[kyleplum]

I can't help but wonder what Microsoft's answer to Apple Silicon will be going forward. They don't really make hardware, but selling Windows laptops gets harder and harder the further Apple gets ahead. It seems inevitable that there needs to be some ARM-based Windows laptops to compete in perf/watt to the M1/M2 but I don't know what company can provide an ARM chip that competes with Apple at this point.

[threeseed]

Their answer is this: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/microsoft-will-boost...

They will need to get developers up to speed porting their apps to ARM before they are even in a position to re-boot their Windows ARM strategy.

But this is a multi-year journey which is likely to give Intel/AMD time to produce something more competitive.

[babypuncher]

Even if that happens, I'm not sure how much appeal an ARM version of Windows actually has. Right now, the only things keeping me on Windows are Visual Studio and my huge library of legacy software (ahem video games). Microsoft's x86 emulation on ARM is downright atrocious. A native ARM version of Visual Studio could keep me productive, but I'm not about to spend money on a new computer than runs all my favorite old games noticeably worse than my current machine.

If I buy an ARM machine any time in the next 5 years, it will almost certainly run macOS or Linux, with Windows relegated to an x86 box that I use for gaming.

[nick_]

I've got my eyes on the ARM64 build of full Visual Studio coming in "the next few weeks".

https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2022/05/27/news-ro...

I've been using VS 2022 on "Windows 11 for ARM" inside Parallels Desktop on my M1 Max MBP, and it's just barely usable as VS 2022 is 64-bit. JetBrains Rider is pretty good on macOS, and "VS 2022 for Mac" is coming along now, but full VS would be nice.

[Macha]

Microsoft has made three seperate attempts at windows on ARM (Windows RT, Windows 10 for ARM, Windows 10 S). Whether because each attempt produced a more locked down platform than standard windows, or because people prefer compatibility with their existing software over battery life, or because non-M1 ARM chips were not competitive with Intel/AMD even before emulation overhead, none of these attempts took off

[lynguist]

The full Windows 10 runs on ARM64 since 2017. See here for all architectures of Windows. [1]

And the deal is that current ARM processors have higher IPC than even the latest Intel and AMD processors and are much more diverse. The biggest ARM CPUs have 128 cores that have higher multi-threaded performance than any CPU by Intel/AMD and a Cortex-X2 has higher IPC than any Intel/AMD.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_vers...

[Shorel]

True, at that point Linux becomes very competitive.

[skohan]

How is the Linux on Arm situation currently? I mean specifically for desktop Linux?

[lynguist]

Pretty much every distribution and software package is available in ARM64. You will not miss anything.

[kube-system]

I think the popularity of the Raspberry Pi has sorted out most desktop use-cases.

[sliken]

Asahi linux has a port for the M1. Accelerated 3d isn't supported yet, but recently his a milestone of a working rendered triangle.

So not yet, but seems pretty close. Marcan has a Patreon if you want to support it.

[skohan]

Is it actually supported to run Asahi linux on an M-series mac? Or is it kind of a sketchy jailbreak type situation?

[kyleplum]

As far as I can tell, the ARM hardware linked is vastly inferior to the current M1 hardware, let alone M2.

> But this is a multi-year journey which is likely to give Intel/AMD time to produce something more competitive.

And during this time Apple is going to release M2 Pro/Max, M3, etc. I just have a hard time seeing how Intel/AMD catchup in the laptop space.

[sliken]

Well fabs used to be hugely important, not only did each generation halve in linear size (4x in transistors per area), but each shrink was a big win on clock speed and power use. This revisions happened often, around 18 months.

These days the shrinks are smaller, i.e. 5nm -> 4nm -> 3nm, but each gen lasts longer, and provides very modest improvements in power and clock speed. They are also coming out in ever slower release cycles.

So now the competition has more time to catch up, and less of a disadvantage of they are a process behind. TSMC is currently leading, Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and others are bidding for the latest/greatest, while Samsung and Intel try to close the gap with their fabs.

Apple has an advantage of doing several generations in phones/tablets before bringing out the M1. Additionally they have an architecture license, so they do custom cores, not just what ARM is offering. This allowed them to tune their designs, use engineers from various companies they acquired to tune their chips, and get rid of the cruft, like 32 bit compatibility.

With all that said I expect Apples the perf/watt advantage to decrease over time. What does seem somewhat unique is they have build in a relatively small, power efficient, and inexpensive package (compared to similar functionality) 128, 256, 512, and 1024 bit wide memory interfaces. Sure you could build a dual socket Epyc with 16 dimms and likely burns north of 100s of watts and takes at least 1 rack unit, or you could buy a mbp m1 max. To match the M1 ultra you'd have to switch to some exotic CPUs that use HBM and sold by companies that typically send 3-6 sales people in suites before revealing their prices.

[shadowpho]

It was hard to imagine Intel catching up to AMD pre C2D.

[jamiek88]

And AMD to intel pre Ryzen.

It takes a good 5 years of doing everything right though.

