Linus Tech Tips actually just released a video a couple of hours ago where they compared the Surface Pro X SQ2 with the M1 MacBook Air. It was not pretty.
So basically, the M1 Macbook Air is two to three times faster than the SQ2, including comparing ARM Windows on the SQ2 against ARM Windows in a VM on the M1 Air.
Relatedly, I wrote this on Twitter a few weeks ago:
cargo build of sccache on a Lenovo Yoga C630 (Snapdragon 850) in WSL: 4 minutes 55 seconds. On a Macbook Air M1: 55 seconds
WSL 1 or 2? WSL 1 has very slow disk access, so compiling can be pretty slow. I.e. I would expect WSL to be slower for disk reasons even it was running on an M1.
He’s off on the strategic focus of Apple (where he says that the M1 benefit because Apple is taking a mobile OS and adapting it for the desktop vs Microsoft is taking a desktop OS and adapting it for mobile architectures. The truth of the matter is that Apple has been consistently making CPUs for about a decade that blow away the competition on compute per watt. Like 2-3 years before the industry catches up to where Apple was. They’re just bringing that same power to laptops/PCs as they’ve saturated what that buys them on mobile (not fully but it’s not a big enough sales driver as mobile sales growth has slowed). That’s why you see AirPods and M1 - “where else can we deploy our perf per watt and vertical integration advantage”.
As for “why are there so few ARM versions of apps”, that’s purely the vertical integration piece again. Apple makes it very clear the old tech line is dead so developers have a clear thing to explain to their management. Microsoft tries to keep everyone happy which means devs are like “I’ll wait until this actually has industry buy in” which then Microsoft uses as “well there’s no interest here and maybe the tech won’t work out/vendors won’t materialize” and “we can’t ask our customers to pay this transition cost”.