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[SHA]

It will cost an arm and a leg.

X86 at 4th stage cancer, at least an arm is not life threatening.

 

[Topher]

None of this is gaming related, though.

In that case....

 

[cartman414]

1. And yet, they haven't.

Safe to assume they're saving it for a hail mary.

2. Which is what dominates the computer market in terms of sales, by and large...which is why we're seeing this push for Arm.

Wake me up when this stuff enters the gaming desktop world.

That's the main thing for a lot of people. Desktop will always have a place even if it cedes ground, and ARM has yet to show proof that it can scale upward towards the power/performance brackets of Intel's/AMD's top chips.

 

[Ozriel]

In that case....

Lol, yeah. It's for the slim laptop you carry around when you travel or leave your house or something. Not for gaming rigs at the moment.
I think I've seen some stuff saying they can pair these ARM chips with discreet GPUs, but so far there's nothing on the cards.

For desktops, nobody needs to worry about battery life. x86 will continue to be the main draw for years, especially as Intel's moving to smaller process nodes and should be more power efficient eventually.

 

[kiphalfton]

War

Lol, yeah right

 

[rodrigolfp]

Even if I'm loaded with money I'm not giving you 500 dollars for 1TB ssd that can be had for 80 dollars just because you decided to solder it to the board

Apple is that "stupid", like Sony?

 

[twilo99]

 

[Fermbiz]

I've been waiting for the Surface Pro 10. I hope it will be worth the purchase.

 

[Danknugz]

the only mac device i have is an iphone and only cause i got it free through work. graphics designers at work demanded macs and they only cause problems

 

[rm082e]

I knew this thread would end up full of Apple fanboy sales pitches..

Don't get me wrong, with over a decade long run as an Apple fanboy (computers, pad, phones..) myself I know how hard it is to come back to real life.

With that said, one thing that kept me on Macs even after coming to my senses again is the fact that they have superior track pads. No joke, they're so good.

/Spinning beach ball

Anyway, there's nothing much to gain for consumers from the main topic of this thread, this is an industry's fight, let's see what happens. I doubt there will be much tangible change to feel from the outside.

Man, they sure are. I'm the opposite of a power user. I do basic office and browser tasks ("manager").

My Surface Laptop 2 died a couple of years ago and the IT team happened to have a 13" MacBook on hand that no one was using. It was the first generation that had that giant touchpad. I put up with it for a week while they got me another Surface, and oh my god that trackpad was amazing. I hated the keyboard and the tiny screen, so I didn't hesitate to trade it back for the Surface, but every time I use a trackpad on a laptop, I think back to that MacBook and how amazing that felt.

I wish I could get an ultrabook that has a 3:2 OLED screen and that touchpad. I'm sure someone makes one by now, but I can't justify to work why I would need one.

 

[BacklashWave534]

Mac is for dummies who are loaded with money. Windows is for masses.

Mac is cleaner, easier to use for day to day tasks and more secure than Windows. The only things Windows is good for (until SteamOS becomes prime time and supports other launchers) is gaming.

 

[twilo99]

wtf is Intel Qualcomm adreno lol

I've been waiting for the Surface Pro 10. I hope it will be worth the purchase.

Same. I’ve got an aging pro 7 that is in need of replacement. It’s the i5 model which I believe was the last fanless design, so hopefully the the Qualcomm pro 10 doesn’t require active cooling

 

[Fermbiz]

Same. I’ve got an aging pro 7 that is in need of replacement. It’s the i5 model which I believe was the last fanless design, so hopefully the the Qualcomm pro 10 doesn’t require active cooling

I have the Surface Go 2. Using it since 2021... i love it, but its fucking horribly slow and dying for a major upgrade lol

 

[twilo99]

I have the Surface Go 2. Using it since 2021... i love it, but its fucking horribly slow and dying for a major upgrade lol

Ye..you’ve been patient

Those Apple M chip air machines have been very tempting but I’ve resisted thus far.. if the pro10 doesn’t deliver I might go there

 

[Danknugz]

Mac is cleaner, easier to use for day to day tasks and more secure than Windows. The only things Windows is good for (until SteamOS becomes prime time and supports other launchers) is gaming.

correct me if i'm wrong but macs can't run any cuda related programming cause they run amd, so good luck doing any kind of ai/ml training or research, even simple stable diffusion won't work? you would be forced to rent a could gpu.

mac is more secure than windows if you're brainwashed by advertising or do t understand simple computer security

 

[Chiggs]

wtf is Intel Qualcomm adreno lol

Depending on what model it is, a pretty good mobile GPU.

x86 will continue to be the main draw for years, especially as Intel's moving to smaller process nodes and should be more power efficient eventually.