[avereveard]

too bad 2012 was a turmoiled period for microsoft, windows 8 for phone was a concrete seed for an unified development environment with an unified api.

a series of strategic and communication mistakes kinda wasted the shot, and when they finally fixed the desktop side of the experience was too little too late.

[mwcampbell]

Ooh, I want one of these. I've long wished that Microsoft would release its own small-form-factor desktop to compete with the Mac mini.

[DougWebb]

I've been running an Odyssey from Seeed Studio for a while now, as an in-house dev server running SQL Server and IIS. It's the form factor you want, and it's been flawless (even though it's underpowered for what I'm doing with it.)

https://www.seeedstudio.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=win10

[WithinReason]

I've long wished that Microsoft would port Windows on ARM to the Raspberry Pi!

[kube-system]

Isn't there Windows IoT Core?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=533...

[WithinReason]

Which is different from Windows on ARM

[skohan]

Why? Windows seems like a terrible option for minimal hardware?

[WithinReason]

Why? Unofficial ports work OK. Besides, imagine how efficient Windows on ARM software would be if it was developed on a Rpi

[BackBlast]

Because using poor/slow tools means we end up with better end results? In my experience using poor tools ends up with higher costs. I don't see how higher costs are going to result in better software in the end.

[olliej]

Does windows not have a rosetta equivalent??

[olliej]

For anyone who saw this I saw a few other comments that say that they do, but obviously I don’t have details.

I was very confused that they wouldn’t have it, it just seemed bizarre to ever have win/arm without it?

[Matl]

> selling Windows laptops gets harder and harder the further Apple gets ahead

That's Apple's marketing but the 12th Gen P chips are perfectly capable of keeping up with Apple on the performance side and AMD's likely to be able to compete on the power consumption side as well. Yes, x86 is likely to never match ARM on battery life, but I believe they can be reasonably close for it not to be an issue.

[procinct]

It would be nice if they could get close in terms of battery. Every windows laptop I’ve ever had including my current one I use for work has had a battery life of around 3 or 4 hours. Compared to my MacBook Air which can easily seem to go over 24.

[pc86]

I have an older work laptop but a nearly brand new (comparatively) battery that's about a year, maybe 18 months old. If I'm actually using my laptop, it will last maybe an hour or two. I might get it to last 3-4 if I just have email up with the screen dimmed.

Not sure if it's Windows, too much work surveillance-ware, or just HP being garbage, but my M1 Mac will last twice as long as I've ever needed it to without getting plugged in. Even my older Intel MBP lasts most of the day.

[Matl]

I am honestly a bit shocked at the low numbers you and parent are reporting. I have not used Windows in a long time but Linux is generally assumed to be less power efficient on laptops and yet I have no problem getting 7-9 hours out of my year old ZenBook 13 OLED.

That's still nowhere near what you get on a MacBook Air but perfectly usable imo.

[Lio]

My experience with Linux, Ubuntu and Fedora on HP EliteBook and Dell XPS13 respectively is similar to the Windows numbers posted above.

My 2014 MBP13 still gets better life than my daily driver XPS13 9370.

[ceeplusplus]

That's exactly the problem though. One OEM can match Apple in performance, and the other in power, but none in both power and performance.

[sliken]

The competition is improving:

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/amds-ryzen-7-6800u-is-35-more-...

[Matl]

My point was AMD's Ryzen 7000 is likely to be able to do both really soon, while Intel's 12th gen can match/even exceed it performance wise now.

[pishpash]

You forgot about price. There is a lot of low-end work that doesn't even need an Air, for $500.

[jklinger410]

Microsoft is a company full of bureaucrats who don't care about their product. Apple is going to take over the computing world here shortly.

[PraetorianGourd]

Please talk to anyone outside of the start-up/tech world and ask them about the technology they use. A majority don't give a toss about M1 or M2 or ARM vs. x86 or anything else that seems to get so many in the tech world so excited. They care about Excel, they care about backwards compatibility, they care about centralized management.

Apple _may_ take over the consumer space but this will be more due to the shift from desktop/laptop computing to phones and tablets than anything with the M* series of processors.

[kyleplum]

Consumers do care about things like battery life. I imagine most consumers would prefer to stick with what they know (windows), but as the battery life/performance gap grows, people will be more likely to make the switch.

[Beltalowda]

> Consumers do care about things like battery life.

For laptops, less than you'd think. A huge chunk of people buy laptops so they can work on the dinner table and then put their computer away easily when it's time for the family dinner.

Source: I spent about five years selling laptops to people. That was a while ago, but I don't think much changed here. If anything, things changed the other way (battery life is even less important for laptops than it was) since a lot of people also have a smartphone or tablet.

And as battery lives get longer, there are diminishing returns as well. The difference between 1 hour and 4 hours is huge. The difference between 4 and 8 hours pretty large. After that? Less so.

In my experience noise and heat (or rather, lack thereof) are more important, although also not hugely so for a lot of people, just more so than battery life.

[brtkdotse]

Consumers buy €400 17” monstrosities with numpads and run them plugged in.

[djhn]

To be honest I'd kill for a revival of the MacBook Pro 17".

Heck I'd love portable 21" and even 24" models.

