARM on Macs, where they had a clearly defined transition period and lots of support, and things worked pretty damn well by the time any users bought anything.

Separately, I’ve been wondering how well Qualcomm is going to support here chips. They famously aren’t great for long term support of Android SoCs; have they committed to doing better here? Maybe it’s just not an issue for reasons I don’t understand, or maybe these laptops will stop getting updates after three years for no apparent reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Disparity

"Contrast Apple’s transition to ARM on Macs, where they had a clearly defined transition period and lots of support, and things worked pretty damn well by the time any users bought anything."

It is easy to be nice and professional when you charge at least double the products true value. With all the free money, you can do things a LITTLE better and just good enough to convince most Apple users that the extra money they are paying is worth it because of things like this.

With all that rip-off money, Apple should have done an even better job. Their transition to ARM was average. To be expected. Normal standards. Nothing special and not worth spaffing your own hard-earnt on.

[Snake]

Re: Disparity

Plus it's a complete apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun intended(. The Apple switch NEEDS to get done as best possible because the entire Apple ecosystem went ARM; the Microsoft ARM is a 'sidelight' as the PC x86 world...isn't leaving x86, probably anywhere within our lifetime. The Copilot ARM PC's are only an attempt to take and limit the market share from Google (Chromebooks), nothing more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Disparity

[Apple]

>> "It is easy to be nice and professional when you charge at least double the products true value. "

Please explain what you think is the "true value", also remembering that, when the M1 Macs came out, they out-performed pretty much everything else in the x86/x64 world while literally just sipping power? And what about the fact that PC vendors still charged more for their ultra-compact laptops than Apple, while with Apple Silicon many Macs actually got cheaper?

What do you think is the "true value" of say a Mac Studio, which outperforms XEON workstations costing more than 10x as much? Or a $699 Mac Mini which runs demanding apps better than a high end PC costing more than double?

Lastly, what's the "true value" of Microsoft's new Copilot+ Surface products then? Surely not the sticker price?

>> "With all the free money, you can do things a LITTLE better and just good enough to convince most Apple users that the extra money they are paying is worth it because of things like this."

If you really think profits made from selling products and services is "free" money then you're economically illiterate (nicely said). It's an idiotic statement.

Also, while I'm sure you believe all the Apple users who stick with the brand many years must all be imbeciles, it's much more likely it's actually you who's talking out of your backside here since aside from some drivel you haven't really made a comprehensive argument for whatever you're arguing.

>> "With all that rip-off money, Apple should have done an even better job. Their transition to ARM was average. To be expected. Normal standards. Nothing special and not worth spaffing your own hard-earnt on."

Yeah, right. Back in reality, Apple has done a tremendous job transitioning from intel to ARM, just as it did when migrating from PowerPC to intel or 68k to PowerPC. There hasn't been any other vendor who did a better job for transitioning between CPU architectures than intel, aside maybe IBM and their mainframes. Which pretty much everyone who understands technology agrees on.

I'm frankly a bit puzzled as to what the purpose of your post was, other than showcasing your illogical hatred of a brand of technology products you don't even seem to have any rudimentary understanding of.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Disparity

This ^

The fact I can spend £1500+ on an i7, 32GB RAM Windows laptop workstation for a customer, and it runs more sluggish right out of the box than my partner's now 6-year-old Intel MacBook Air, and significantly more sluggish than my base-model 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro, says it all.

While I doubt MacOS + Apple will ever replace Windows' market share, I find it hilarious to see people arguing that Apple is not worth the money or is "overpriced", when you end up spending much more on Windows machines that run a lot, lot worse.

[chris9465]

Stop believing Microsoft

It doesn't pay to be the first in line for a brand new Microsoft Product especially its hardware.

Microsoft constantly releases broken updates that cause more problems than it ever fixes.

I have a surface pro 9 i7 16GB ram that is slow as molasses uphill in the winter. I bought it believing it was better than a 5yr old iPad. I was wrong.

Am really glad I had thought of not buying a copilot plus because of Microsoft's history with everything new they release. Its always bad.

Everything from its xbox to its tablet's and everything in between is broken and unusable for at least 6 months. Except the smartphone blahaha a kindergarten class could build a better phone.

All I can do is LMFAO at the early adopters. Its what you get for ignoring Microsoft's history of product releases. Software updates often break more programs than it fixes.

Get away from Windows on anything, its bad software combined with bad hardware.

I don't care how fast or powerful Microsoft says its Hardware is, it's not fast or powerful if you can't use it.