Ah, there it is. I was waiting for the "process node will solve Intel's woes" argument.

 

[StereoVsn]

Man, they sure are. I'm the opposite of a power user. I do basic office and browser tasks ("manager").

My Surface Laptop 2 died a couple of years ago and the IT team happened to have a 13" MacBook on hand that no one was using. It was the first generation that had that giant touchpad. I put up with it for a week while they got me another Surface, and oh my god that trackpad was amazing. I hated the keyboard and the tiny screen, so I didn't hesitate to trade it back for the Surface, but every time I use a trackpad on a laptop, I think back to that MacBook and how amazing that felt.

I wish I could get an ultrabook that has a 3:2 OLED screen and that touchpad. I'm sure someone makes one by now, but I can't justify to work why I would need one.

You could get a 15” MacBook with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD and would be more than sufficient for the sort of work you do. It’s about $1,500 which is going to be similar to good quality laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, or Samsung.

Macs are expensive, but hell, so are Surfaces.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Pc’s make sense, they have a clean setups and people know windows already, teachers in schools help with learning Macs.

 

[Ozriel]

Ah, there it is. I was waiting for the "process node will solve Intel's woes" argument.

Good thing that wasn’t the argument I set out to make, eh?

 

[Chiggs]

Good thing that wasn’t the argument I set out to make, eh?

It is indeed a good thing you didn't lean too hard into it, because anyone who has followed Intel over the past 10 years (aka, "The Lost Decade"), would know what a rubbish argument it truly is, ignoring the company's structural problems, leadership issues, and talent exodus.

 

[MrRenegade]

Next week: Bill Gates will announce himself, that the Office assistants, like Clippy will be back in all currently running Windows versions. They will be smarter than ever, now with Prometheus AI. They cannot be turned off, listen to everything you say, transcribe it and gonna chime in whenever they think have something to say. Every once in a while BG himself will call you on Microsoft Teams and will talk with you for 5 minutes about saving the world.

 

[Chiggs]

Next week: Bill Gates will announce himself, that the Office assistants, like Clippy will be back in all currently running Windows versions. They will be smarter than ever, now with Prometheus AI. They cannot be turned off, listen to everything you say, transcribe it and gonna chime in whenever they think have something to say. Every once in a while BG himself will call you on Microsoft Teams and will talk with you for 5 minutes about saving the world.

 

[Joramun]

correct, everything works like that

Nope. It doesn't.

You can get better open source alternatives for software. Proxmox, pi-hole, adguard and unbound dns for example.

So not everything. Most things maybe.

 

[Bradamante3D]

Funny how nobody talks about Apple's iGPUs, which are also important for customer feel, and which are also incredibly powerful considering their power envelope.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Funny how nobody talks about Apple's iGPUs, which are also important for customer feel, and which are also incredibly powerful considering their power envelope.

Apple's iGPU's are steadily growing in power but Apple insists you use their Metal API instead of something like OpenGL/Vulkan and no one has really put effort into emulating Direct3D on Mac yet the way they have on the Linux side with Proton. Until you can reliably execute API's commonly used in gaming you aren't going to see a lot of games for Mac anytime soon if ever

This is where Windows on ARM on Snapdragon X Elite has a real entry point, it's going to be running real Windows and real Direct3D and that removes one of the biggest pain points of playing PC games on something other than Windows. If Qualcomm and MS can get their x86 emulation house in good order and we start to see good performance out of Adreno on the iGPU side and driver support for Windows on ARM from Nvidia and AMD, then we'll see some real movement in breaking PC gaming out of the x86 walled prison

 

[Tams]

x86 vs ARM, or more broadly CISC vs RISC is all rather academic and a bit silly.

The only real difference is that x86 licensing is a mess.