[The_Colonel]

I agree about the CPU architecture, people don't give a shit.

However, I think MS/Intel will start losing also corporate space. With the staffing problems, companies are looking for ways to score cheap points, and I'm starting to see "free choice of a laptop, including MacBook" as one of the benefits even in some big corps.

[threeseed]

Thankfully we don't need to trust in meaningless anecdotes about what those in the 'real world' do or don't know.

The facts on the ground are that Apple's Mac sales are rapidly growing and in the last quarter half of all Mac buyers were new. That clearly indicates that something new to the Mac platform is attracting users.

So whether they know specifically about M1 or not they do know that the Macs have better characteristics than in previous years which M1 is responsible for.

And given that in all Mac marketing the M1 has been heavily advertised logically at least some proportion of users do know about it and do see it as a key differentiator.

[rastignack]

I’m working for a big bank. They now offer Mac workstations to be able to hire the best devs.

I would have never expected a Unix workstation in such a corporate setup when I started 15 years ago.

[seabriez]

It's a gimmick. Best devs dont us MacOS, lol. There's probably some cohort of frontend that try to look "cool." But any dev doesn't fall for that fluff. FFS, Apple just announced memory swapping as a feature on their iPad, a feature that's literally been around since 1970s. That's laughable and sad, any dev worth their salt would know this.

[ezsmi]

I agree that the world basically runs on excel, but given that, the world cares about excel’s performance. Especially as spreadsheets are only getting bigger.

And then there’s this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-office-for-ma...

[airstrike]

Office for Mac is a non-starter for power users due to the lack of Alt-key accelerators. There are countless other missing features, but that alone is enough to never make the switch

[reaperducer]

Interesting that you state there are missing features.

I remember a speech given by one of the leaders of Mac development at Microsoft saying that new features are tested out on the Mac first, and if they work out, they're brought into the Windows version.

Is that no longer the case?

[airstrike]

The problem is that Alt-key accelerators are encouraged by Windows across the entire OS and it has been the case since the very first version of Excel (it really predates Excel)

I love the approach of testing new features on the Mac first, but it isn't sufficient since the Mac version was never updated to be 100% parity with the Windows version, which means some of the preexisting features would forever be missing from the Mac

[onphonenow]

No chance unfortunately. Windows 11 has pop up "notifications" that are basically ads all over. Unnecessarily hard to cleanup / customize in a biz setting.

If we could deploy Apple products in a business environment we would in a heartbeat. But Microsoft just is better here currently on a lot of fronts - the last time I chased my tail here it didn't pay off.

If Apple wants to compete for the business market I think they should! We need first class user account management that INTEGRATES with other stuff (ie, google email etc etc). Right now you can federate from active directory to almost anything (SonicWall/VPN for remote users, WiFi for onprem user devices, vSphere for VM management etc etc). If you sync to google you can then use google one click sign-ons everywhere on the web SAAS side.

We then need office running perfectly.

Then we'd probably do our legacy apps on some VMs and chrome for SAAS apps.

We also need to be able to run MacOS virtually. We have remote users who talk to an on-prem VMs, separates their personal and work stuff, we can lock down and monitor the on-prem VMs and they can watch netflix with no worries using home machine. How does this work with Apple? It's easy with Windows.

I think there would be some demand from smaller co's to make the switch if there was a solution which allowed what folks are looking for -> migration to cloud as offices go virtual with controlled "desktops" delivered to users while still allowing in office / warehouse / factory deployments.

[wintermutestwin]

My cut n' paste pet peeve example of why macOS seems like a "toy" and not for serious business use:

The file save dialog box has this unbelievable limit of 38 viewable characters! I regularly have to deal with 50+ character naming conventions where the first 38 characters are the same among many files. It is a huge hassle of cursor navigation that is so unnecessary as I am looking at all this unused real estate in the dialog box.

[reaperducer]

I agree that this particular aspect of the the dialog box is bad. But if something as minor as this keeps you off an entire platform, it sounds like making excuses.

I save ~50 - ~100 character filenames all the time. I even cut, copy, and paste bits of them in that little box. It doesn't feel like a big deal to me.

But yeah, it's the little things like this that belie Apple's reputation for attention to detail.

[rtlfe]

> If we could deploy Apple products in a business environment we would in a heartbeat.

I'm not gonna pretend to know about how IT works in business, but most employees at big tech companies do all their work on Macs, so it's certainly possible in some cases.

[iostream24]

Is Active Directory still LDAP compliant? Embraced and extended or compliant?

Open-LDAP should be able to get you most of the way there. Stuff like CIFS allows for mountable shares, and roaming profiles is easily handled by LDAP login and a mounted /home

Oh wait, then you could use actual FOSS systems, Sorry I forgot that this was about Apple.. Ok so they can license AD, giving M$!a bone in the process

[onphonenow]

I actually used to do this. Samba on Mac used to be great, so you could do a good hybrid setup. And once you had Samba working your linux users could jump in more or less if they could self support.