Snapdragon is up on the lift, and Microsoft is still trying to figure out how to fix it.

Still haven't fixed all the problems with Windows 11. They make it worse with every update.

[Anonymous Coward]

WinTel ... Soon to be a thing of the past??

......just a thought!!!!

[ecofeco]

Re: WinTel ... Soon to be a thing of the past??

We can only hope.

[navarac]

Marketing again...

Once again, Microsoft shows that Marketing is in control, not Engineering. Reign-in the Marketing idiots, Nadella, before they bring you and the whole of Microsoft down.

[Ken Moorhouse]

"Microsoft has nothing to share at this time"

Is this their new Incorrect Username or Password prompt?

[david1024]

Have to agree with MS on this one

The folks they are targeting with this machine, for better or worse, will likely have access to native code for the processor--or the emulator will work fine. If you are part of the minority of folks that can't migrate... well, here's where you start migrating your code, or dig in for the long cold path to old iron.

This is another order from the cathedral.... sometimes they stick (like the office ribbons).... sometimes you aren't as big as you thought (sony with memorystick). It wont look good to the power users, but for most of use, non-x86 is not a deal-breaker and hasn't been for decades.

[Bill Neal]

useful AI

Want a killer app that people actually need? Make an AI that can write it's own drivers!

[Tron]

Avoid anything with AI in it, including Copilot+ PCs. And maybe use less tech.

The treatment of users by MS has just sunk another notch. Expect pre-Copilot+ hardware to hold its value on the second hand market as more people avoid the new stuff.

This may be time for large organisations to consider de-computerising some aspects of their business, especially if their software isn't going to work without spending serious cash on an upgrade. Computers are great, but not if the year on year costs outweigh the benefits against doing things manually. Shifting to a basic Works package offered benefits back in the day, but the cost, lack of resilience, downtime hit, and constant maintenance and upgrade costs of having a complex cross-enterprise, customised package may not be worth it (ask Birmingham). Corporates and governments probably don't care how much they spend on this, but anyone smaller needs their computing to be cost effective. There is only so much damage a business can take. The UK is about a third poorer post-Brexit, thanks to the hit on Sterling and increased people/goods mobility costs. Savings have to be made somewhere. The government may want everyone to live on trackable apps, but they aren't paying for it. We may need to ask ourselves how much of our tech we can do without. Do we really need gigabytes of data covering every aspect of our business. Can we simplify how we do stuff. Printed forms, call centre flow charts and biros cost pennies, don't need IT staff and they don't get hacked. Computers and off the shelf software will still be hugely useful, but maybe we don't need to be addicted to the silicon drug. We don't need tech everywhere doing everything, and might want to see just how much money we can save using less.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Avoid anything with AI in it, including Copilot+ PCs. And maybe use less tech.

I'd like to introduce you to something called paragraphs.

"Can we simplify how we do stuff. Printed forms, call centre flow charts and biros cost pennies, don't need IT staff and they don't get hacked. Computers and off the shelf software will still be hugely useful, but maybe we don't need to be addicted to the silicon drug. We don't need tech everywhere doing everything"

A chunky quote there. But enough English. Printed forms are a good one. Ha, ha. :Smiling=returd

Probably the greatest thing HTML ever did was <FORM>. Only 5 years ago I designed one for small c based on their paper app form, which drove them nuts as they had to type it. 2 days work for me and 3 hours work saved a day for them.

Pens! I had an image of peasants marching though lanes in anger when I read that.

We need much much more hidden tech. The big step is background internet. Lots going on for you but you are managing the surface level stuff to free more time up. The internet - and AI in a few years - are there to save time and effort. You are using it wrong.

By all means make more use of the Focus feature. And then remove yourself bit by bit from the internet until you are nothing to us. Then go and live in the hills if you like. If it makes you happy.

HTH

[Bogusz]

Browser + VSC/Node would be enough for many. You can get Intellij Idea for ARM64, both Linux and Windows. I am not impressed by current laptops' pricing but it is a decent alternative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes...

Windows broken blah blah blah. Nobody cares.

Has anyone run Linux on one yet? That is the interesting part.

Qualcomm has been working closely with kernel devs to get support in the kernel for this SoC but I've not seen a single reviewer try it out.

Who gives a fuck about an ARM powered Windows laptop? Doesn't matter how you catch AIDS its still AIDS.

ARM isn't going to magically make Windows awesome for regular people but for techies an ARM based Linux laptop is nirvana.