Most of Apple's lead is from:

a) integration all into one SoC (so no separate RAM, GPU, etc.; therefore zero chance of upgradability)
b) Using the latest fabrication node, often buying up the entire lot, meaning no one else can use it.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

x86 vs ARM, or more broadly CISC vs RISC is all rather academic and a bit silly.

The only real difference is that x86 licensing is a mess.

Most of Apple's lead is from:

a) integration all into one SoC (so no separate RAM, GPU, etc.; therefore zero chance of upgradability)
b) Using the latest fabrication node, often buying up the entire lot, meaning no one else can use it.

All of Apples lead is from being first

 

[Chiggs]

b) Using the latest fabrication node, often buying up the entire lot, meaning no one else can use it.

Oh, how I can't wait until the playing field is somewhat more level so I can watch this argument just get exposed for the nonsense it is.

All of Apples lead is from being first

Uh huh...I'm sure there's nothing special AT ALL about their chip designs whatsoever. I'm sure Pat Gelsinger and crew are really going to bring the house down in the next couple of years; all of their incompetence over the last decade has really just been a case of Ali/Foreman rope-a-doping, designed to lull Apple into a false sense of security.

Intel...truly the 4D chessmasters of our time.

Funny how nobody talks about Apple's iGPUs, which are also important for customer feel, and which are also incredibly powerful considering their power envelope.

I think they're absolutely bonkers in terms of performance. Right now, Apple is the only chipmaker that has a chance at giving Nvidia a run for their money, IMO.

 

[Tams]

Oh, how I can't wait until the playing field is somewhat more level so I can watch this argument just get exposed for the nonsense it is.

Just ignore half my argument why don't you.

And anyway, explain how Apple's lead is suspiciously close to the improvements that mlre advanced nodes offer...

 

[Futaleufu]

I'm sure the x86 compatibility layer will allow you to play Rise of the Tomb Raider at 30 fps

 

[Ashamam]

Until you can reliably execute API's commonly used in gaming you aren't going to see a lot of games for Mac anytime soon if ever

GPTK. Shadows day and date. We'll see what else comes out at WWDC.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Uh huh...I'm sure there's nothing special AT ALL about their chip designs whatsoever. I'm sure Pat Gelsinger and crew are really going to bring the house down in the next couple of years; all of their incompetence over the last decade has really just been a case of Ali/Foreman rope-a-doping, designed to lull Apple into a false sense of security.

Intel...truly the 4D chessmasters of our time.

Well of course they are doing fantastic work but my comment is if they are the only ones doing serious Arm chips of course they have the lead. I have a 16" Mac Pro and. iPad Pro 12.9 with the m2. Iphone 15 pro, Apple Watch Ultra so I'm no hater.

 

[Chiggs]

Another "paid" newsletter from Tom Warren with some big claims:

On a recent morning at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft representatives set out new Surface devices equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips inside and compared them directly to Apple’s category-leading laptop. I witnessed an hour of demos and benchmarks that started with Geekbench and Cinebench comparisons, then moved on to apps and compatibility.

Benchmark tests usually aren’t that exciting to watch. But a lot was at stake here: for years, the MacBook Air has been able to smoke Arm-powered PC chips — and Intel-based ones, too. Except, this time around, the Surface pulled ahead on the first test. Then it won another test and another after that. The results of these tests are why Microsoft believes it’s now in position to conquer the laptop market.

Performance

Over the past two years, Microsoft has worked in secret with all of its top laptop partners to ready a selection of Arm-powered Windows machines that will hit the market this summer. Known as Copilot Plus PCs, they’re meant to kick-start a generation of powerful, battery-efficient Windows laptops and lay the groundwork for an AI-powered future.

“You’re going to have the most powerful PC ever,” says Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, during the briefing. “In fact, it’s going to outperform any device out there, including a MacBook Air with an M3 processor, by over 50 percent on sustained performance.”