I think Samba went to GPLv3 and updates for it on mac seemed to stop entirely cold which killed this as the easy integration glue. Does anyone remember details? This great integration point went away and basically you end up tilting at windmills.

[jiggawatts]

You realise that something like 99% of all LDAP authentications in the world go through Active Directory, right?

This is like someone screaming that Linux is a toy because it’s not really UNIX unlike SCO.

[coliveira]

I have worked on big companies that do pretty much all of this on Mac. I agree that it might be harder to do than on Windows, because there is so much industry know-how on the MS side. But there is no real technical barrier for this to happen.

[Shorel]

Provide a service similar to Active Directory? Absolutely, that's what is needed from Apple, Red Hat, Canonical, etc.

Depend in any way on a Google Account for anything critical? That's something I oppose with all my will.

[onphonenow]

In a business context a google account requirement would be fine. Microsoft is basically going there to get folks to move AD into the Azure cloud. We're feeling a ton of a pressure towards that, and entitlements for Office etc are being delivered that way (so you end up with a mini AD instance in cloud already).

[fomine3]

Virtualizing macOS for enterprise is a good point. I wonder IBM/Apple want to do this.

[babypuncher]

Microsoft cares about their B2B products. While end users complain about Windows being a bloated mess, corporations still see no better alternative platform for deploying and managing a fleet of thousands (or tens of thousands) of machines.

[bob1029]

Just a few weeks ago I replaced my Surface Laptop 3 with a M1 MacBook and couldn't agree more regarding hardware. I can't speak for any xbox branded stuff, but any MS-branded computer I've ever owned has been trash. Microsoft might be terrible at this hardware business, but they do have a powerful presence in the developer & business community.

I still feel like Microsoft is the strongest software company on earth. Consider that not even the confines of this M1 MacBook prevent me from being able to compile & run my .NET apps without modification. Apple's hypothetical hegemony does not cross over in the same way.

Until Apple can get me to look at their Xcode offerings and think "wow fuck visual studio, GitHub, et. al.", I do not think their takeover of the computing world will begin.

[pmulard]

I have to disagree on this. Microsoft has gone out of their way to support their legacy software on older systems, and it's a huge reason companies in the IT and IoT sector have stayed with them all these years.

[api]

It's worse than that. They're busy turning off their users with dark patterns, terrible UX, ads and spam in the OS, and endless amounts of unnecessary telemetry.

[dt3ft]

I just had to hack/patch windows 11 in order to bring back "never combine taskbar windows" functionality which existed in windows 10. I am strongly considering switching over at this point. Removal of "never combine" is such a productivity kill that it baffles me how this thing rolled out at all. Who took over the wheel over at Microsoft and who left, that made this major breaking change take place?

[alluro2]

Oof - I understand your gripe completely, Win 11 is downright perplexing with some of this stuff, but if you're someone who wants the "Never combine..." option, you'll probably hate MacOS dock, the way window and app switching works, lack of any options there, and general "We know better than our users" mentality all over the place...

[seabriez]

"Grass is always greener" effect. If you think there isn't weird UI shit on MacOS...

[airstrike]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm never upgrading if I can help it...

[mwcampbell]

And yet, I and many of my friends will keep using Windows because the third-party Windows screen readers are better than macOS's VoiceOver in many ways. I have no doubt that other users have their own favorite (edit: or essential) third-party tools that keep them on Windows.

[cowtools]

It's a false dichotomy. You could say the same about either company. Those are the inevitable consequences of proprietary software and vendor lock-in

(my original comment was some rhetorical question, I edited it to be more direct and less passive-agressive)

[eitland]

Microsoft.

They had some promising years but I always sensed a struggle in the wheelhouse.

Now they are back to forcing Edge on people, ads on login screen and in the Start menu are their new inventions and their store is almost as broken as ever and most importantly hard earned trust flew out the window in the process.

[cowtools]

Apple forces safari on users in iOS, has icloud ads and integrations built into the OS, and sells devices with locked down bootloaders/filesystems that don't let you sideload your own programs.

Who is the bigger threat here? The real threat to user freedom is the tribalism of picking the "lesser evil" when there are workable non-evil solutions like linux.

[eitland]

It doesn't force Safari. Chrome is absolutely allowed to create a browser and track users and monetize them on iOS. They just have to use the same rendering engine.

I'm not Apples greatest fan (see my latest comment), but there is a major difference between iCloud or OneDrive being pre-installed, both which is OK with me, and Candy Crush showing up in the start menu on my work laptop or some stupid game altering my login screen, again on my work laptop.

And yes, I too am a Linux user.

Why choose between various dumb and evil options if nice is available? (I know, some people get as mad at font problems and alignment on Linux as I get on microlagging on Windows and boneheaded CMD-TAB on Mac, but each to their own.)

[chongli]

No, you can't. There are no dark patterns, ads, or spam in macOS. The worst you could say is that it has "terrible UX." I would then respond: compared to what?

In my view, the only desktop-grade OS I prefer over the modern Mac is MacOS 9. It was much easier to use and understand from top to bottom. On the other hand, it lacked a lot of features I've come to take for granted (pre-emptive multitasking, multithreading, protected memory, support for modern hardware, gestures, etc).

