[nerdjon]

Some competition for Apple in this space and competition for Intel and AMD is great.

But I really do question how well Windows on Arm is really going to work out long term.

For Apple it worked because they were able to force the issue. If you wanted a new Mac it was going to be Arm and we all knew eventually (this year or is it next year?) Intel support would drop. Over time we have seen M series exclusive features.

Developers were forced to update or abandon Mac which gave users a great experience (with some early growing pains).

This is something that Windows will never be able too do. They will always be stuck maintaining an emulator and a likely large subset of apps only supporting one over the other. (also does this work the other way around with an Arm only app working on x86?)

This seems like a repeat of when it was not uncommon for games to only support Intel or AMD or NVIDIA or AMD. But worse since they are not both x86. Sure at least we have emulation but just like with Rosetta2 it shouldn't ever be the long term solution.

[kllrnohj]

For Apple it worked because they waited until they had a really, really good ARM ISA CPU (combined with arguably sandbagging their x86 offering for a few years prior but I digress).

Qualcomm is also working on a really good ARM ISA CPU with their acquisition of NuVia and subsequent Oryon architecture.

Meanwhile this is just using off-the-shelf ARM CPUs in a MediaTek SoC with blackwell bolted to the side of it. ARM's CPUs so far have been subpar for laptop-class chips. Hence why neither Apple nor Qualcomm are using them.

[zamadatix]

> Meanwhile this is just using off-the-shelf ARM CPUs in a MediaTek SoC with blackwell bolted to the side of it

MediaTek is involved in the SoC but both the CPU & GPU from Nvidia are bolted on to it. I.e. it's not a standard MediaTek CPU with an Nvidia GPU added.

[kllrnohj]

MediaTek's press release pretty clearly indicates the CPU came from MediaTek, and so far Nvidia doesn't have any custom CPU core they've called "Grace". Seeing as the DGX Spark has what seems to be the same core chip, it'd be really surprising if the RTX Spark swapped out the CPU cores without any fanfare announcing that

[dijit]

> arguably sandbagging their x86 offering

tbh, I always read this as Intel doing some sales magic here.

Apple: "Hey, we're making a product that has a 15w thermal envelope, do you have anything?"

Intel: "Yes!"

(Unspoken: their products will throttle down to fit, in fact, they will try to run always at 99ºC so you always get the best performance! FEATURE!)

Apple: "uhhhh..."

Consumers: "HEH IS IT EVEN A PRO DEVICE IF IT DOESN"T HAVE <INTEL MARKETING BRAND TERM>?"

Apple: "UHHHH... Guess we'll do it ourselves"

[kllrnohj]

> tbh, I always read this as Intel doing some sales magic here.

Possibly, but Apple choosing a new, thicker chassis the same generation that they introduce their more power efficient replacement is certainly a thing. Even if Intel failed to achieve the TDP they told Apple, Apple also seems to no longer believe the thinness they were doing was viable for that TDP anyway.

Intel's product offering certainly wasn't as compelling towards the end there, but it also looked almost uniquely bad in Apple's chassis vs everyone else's

[internet2000]

"Sandbagging their x86 offering" is a new one. There's no winning.

[yurishimo]

The Intel chips of that time were fine but it was a problem from both sides. Apple refused to "compromise" their hardware design and Intel failed to deliver on their promises regarding power/heat budgets and kept telling Apple execs that they were just one cycle away from fixing all of the problems.

Ultimately, Apple won that fight when they decided to stop letting Intel control their hardware roadmap and it's been a great change for the entire industry. Intel is finally seeing some changes in their own products, largely in response to Apple dropping them. Now Nvidia is getting into the game which means more competition which is also good.

[Danox]

Apple had a similar run-in with AMD and Nvidia. Over design issues.

[rickdeckard]

That's surely one thing, Apple went all-in on ARM, for Microsoft it's still a kinda "reduced experience".

But the bigger problem in my opinion: How much of the Windows userbase actually sticks to Windows because of its backwards-compatibility?

--> What would happen if they break this model and the OS is only judged based on its user experience and available applications...?

I'm not sure it would stand any chance to compete in the B2C space. If I think about it, there's not a single new feature in Windows of the last ~20 years I particularly care about.

Without backwards compatibility, there's barely any ecosystem. MacOS on the other hand is full of ecosystem features, improving collaboration, connectivity, handoff across devices, etc.

[brailsafe]

> MacOS on the other hand is full of ecosystem features, improving collaboration, connectivity, handoff across devices, etc.

True, but if you're only in the ecosystem as a mac user, in many ways it's felt like a mixed bag. I still wildly prefer mac over other operating systems, but if upgrades had a price, I think those sales would mostly go to iPhone users. Even at free, I'm yet to find a compelling reason to install Tahoe, and will probably just continue waiting until the next one.

[rickdeckard]

Agree, it's a fairly closed ecosystem, that's why I personally don't use it.

But despite that, as a Windows user I acknowledge that any kind of interaction with another Mac from within MacOS (Handoff, Sidecar, Universal Control, Bluetooth-pairing to Apple-ID instead of Hardware MAC-ID,...) is leaps ahead of what Microsoft was doing with their OS for the past years.

Just the scenario of an employee getting a Windows laptop as a work-PC, there's barely any halo-effect if he/she also uses Windows at home. No easier handoff, no interaction, hardly any "just-works" connectivity.

Windows is mostly a vessel for the (legacy) applications it can run, and for these Browser-based Microsoft Online-Applications (which work equally-well on other platforms)

They didn't invest in creating "just works" frameworks for their PCs which amplify the ecosystem the more compatible devices you have, instead most of their focus is now on "just-works" stuff in the cloud.

So if Microsoft would make a clean cut on backwards-compatibility, I'm not sure there would be a reason left for most B2C users to even stay with Windows.

The "you can make it work if you invest a bit of time or google it" paradigm is nowadays well-covered by Linux already, and it's getting even harder for brands to compete on price/quality with Apple's scale, for almost any portable device...

[brailsafe]

Ya I agree. I'm primarily a Mac and Android user, but also use Windows for gaming, and Windows has never been particularly good at anything. It's never been a smooth user experience.

Recently I upgraded my motherboard and tried reinstalling Win10 Pro, but couldn't activate it despite saving the product key. They have at least THREE obscure flows for re-activation depending on how it was originally activated. The license in my flow needed to have been bound to a Microsoft account that I never previously needed, because it ties itself to the hardware. I had to dismantle and rebuild with my old installation, activate it with my old motherboard on a Microsoft account that I wasn't planning to use to login with, then rebuild again with my new components, sign in to activate, and then disable sign in to be able to use a local user account. Insane.

[msh]

For me this feature is worth upgrading over: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/you-can-finally-manag...

[brailsafe]

Hmm, that actually is an important difference. I was considering trying to set something like this up so I didn't have to bring two laptops with me while traveling, but was skeptical it would go smoothly, apparently for good reason.

[crims0n]

I feel like making universal binaries a thing, and pushing for it to be standard is one viable path.

[pjmlp]

They already kind of are with ARM64EC, however Windows ecosystem isn't macOS, unless there is market pressure, most shops will keep doing x86/x64.

[MagicMoonlight]

Microslop doesn’t want people to be able to run their binaries elsewhere, it’s the only reason people buy their product.

[pjmlp]

They also buy it, because to this day most people cannot buy GNU/Linux powered laptops on the stores they usually buy their computers from.

They only know Apple, Windows and Chromebooks.