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by WhereIsTheTruth 975 days ago
Prior to switching to Apple Silicon, Apple prepared the path with their effort to push for universal binaries by default

Software made yesterday were already prepared to run on their new silicon

Rosetta was only a transition helper, not meant to be a permanent solution

Microsoft didn't do any of that, and still doesn't, their leadership is clueless and dangerous

If Microsoft doesn't put in the effort, it'll never work

Let's hope there's no secret agreement to exclude Linux (?AMD AI?)

I wish Valve would encourage developpers to submit ARM binaries to prepare for the future...

Why only Apple is able to pull it off? Why this lack of care from everybody else?

Meanwhile.. https://www.huaweicentral.com/harmonyos-to-launch-for-pc-win...

2 comments

>Why only Apple is able to pull it off? Why this lack of care from everybody else?

Apple got burnt, multiple times, by both Intel and Nvidia. That set them on a complete war path to move to arm where they control the chips. As part of that war path, their goal was to drop x86 entirely so they needed the transition layer.

Microsoft has no need to drop x86 entirely, in fact x86 will continue to remain a good part of a market for the foreseeable future. Who knows, maybe RISCV suddenly takes off because even Qualcomm has begun pushing a cool billion dollars towards RISCV development due to ARM/Softbank attempting to make them destroy their IP. Heck, ARM/Softbank is basically trying to destroy the ARM market for profit by terminating Qualcomm's licenses by 2025.

That is one way to put it. Another way to look at it is that Apple had unreasonable demands for those companies considering their goals and strategies. They tried to strongarm them and failed. Now they market their stuff as the second coming even though it is actually inferior in many way.

Nvidia and Intel are not necessarily nice irreproachable companies, but if there is one company that is known to be a major d*ck with their suppliers it must be Apple. You only need to look at how they treat their developers to understand, and the only reason suppliers are not treated worse is because they actually need them. I am sure Intel and Nvidia are perfectly OK with Apple doing their own stuff even if they lost a bit of business. Not unlike a tech support guy who finally got rid of a decently well-paying but majorly annoying customer, I guess. Sometimes the money isn't worth it...

> Microsoft didn't do any of that, and still doesn't, their leadership is clueless and dangerous

It did with .NET but most software isn't .NET I think.

dotnet supported Apple Silicon way before ARM for Windows, this behavior shouldn't be overlooked, this is part of the issues with Microsoft, their lack of care/anticipation
Anticipation of what? Microsoft has "supported" ARM as far back as Windows RT, but developers and integrators don't care. The hardware didn't (and still doesn't) sell, and every usable core design is either from the stone age or completely proprietary. Somehow, x86 SOCs are easier to iterate on.

Dotnet supports Apple Silicon for the same reason it supports AArch64-Linux; it's a real user platform. Windows-on-ARM is really not, and it won't get the attention it needs until attractive hardware is ready to ship.

> Anticipation of what?

> it won't get the attention it needs until attractive hardware is ready to ship.

Dunno what to say!

Windows RT is the perfect example; software was not ready, and is still not

It's only been 11 months that Visual Studio can run on ARM

>It's only been 11 months that Visual Studio can run on ARM

It's only been 3 years since Visual Studio runs in 64-bit on x86 ;)

I think the biggest holdback for VS with ARM was there were no good build boxes out there. With VS for ARM, Microsoft released their own ARM dev kit hardware loaded with 32gigs of ram and a snapdragon 8cx. Anyone else selling ARM hardware for Windows skimps with like 4g of ram.

VS could however crosscompile to ARM32 and later ARM64 for quite awhile.

Dotnet Core and Mono both supported AArch64 targets long before Apple Silicon existed, too. I think characterizing Microsoft as "lazy" in regards to RISC is wrong from a pragmatic point-of-view.
I think unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t commit to Arm. And because it doesn’t commit it doesn’t truly invest like Apple in ensuring success.