I do really miss the spatial Finder though.

[heavyset_go]

There are plenty of dark patterns in macOS. For example, macOS will trick users into thinking that the apps they want to use are either broken or malicious if developers didn't pay Apple $100 a year and Notarize apps. macOS has increasingly become a platform to sell iCloud subscriptions, as well.

[seabriez]

No "dark" patterns he says. Even after all the revelations, iFads just keep mindlessly worship Crapple. When in reality:

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

"iOS sends the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other handsets and the home gateway, to Apple together with their GPS location. Users have no opt out from this and currently there are few, if any, realistic options for preventing this data sharing."

Power corrupts and when one company wields too much of it, shit will hit the fan.

[seabriez]

Please purchase iCloud Subscription to backup this comment.

[api]

Yes Apple does push iCloud a bit but it seems fairly simple to opt out and after you do it stops bugging you, or at least that has been my experience.

[malfist]

I'm not even sure which company they're accusing of having those faults.

[rhinoceraptor]

Not to mention, up until a few years ago, most PCs did not come with TPMs, so they can't run Windows 11. And Windows 10 won't get security patches after 2025.

I built my computer in 2017, and it's still very capable of running modern games, and in three years it will still be perfectly fine. But I won't be able to run Windows 11 unless I do weird hacks and workarounds, or try to source a TPM that works with my motherboard.

[bornfreddy]

Yes, Apple would have a difficult job displacing MS, but it seems that MS is set on helping them. I mean, who doesn't want ads on their work computer? /s

[aseipp]

The theory some people have is that Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia last year was their attempt to get their hands on some desktop-class CPU cores (Nuvia was originally aiming for the server market), and Microsoft has largely partnered with Qualcomm on all their previous offerings. So that might be their saving grace if they can actually materialize something in the next year.

But I agree. Apple is pulling ahead a decent amount here and likely will stay in that leading position for a while, like they did in the phone space, and that makes all the competitors that much less appealing.

[skavi]

Nuvia by all accounts has an excellent team. IIRC, Qualcomm has redirected their efforts to laptop SoCs.

[aseipp]

Yeah, I have no doubt they can make an excellent core based on what I saw; it's just that there's a limited timeline before your competitors make their move, and Apple is very much moving right now. Hopefully they'll have something released within the next ~6-10 months.

[hiitechk]

I see Microsoft as a SaaS company now, heavy on cloud and Azure. Apple is still a products company.

[babypuncher]

Supposedly Qualcomm will have an M1-class laptop chip ready at the end of 2023.

That timeframe does not inspire much confidence in me, seeing as it is three whole years after M1-based products first hit store shelves.

[runevault]

Quick Google search indicates Windows still holds a 74% market share. Apple has a long way to go before they are really crunching on Windows in the general market. Hardware superiority does not guarantee success, for many people what they are already comfortable with is fine.

[jcstauffer]

Windows may still dominate, but 75% is far below the 90% it was 10 years ago, while MacOS has nearly doubled in the same timeframe.

As someone who can remember this never changing, that's a pretty steep slope...

[runevault]

Oh it is far from nothing to be certain. And as Netflix's recent loss of subscribers and subsequent drop in stock price showed nothing is forever. But I'd still need to see the drop continue for a bit longer before I full on expect Microsoft to be in trouble.

Mind you, I would like to see them follow in Apple's footsteps on the train the M1 is creating. It certainly makes it FEEL like there is more runway down this path then Intel's, with caveats for potential hardware vulnerabilities like specter that simply haven't been found yet on Apple silicon to inhibit optimizations.

[Macha]

I think at this point Windows market share could go to 0, and while it'd hurt, with Office 365, Azure, Xbox, etc., I think microsoft is sufficiently diversified to survive that.

[freediver]

I assume what you refer to is this

https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...

If you look at the trend, macOS is gaining worldwide market share while Windows is steadily dropping.

And macOS share in USA has already reached close to 25%.

[Macha]

Right, but for Apple to gain share in the rest of world like they have in the US, they need to drop prices, and that'd hurt their margins, including in the US if enough people buy cheaper foreign macs (which is definitely a thing, in my western european country there's a couple of somewhat popular retailers selling imported US laptops which are cheaper than local SKUs)

[momenti]

It's behind a paywall for me.

[robocat]

> Windows still holds a 74% market share

Note that is for desktop PCs: many people don’t own a PC/laptop so the market share is far far lower than that, especially outside of rich countries. Microsoft is now primarily just business software?

[pier25]

According to StatCounter, macOS only has 15% of the global desktop market share.

https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide

[guelo]

I'm not convinced that Apple's advantage is due to ARM vs x86. I think it has more to do with Apple's exclusive rights to TSMC's most advanced proccess. After all Apple is also beating Qualcomm's ARM Android CPUs.

[giantrobot]

Apple's advantage is manifold. They have an in-house chip design firm that is very talented and an architecture license for ARM. So they can make CPUs that do whatever they need. They also build the OS so can take advantage of new CPU and GPU features or go the other way and request hardware features to support software designs.