Windows laptops have fallen far behind MacBooks in performance and battery life ever since Apple’s transition to its own chips with the M1 launch in 2020. That makes Microsoft’s confidence levels here surprising, particularly given its rocky efforts with Windows on Arm over the past decade. Microsoft first attempted to transition Windows to Arm chips with the Surface RT in 2012, but performance was terrible and app compatibility was virtually nonexistent. The launch of the Surface Pro X in 2019 was a lot better thanks to improved emulation and underlying Windows changes. It wasn’t enough to match Apple’s M1 launch months later, but it was a sign of things to come, with the start of a close Qualcomm partnership that now looks like it might finally pay off.

“It’s something we haven’t had in over two decades, we’ve not had the high ground on having the most performant device. We’re going to have that,” says Mehdi.

I won’t be fully convinced until I’ve spent enough time with one of these new Copilot Plus PCs, but everything Microsoft showed me around performance and battery life looks lightyears ahead of the Arm-powered Windows laptops that existed before today.

Compatibility

One of the big advancements is an improved emulator called Prism, which Microsoft claims is as efficient as Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer and can emulate apps twice as fast as the previous generation of Windows on Arm devices.

“We spent a ton of energy here. For apps that are not yet native, we’re now able to take advantage of Prism’s capabilities and solve this with the better energy, platform, and performance efficiency of the emulator,” says Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri.

That should result in efficiency gains over the previous emulator, but Microsoft is being vague with its promises here, so I’m not expecting huge leaps. Emulation only goes so far anyway. Apple’s success with the M1 was thanks to developers quickly porting apps to be fully native. Windows needs that same level of support from its developer community.

Fortunately for Microsoft, two major shifts have happened in recent years. First, many of the biggest apps now natively support Arm chips: Photoshop, Dropbox, Zoom, Spotify, and top entertainment apps like Prime and Hulu are all native ARM64 apps now. Second, Google and many other browser makers are moving to ARM64. A native version of Chrome launched recently, followed by Opera just last week. Firefox, Vivaldi, Brave, and Microsoft Edge are all also ARM64 native, so you won’t lose performance in any browser. That’s a big deal when you consider a lot of apps are web-based now and that we spend more time than ever inside a browser.

Battery

All of this app compatibility and performance is nothing without battery life, though. Microsoft uses a script to simulate web browsing. On 2022’s Intel-based Surface Laptop 5, it took eight hours, 38 minutes to completely deplete a battery; the new Surface Copilot Plus PC lasted three times that, hitting 16 hours, 56 minutes. That’s an incredible jump in efficiency, and it even beats the same test on a 15-inch MacBook Air M3, which lasted 15 hours, 25 minutes. That’s a whole hour and a half more.

Microsoft ran a similar test for video playback, which saw the Surface Copilot Plus PC hit more than 20 hours in a test, with the MacBook Air M3 reaching 17 hours, 45 minutes. That’s also nearly eight hours more than the Surface Laptop 5, which lasted 12 hours, 30 minutes. If those battery gains extend beyond basic web browsing and video playback, this will be a significant improvement for Windows laptops.

 

[Topher]

 

[Chiggs]

I'd hold the laughter until we see some true comparisons from trusted sites. Tom Warren posted his most recent newsletter and the performance claims look pretty fucking good. If Microsoft is outright lying here, Apple will throw it in their face and it'll all be over.

So it can't be all lies, can it?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Microsoft's problem has long been they fixate on competitors instead of making their products something people want to use independently of whatever competition that is used as the metric

Mac users aren't going to notice Windows because of some battery life benchmark, it's as dumb as thinking iPhone users will switch to Android because some Android phones have better battery life than iPhones

If I liked Windows, I would use Windows. I already am forced to use Windows to be a PC gamer and I genuinely prefer to use my MacBook Pro when I'm not playing games and I'm not sure how giving a Windows machine longer battery life will suddenly make me start liking Windows

Also that Recall and Copilot+ shit is fucking creepy, MS thinks people actually want an AI watching everything they do on their computer 24/7?

 

[Chiggs]

Also that Recall and Copilot+ shit is fucking creepy, MS thinks people actually want an AI watching everything they do on their computer 24/7?

I thought Steam was evil back in 2004. Nowadays....

