And here's the difference between Microsoft and Apple: When Apple switches to ARM, people believe them. When Microsoft switches to arm, people ignore them. Why? Because Microsoft only ever half-asses such changes (see the terrible SOC in this).
I think another considerable difference is that Windows global footprint is 10x that of MacOS, so Microsoft has to keep both backwards compatibility and OEM's production plans in mind.
There is nothing for people to believe or not believe. MS cannot cannot discontinue x86 overnight because their OS is used by a much larger proportion of the world.
> There is nothing for people to believe or not believe. MS cannot cannot discontinue x86 overnight because their OS is used by a much larger proportion of the world.
Apple managed a competent compatibility layer, albeit with some special sauce in the SOC to make it fast. Is that too much to ask from Microsoft?
Windows is a general purpose OS, which is why it dominates two enormous markets: business software and games software. Microsoft will usually err on the side of developers because of this. The two companies' philosophies will of course be different.
If MacOS had similar mindshare in those markets, Mac developers would probably ask Apple to avoid overnight changes like the discontinuation of x86 Macs.
MS still provides security updates for Windows 7 despite its EOL occurring nearly 3 years ago. This is because many organizations still run critical software that they cannot shift away from, for whatever reason. Apple doesn't have to do that because no hospital or airport is running their logistics on MacOS.
Even with all this baggage, Windows on ARM has been available in some form since 2012's Surface RT.
They have no better choice. Name me, today, a desktop class ARM SoC that isn't made by Apple and represents the median performance band of the class.
Fundamentally, ARM Holdings is what Antitrust legislation was supposed to break down. They own the "ARM" name and control who can license the ARM IP and most importantly, how.
Ampere, the folks behind a lot of ARM servers, are by contract barred from getting into the market of making ARM chips for phones, desktops, or otherwise. That's the form of their license: Server-grade 96-core behemoths running at 3+Ghz and with the thermal output of a small space heater.
ARM holdings sets all sorts of weird restrictions and forces market segmentation to make sure that nobody "Accidentally" makes something that they don't immediately approve of. Qualcomm is basically locked into making phone SoCs for all eternity until they renegotiate their license with ARM holdings. They're in a shit situation because they have competition all over the place (Allwinner, Rockchip, a legacy Intel series, NXP, and Samsung to name a few), letting ARMHoldings bully them into not making something that rocks the boat too hard.
Apple pulled a massive show of force in making ARM license them desktop grade chips. You see, Apple has been a license holder for ARM for a bit now (with the Ax series chips) and makes up, ballpark, 15% of worldwide phones and now >50% of US phones. Apple had already idly said "we could... you know, not use an integrated solution" when they fiddled with Intel's radio baseband.
For ARM to try and sue Apple for breach of contract for developing the Mx series of desktop class ARM processors and get away with it, they'd be putting their market share dominance in four different major markets at risk. Qualcomm can't do that.
So that leaves Microsoft, who does not want to get into the processor fabrication business and who is still reeling over the antitrust lawsuit 20 years ago (which, I'll point out, was mostly over a shared text mangling library, for what it's worth) out in the dust looking for options, and the option they get is "Whatever Qualcomm will ship them."
> Apple pulled a massive show of force in making ARM license them desktop grade chips. You see, Apple has been a license holder for ARM for a bit now (with the Ax series chips) and makes up, ballpark, 15% of worldwide phones and now >50% of US phones. Apple had already idly said "we could... you know, not use an integrated solution" when they fiddled with Intel's radio baseband.
> For ARM to try and sue Apple for breach of contract for developing the Mx series of desktop class ARM processors and get away with it, they'd be putting their market share dominance in four different major markets at risk.
As I understand, Apple has a special license with a lot more leeway than those held by other companies thanks to Apple having been one of ARM's founders[0], so they may not have had to do any negotiations at all since they had the rights from the get-go.
Let me play my tiny violin for the Gigacorporation Microsoft that was so unfairly treated by ARM that they just had to take "Whatever Qualcomm will ship them". Poor Multi Billion Dollar, they never had a chance to compete on a fair playing ground.
Nah, this is just organizational incompetence. The same reason we got cortana, windows 8 or adds in the start bar.
Well when the M1 came out it was dramatically better than everything else available to Mac users outside some small use-cases (like Mac Pro + multi-GPU).
People would have mostly wanted it anyway.
That doesn’t seem to be the case with this hardware.