They're also using essentially the same cores between their mobile and desktop products. Apple is their own ARM ecosystem. An improved core for the A-series chips is an automatic improvement for the next M-series chip. Most arm licensees have to wait for ARM to come out with new cores.

The fact Apple can book the initial runs of any of TSMC's process nodes is just one of many of their advantage over other ARM and x86 manufacturers.

[seabriez]

Yeah, thats a good point. There's def something shady and untold about this whole thing; and that could explain it. Apple has deep pockets and considering they have done shady deals (like the Google default search engine) this could be another one of those.

[lynguist]

The ISA does not matter in a CPU design.

But the process node is also not the main reason.

What matters is only microarchitecture. And Apple has by far the most performant microarchitecture design of all CPUs.

[avianes]

ISA does matter in a CPU design and CPU performance:

- Variable instruction sizes make the front-end more complex and limits the decoding width;

- Delayslot makes superscalar front-end more complex;

- Page size limits VIPT L1 cache size;

- Dedicated SIMD/FP architectural registers allow dedicated SIMD/FP physical register files;

...

The choice and design of the ISA is extremely important, it's hard to argue that the ARM ISA has no impact on M1&M2 performance.

But the ISA choice is obviously not enough to explain the whole performance of the M1&M2. Likewise, the manufacturing process cannot fully explain the performance of the M1&M2.

The Apple microarchitecture is by far the most performant and efficient of all high-end superscalar CPU.

But be careful with simplistic explanations, the microarchitecture is always constrained by the ISA/architecture, and the x86 ISA has some flaws that can affect the microarchitecture (least on the power consumption).

[lynguist]

Mike Clark, the architect of Zen says in [1] literally that ISA doesn’t matter and that it’s all about the microarchitecture.

Quote: “Although I've worked on x86 obviously for 28 years, it's just an ISA, and you can build a low-power design or a high-performance out any ISA. I mean, ISA does matter, but it's not the main component - you can change the ISA if you need some special instructions to do stuff, but really the microarchitecture is in a lot of ways independent of the ISA. There are some interesting quirks in the different ISAs, but at the end of the day, it's really about microarchitecture.”

In the end, ISA is such a small part that impacts the design of a modern high performance CPU that it is almost negligible. It is physically impacting only the decode unit, but the decode unit is only a few percent of die area. Feel free to listen to the whole interview to get a feeling.

1: https://youtu.be/3vyNzgOP5yw

[andoriyu]

Qualcomm hasn't made a single Qualcomm core since Apple released their first aarch64 SoC. Qualcomm had zero competition and decided to not really work on anything. Apple blindsided it with its very competitive aarch64 cores, Qualcomm had nothing to show, so they switched to ARM's core design.

Customers kept paying Qualcomm for their SoC with ARM designed cores, so once again, Qualcomm had no reason to actually do anything but sit on their patents.

Intel had a similar story, since Sandy Bridge "x86_64" part of CPU barely changed, most of the performance gain was somewhere from better process, more custom instructions (avx2, etc.), higher TDP (since ryzen).

It's not ARM vs x86, it's Apple ARM cores vs everyone elses cores.

[bee_rider]

Continue hoping that people who don't want to run MacOS still won't want to?

I don't think they have any chance to match Apple in terms of efficiency while buying third party chips. The advantage comes from controlling the whole stack I think. Apple knows exactly what accelerators will be available for each generation, and their communication between hardware and software folks is presumably much tighter.

Is the Wintel laptop/Macbook gap even that much larger than the Android/iPhone gap?

The market for non-Apple devices is, I think, pretty large.

[cbhl]

Microsoft has ported Windows and Office to ARM for a decade, and they have both x86-to-arm (Windows 10) and x64-to-arm (Windows 11) translation technologies. They also have ARM-based Surface devices in the Microsoft Store (looks like the Surface Pro X is the current model).

That said, the big business is still big business: Azure (Cloud), Office, and device management (MDM) / active directory are big focuses even in a heterogeneous computing environment that includes Chromebooks and Macs.

[sharikous]

It's not clear if the ISA difference is so meaningful, perhaps it's only a small part of the performance boost. Don't forget that Apple moved from PPC to x86 to get better perf/watt and the PPC ISA is closer to ARM than x86.

Intel or AMD back on their feet can probably match Apple in perf/watt. And I guess they are the closest competitors in the PC market.

[genewitch]

i thought apple switched to x86 because two console companies were buying most of the PPC fab output? I distinctly remember that being the reasoning. Until Ryzen hit with the 3000 series x86 didn't have a better perf/watt than PPC, at a glance.

In the 10 years between my 40 core HP server's release and the Ryzen 5950x's 16 cores, performance increased ~10%, but the TDP of the 5950x is 10% of the quad xeons in the HP. This is ignoring the fact that a single 5950x cost less in any market than a single xeon in that HP upon release.

Does anyone else remember the Cavium ThunderX processors? Whatever happened to those? the perf/watt on those was supposed to be outstanding...

[vorpalhex]

Simply getting functional Windows on ARM would be helpful. The last surface ARM attempt went poorly.