 

[GHG]

Microsoft's problem has long been they fixate on competitors instead of making their products something people want to use independently of whatever competition that is used as the metric

Mac users aren't going to notice Windows because of some battery life benchmark, it's as dumb as thinking iPhone users will switch to Android because some Android phones have better battery life than iPhones

If I liked Windows, I would use Windows. I already am forced to use Windows to be a PC gamer and I genuinely prefer to use my MacBook Pro when I'm not playing games and I'm not sure how giving a Windows machine longer battery life will suddenly make me start liking Windows

Also that Recall and Copilot+ shit is fucking creepy, MS thinks people actually want an AI watching everything they do on their computer 24/7?

Nailed it.

Instead of answering the question and stating why people should be looking at their product and what it's benefits are the main buzzword once again is "competition" x100:




It doesn't have to be "windows vs mac", there's an opportunity for them to carve out their own niche here, the market is green enough for them to be able to do so (combined with their resources). But instead, once again it's this focus on attempting to take someone else down.

War is all they know.

 

[Topher]

I'd hold the laughter until we see some true comparisons from trusted sites. Tom Warren posted his most recent newsletter and the performance claims look pretty fucking good. If Microsoft is outright lying here, Apple will throw it in their face and it'll all be over.

So it can't be all lies, can it?

It could all be true but that doesn't mean folks need to start dancing on Apple's grave. It's just Jez being Jez.

Edit: To be clear, I was laughing at Jez, not the news reported from the event today. I agree with you that it all looks really good.

 

[simpatico]

I only used Windows when I'm forced. At work with PLC software. At home with most games. If Valve gets this Linux shit rolling I will very happily never look back. At work, I fear I'm stuck with Windows forever. -_-

I think most people only use Windows because they have to. I mean who's out there buying windows laptops if they're not gaming and not using them for work software?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Nailed it.

Instead of answering the question and stating why people should be looking at their product and what it's benefits are the main buzzword once again is "competition" x100:




It doesn't have to be "windows vs mac", there's an opportunity for them to carve out their own niche here, the market is green enough for them to be able to do so (combined with their resources). But instead, once again it's this focus on attempting to take someone else down.

War is all they know.

Mac users:

 

[Orutisu Furio]

I’ve been both a Microsoft user and also an Apple user throughout my life. I’ved used Windows since Windows 95. I’ve invested in XBOX gaming consoles since the original XBOX launched in 2001, I’ve owned various Windows PCs from different manufacturers, I was one of the first people in line (launch was actually a big deal back then) in my city to purchase the original Surface tablet when it launched in 2012 at the Microsoft Store (when they existed for a short period of time), and I’ve also been a Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 10 user with Nokia and also the Lumia brand from Microsoft. I’ve also used and still use various Microsoft services (Outlook, Office, OneDrive, etc) — I still use some of them to this day.

Despite all of this, the Apple user experience and ecosystem is vastly superior and more pleasing to use in my daily life, both personal and work. Everything Apple does just works, and they work better in unison when you have all of the Apple devices and services connected under your account. iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, iCloud, etc — a beautiful and flawless experience. MacOS is far more enjoyable to use than Windows, and it feels like a modern operating system.

Microsoft has a bad track record of hyping and releasing new products and services, for them to only cancel it later or discontinue it. Zune, Kin, Surface RT, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Surface Duo, Windows on Arm, etc. Copilot+ PC is just another one that the consumer market won’t understand or get into, or it will be “too expensive“, etc. The vast majority of Windows users who are on Windows are using because they have to, through work or school, or government, or their non-profit, etc. Gaming, I understand.

But if you’re not using Windows for work, school, or gaming — there’s no reason to.…

 

[GHG]

It could all be true but that doesn't mean folks need to start dancing on Apple's grave. It's just Jez being Jez.

Edit: To be clear, I was laughing at Jez, not the news reported from the event today. I agree with you that it all looks really good.

If they really want to pull people away from Apple then they should be looking at evolving/innovating things from a HCI perspective. The opportunity is now there with AI, it represents a paradigm shift for computing, and as such how we actually interact and interface with the computer needs to evolve in order to get the most use out of it. In the age of AI we shouldn't still be tapping at keyboards and faffing around with mice/touchpads but here we are.

So what do they go and do? Announce a bunch of bog standard laptops that have spyware ramped up to 1000 with little tangible benefit to the end-user. Complete lack of imagination. Apple HQ will be laughing, I guarantee they will be cooking up something far more imaginative and interesting than that.