[beagle3]

What they did not win was the popularity contest, mostly thanks to Windows - the Wintel market was just too massive to compete with.

But that’s changed somewhat - Apple has managed a larger mind and market share (while switching into ARM). The vast majority of uses are now available on the web, which is CPU agnostic, and there is a huge amount of open source software available.

The only things for which x86 still shines a little brighter are games, and native office. But office is mostly available on web, on Mac, and on Winarm. So games. Which aren’t big enough market mass to sustain the x86’s popularity — and is a segment (soon) under attack by Valve.

[wolrah]

> The only things for which x86 still shines a little brighter are games, and native office. But office is mostly available on web, on Mac, and on Winarm. So games. Which aren’t big enough market mass to sustain the x86’s popularity — and is a segment (soon) under attack by Valve.

You've missed a huge segment:

Random in-house apps or niche vertical market apps that are closely tethered with a business workflow to the point that replacing them is a massive undertaking, where the developers at best aren't interested in improving anything and at worst no longer exist.

[beagle3]

No I did not miss it. That has moved to web, either directly Or through an RDP/VNC interface where the actual windows virtual machine is hidden.

Embedded/hardware is the last segment still not replaced by web.

[wolrah]

It absolutely has not. I absolutely agree most of those kinds of apps could, and those that can probably should, but more than enough have not.

I support a lot of dental practices using Patterson Eaglesoft and they still don't officially support VMs in any form, even for the server (despite it working fine) while they have removed all support for using terminal services. Obviously the basic application works fine, but a dental practice needs to be able to take digital x-rays. Shock the sensor drivers only exist for Windows and back when RDP and Citrix were supported it required a special bridge running on both the client (which of course still had to be Windows) and the server.

We used some thin clients back in the day for front desk stations and hygiene rooms that didn't need any special hardware, but the main practice rooms and the pano stations always needed full Windows PCs.

The client app is built with PowerBuilder so it'd require a deep rewrite to support any other platforms.

The server side is a Sybase SQL Anywhere database and a SMB file share so it could easily be run natively on Linux but the vendor can't be bothered.

This is a company that still insists that every user needs local admin privileges, despite literally nothing going wrong when they don't have it, and who usually doesn't support new Windows releases until a few months after it becomes the default for new PCs.

---

There are other dental platforms that do have web interfaces intended mostly to enable the use of iPads and other tablets but switching platforms is far from straightforward for practices with years of data, custom integrations, etc. Even if you are willing to go through the trouble (or starting fresh) those platforms, to my knowledge, still require Windows PCs for digital x-ray support.

[beagle3]

I did write “embedded/hardware”. Yes, you need special drivers for your X-ray/drill/whatever so you earned an another decade of windows.

But in the places I frequent (backoffice, municipal, finance) it’s all gone web and rdp-through-web (which is web, in the sense that it doesn’t require windows on the client) with centralized administration with minimal (not quite self-serve but reasonably close) thin client users.

[pjmlp]

Most people outside US, and similar G8 countries, aren't going to pay Apple.

[beagle3]

No, but Microsoft are also going arm. Where the us goes, the world goes eventually.

[pjmlp]

Microsoft keeps trying to go ARM for a decade already, most Windows devs and consumers don't care, backwards compatibility rules on PC world, regardless of Prism and ARM64EC.

Additionally beware what to wish for, as CoPilot+ PC are locked down with Pluton security processor, from XBox and Azure Sphere.

[beagle3]

The x86 emulation for fallback is (I’ve heard - not tried) usable for the first time.

Microsoft tried in the past without a Rosetta equivalent; Apple succeeded twice with Rosetta. They did not try to switch cold turkey the way Microsoft did.

[pjmlp]

It doesn't cover device drivers, nor stuff like DAWs plugins.

Apple doesn't care about backwards compatibility like the PC, who doesn't move, stays behind.

[beagle3]

Are you familiar with anyone who uses a 20 year old DAW?

Retro Amiga trackers don’t count.

[gaigalas]

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