[aseipp]

Windows on ARM is basically completely different at this point, it's perfectly functional; they have x64 emulation as of recently and it just uses normal UEFI for booting, just like most other normal laptops. Honestly the emulation is pretty good even if it's not as fast as Rosetta2, and they even now have a new 64-bit Windows ABI and calling convention that allows developers to incrementally port their applications to AArch64 on an individual DLL-by-DLL basis (so the emulator can handle transitioning between an x64 app and an AArch64 DLL, or the other way around.) They aren't just doing nothing.

The biggest problem is the hardware: you're basically just buying a poorly performing laptop with probably lagging Linux support if you get tired of Windows, and you could just buy an M1 Macbook and get superior performance and battery life for the same cost, and you can even just run Windows on that using Parallels and still get good performance. The AArch64 laptop market is mostly just Qualcomm processors and Apple, and if you actually care about the performance profile, there's basically no comparison between the two right now with current offerings; the Mac is the winner, and you can even run Linux on it.

[vorpalhex]

None of the major manufacturers are going to ship Linux to consumers. Having a version of Windows that actually has apps that they can ship means now building the hardware is worth it.

[MikusR]

It's not as fast as Rosetta2 because M1 is about 2-3 times faster than the Qualcomm Microsoft is using

[kyleplum]

I have faith in MS software development - I believe they can get windows on ARM working - but as far as I can tell, all non-Apple ARM hardware implementations are significantly lacking in the laptop space. There are vendors making decent phone chips, but I've seen no indication of the ability to scale up to a laptop in the way Apple Silicon has.

[macintux]

Apple’s key advantage here, though, is one Microsoft would never voluntarily embrace: abandoning x86-64 in favor of ARM.

Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind. Microsoft would never do that, so Windows on ARM will presumably languish in application support indefinitely.

[SoftTalker]

Yes Apple is walking on familiar ground here. They abandoned M68K, then PPC, now Intel. They know they can do it, as they have done it before, and their customers will follow along, as they have done before.

[Shadonototra]

x86 is dead, full of security issues and is energy-intensive

smartphones, even embedded devices, including cars nowadays are all on ARM, servers are building momentum too, not because it is shiny, but because of tangible gains on many aspects

> Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind.

That's not true at all, the chip doesn't matter when you sell software, hardware and services

It's like changing the internals of your Camera to provide a better experience and quality, why do you care about it? in fact you don't! You want a better Camera, company will pick what's best for the better Camera

Apple provide a transparent translation layer to accompany the transition with Rosetta, it's effortless for the users

That's the problem of Microsoft, they are incapable of designing proper UX solution to accompany their customers to better solutions, instead they force their customers to be stuck with inefficient solution, Microsoft don't even care nor dare cleaning their OS to provide up-to-date solutions

It's a bloaty mess of 5 generations of different UI/UX

Choosing Windows prevents you from having a seamless experience from your Watch -> Phone -> Desktop -> Car

That's what Microsoft fanboy don't understand, they protect their poor decision making, their inefficient products and ultimately, it leads to the death of their products

Microsoft Windows consumers are stuck

That's why Windows Mobile, Metro, UWP, WinUI all flopped, the platform is no longer up to date

And it's not just a chip issue, it's the whole ecosystem and culture, always too late to make changes, and here, incapable of providing a transition path, hence they are failing behind apple

[paulmd]

> x86 is dead, full of security issues

to be clear though: spectre/meltdown are not an x86 issue. POWER, SPARC, and indeed even ARM (although only some of their products have OoO/speculation) were affected as well. There is no magic to ARM that magically makes it secure if you don't protect against side-effecting.

I generally agree with the rest of your points, Microsoft is stuck in legacy hell with x86 and they are stuck with a customer base that specifically values that (everyone else has departed for linux or osx, they have "dead sea effect"ed themselves into a high-maintenance customer base), and they've done a super shitty job in general with 5 different generations of UX lava-layered over the top, and x86 is clearly falling behind in energy efficiency. But security isn't something intrinsic to ARM or x86, you can design a secure x86 processor and you can design an insecure ARM processor.

[jcranmer]

> to be clear though: spectre/meltdown are not an x86 issue. POWER, SPARC, and indeed even ARM (although only some of their products have OoO/speculation) were affected as well. There is no magic to ARM that magically makes it secure if you don't protect against side-effecting.

IIRC, M1 was even vulnerable to some of the otherwise Intel-only Meltdown (cross-privilege boundaries) exploits, let alone the more-or-less ubiquitous Spectre (only within same-privilege boundaries) exploits.

[jmclnx]

> That's not true at all, the chip doesn't matter when you sell software, hardware and services

Yes they do, I am typing this in a fully functional 10+ year old Thinkpad running Linux and getting updates to software.

I know people with with Apple Laptops that they can no longer get security updates due to the chip change. There only option is to install another OS to keep on that hardware.

But they chose to pay for a brand new model instead of leaving their OS of choice.

So, Apple is able to pull these people along raking in the doe because they are willing to send 1500+ USD to Apple every few years.

Good for Apple, PT Barnum comes to mind with Apple.

[Shadonototra]

> I know people with with Apple Laptops that they can no longer get security updates due to the chip change. There only option is to install another OS to keep on that hardware.

Why do you lie? The newly announced macOS supports Intel based macs

https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/06/macos-13-ventura-supported-ma...

[ChuckNorris89]

>That's what Microsoft fanboy don't understand

Maybe if you stop accusing people of being fanboys, discussions could be more productive.

In fact, your entire post is all trolling, FUD, and no substance or arguments.

[Shadonototra]

We can never complain about Microsoft and Windows, it is always seen as "trolling", FUD, or arguments with no substance, despite everything being already documented and archived for over a decade, I'm not going to turn a comment into a 10 pages essay when you can just with the help of a google search find the documented claims i am making

When you hide the problems, they resurface years later, and here we are!

Apple moving to ARM allows their entire lineup to have a seamless ecosystem, apps runs natively everywhere, iOS/iPadOS/macOS

Microsoft indeed is stuck and had to come up with a full VM to support an OS with a different architecture, and android apps for a different kind of chip! is that FUD? am i a troll? come on, let's be serious!

[MBCook]

Yeah, my impression is that the arm windows laptops were basically using cell phone chips.

And if you consider that arm cellphone chips are already behind Apple cellphone chips (which the M1/2 improved on)… not great performance for windows.

[cowtools]

even if they can get windows on ARM working, they still need to get vendors to distribute ARM versions of their software. This is another leg up for apple and the humble penguin.

[mwcampbell]

How is this an advantage for desktop Linux? Yes, open-source software can simply be recompiled, but desktop Linux-based platforms (particularly GNU/Linux) have never been great for proprietary app developers, and adding ARM to the mix doesn't make this any better.

[speedgoose]

I use a windows 11 arm vm on my m1 MacBook with parallel and the experience is pretty good.

[mwcampbell]

Did you have to do anything legally dubious to get that Windows ARM VM running? I thought that Windows for ARM wasn't officially available except on Qualcomm devices.

[speedgoose]

No, it was extremely easy and I was surprised about it. Just install Parallel, select windows 11, wait a bit and it’s done.

[zerkten]

Do you mean the Surface X?

[jjtheblunt]

i use surface pro x on arm as a daily driver and it's excellent (on the beta release train anyway), and i use linux and osx too daily.

[paxys]

The question is who is Apple competing with with these new chips? Is it other PC/laptop makers (Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, Dell etc) or is it solely Apple on Intel? Whether Microsoft (and everyone else) needs to react or not depends on whether Apple's overall market share in the segment is going up.

[gwbas1c]

I just tried out the Surface X. (Arm-based Microsoft tablet running Windows.) There was a lot to like about it, but I returned it because it wouldn't connect to my printer and scanner.

In general, compared to a Macbook:

- It has a touchscreen

- It has a detachable keyboard

- It has a pen input

Microsoft's execution on the device is flawed. (IE, in order to use it as a laptop it needs a much more sturdy hinged keyboard,) but there's clear differentiators in their lineup.

IMO: Apple's lack of a touchscreen and detachable keyboard (or 270 degree fold) really hurts the Macbook lineup. If I could get a Macbook that I could also use as a table, or an iPad that truly ran OSX, I'd be happy.

[dboreham]

I also invested in a Surface Pro X (I have macbooks but don't like to use them vs Windows), bought at a deep discount on Amazon. I persevered with the ARM-related issues and now love it. You really need to run the insiders' builds at present in order to get decent compatibility (e.g. Android apps and 64-bit Intel emulation). I have Docker and the complete stack of dev tools for my projects (Scala, Kotlin, Haskell, Rust, TS) running in WSL2 with VSCode IDE.

[shadowpho]

What compiler do you use?

[dboreham]

For which language? but generally I use the common/default/stock compiler for any language.

[eitland]

There are plenty of people who don't like Mac.

Me I am a Linux user, had already had a job that "forced" me to use Linux back in 2009 (yes, my boss demanded everyone used Linux, in 2009 and I absolutely did not complain as it had been my choice since 2005).

I came to Mac that year and was very enthusiastic about what I had heard was like a polished, commercially supported Linux distro.

I left three years later after having spent significant time trying to adapt to it.

I was relieved to get back, even to Windows.

Last fall I got a Mac Mini.

Some of the warts are now fixable, but I only use it for things I won't have to do in anger or fear or anything like that.

[vegai_]

The only reason to buy a Windows laptop is so you can install Linux on it. If Asahi gets there, the last reason will vanish.

[bee_rider]

I am pretty happy in Intel+Linux. My device basically lasts all day. It does get kind of hot if I'm running some crunchy numerical code, but that's usually pretty short (assuming the thing I'm running is a laptop appropriate toy problem).

[lynguist]

What is even a Windows laptop? A laptop for which Windows has drivers? You buy a laptop for which Windows has drivers in order to install Linux? That doesn’t make sense.

What you mean to say is: you buy a laptop for which Linux has drivers for. Windows is not in this equation, my friend.