Qualcomm and Microsoft have an exclusivity deal for Windows on ARM, but that could change soon

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, hishnash said:

The key issue MS have is they are not, and will not, give a clear message to developers. Apple on the other had has not only giving a clear message but even provided a tight timeline that within 2 years of starting they will not be selling any more x86 systems this is the real kick in the bug our industry needs, speaking as a developer who has worked in large enterprise software roles I know every time MS keep on releasing new ARM devices the enterprise simple ignore it since at no point is MS putting any pressure on them support it.

 

To cover the R&D costs for something like this MS would have really needed to be all in, they would have had to sell enough units. I think MS is still `playing with` arm. To do a sucesfull transition they need to make us devs feel that we MUST put in the work (in most cases this is not much work). 

Well what do you expect Microsoft to do? They Clearly have no plans to go exclusively to ARM so idk how they would pressure developers to program for ARM. Also Apple's success was hardly the result of pressuring developers to switch to ARM as even when running x86 programs on the M1 Macs it still has very good performance. 

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Also Apple's success was hardly the result of pressuring developers to switch to ARM as even when running x86 programs on the M1 Macs it still has very good performance. 

It's not that apple is pressuring us but rather that they are very clear about the future. 

MS could be more clear even withithout moving 100% to ARM they could do things to make it clear to developers that within a few years many of the new machines users will be ARM. MS could also have done more work on the dev tools side of things in advance, one thing MS have failed to do in the develop space is push developer to stop using apis that were deprecated 10+ years ago.

They should have been doing what apple have been doing for years, saying to developers "if you want to use these new apis/tools you must stop using that api we deprecated ... years ago. If you want to continue to use that legacy api that's ok but your going to need to use this legacy SDK and dev tools to got with it." The effect of doing this has a really big impact on third party (open and closed source) packages that we all depend upon. In the windows space if you pick up a random third party package to do something there is a good chance it will be using 3 to 4 different generations of the same api, this is a big issue in the ARM migration were, understandable, some of those ultra legacy apis are no longer supported.  Making sure your own codebase compiles is normal not very hard but unless your some extreme purist more than 50% of your code is likely to be third party (close and or open source) dependancies even with source access going through these (and understanding them enough) to update them to no longer use the 100s of deprecated apis that they just assumed they could continue to use is a massive amount of work for the community.

Apples approach of requiring devs that want to use any of the latests tool/apis to stop using deprecated apis is very effective at ensuring the currently maintained packages are much more ready for such transitions.  

[Jaesop]

On 11/23/2021 at 3:08 AM, RejZoR said:

Apple did the same in just 1 year

Took way longer than a year.

[Jaesop]

On 11/23/2021 at 6:02 PM, James Evens said:

Windows 10s - failure

Windows RT - failure

Windows mobile (all of them) - failure

Windows 10S never became a thing, they did S mode instead. And Windows Mobile was a popular smartphone OS pre-iPhone.

[RejZoR]

53 minutes ago, Jaesop said:

Took way longer than a year.

"way longer than a year"

 

M1 Mac literally being released just 1 year ago (give or take a month or two). That's not "way more". Certainly not a frigging decade and still being utterly broken even for most common popular stuff like on Windows. And it's not like they are still lingering around with x86. They do support old versions of laptops with new OS versions, but essentially they replaced their whole product stack with entirely different architecture. And this isn't the first time they've done it.

[Jaesop]

16 hours ago, RejZoR said:

M1 Mac literally being released just 1 year ago (give or take a month or two). That's not "way more".

M1 was not birthed into existence upon release. Apple has been building their silicon platform for over a decade now, and that custom silicon is the key to their success in running their desktop/laptop platform on it.

 

Quote

And it's not like they are still lingering around with x86.

There is no planet where Microsoft stops supporting x86, nor should they. Windows legacy support is a massive feature and need of their enterprise clientele. Apple customers do not have that expectation, thus why Apple was able to kill off 32 bit and x86 support without much issue.

[hishnash]

8 minutes ago, Jaesop said:

There is no planet where Microsoft stops supporting x86, nor should they. Windows legacy support is a massive feature and need of their enterprise clientele.

So with the move to windows365 I think there might well be a feature were the desktop os does start to drop support much more than you think. MS want to push enterprise to use the window356 and many enterprise customers in fact really prefer the VM based solutions (the IT teams prefer this and they are the ones deciding what to do).   I do expect MS to start to push enterprise (and anyone who wants legacy windows support) to using window365 this is a big future move for them as it turns a one off $100-$200 purchase into a $10 monthly subscription !

Things like dropping 32bit support could well be coming sooner than you think, remember macOS can run 32bit apps the draping of 32bit support is dropping 32bit system libs so while you can run a 32bit app you can't call any 32bit system apis you need to mode switch to 64bit to call the apis then switch back (this is how wine/crosover manage to let you play 32bit windows apps on modern Macs).  I could see MS start to no ship the 32bit system libs in regular windows only shipping them in a legacy mode for pro windows (possibly in a sandbox lifted hypervisor situations as well since many of these legacy apis are full of issues that from a security perspective MS would love to put a little wall around). 

 

14 minutes ago, Jaesop said:

Apple customers do not have that expectation, thus why Apple was able to kill off 32 bit and x86 support without much issue.

The reason apple have been able to make these changes `without much issue` is the large amount of effort they put in to gradually ensure developer move forward and don't stay stuck in the past.  Fundimnalty on apple platforms as a develop if you want to use new features and or new tools at some point you need to stop using deprecated apis, this has the side effect of all the third party libs/packages we depend upon being updated quite quickly as the devs working on these tend to want to use the new shiny tools. Apple tends to only remove things form the os much later than this (typical over 10 years after depreciating an api).

MS also deprecate apis (just the same as apple) however they do not do a good job on pets-wading developers to stop using them since you can use the latest apis and tools on windows and still use apis that were depreciating 20 years ago, this has the side effect of all third party packages/libs that any app depends upon being full of uses of deprecated apis.   

While building a new app today on macOS will be very unlikely to include any deprecated apis almost all new apps built on windows today will contain a few third party dependancies that are full of apis that were deprecated 10+ years ago.  This must be a massive headache for the MS security teams.

[Jaesop]

4 hours ago, hishnash said:

The reason apple have been able to make these changes `without much issue` is the large amount of effort they put in to gradually ensure developer move forward and don't stay stuck in the past.

It's not about developers being stuck in the past. Enterprise users utilize software that developers literally made in the past, and can often use legacy hardware. Apple is not used in the enterprise setting like that. No one is using OSX software from 2004. Apple dropping 32 bit support did not dramatically impact their userbase. It would massively impact Windows.

 

Quote

So with the move to windows365 I think there might well be a feature were the desktop os does start to drop support much more than you think. MS want to push enterprise to use the window356 and many enterprise customers in fact really prefer the VM based solutions (the IT teams prefer this and they are the ones deciding what to do).   I do expect MS to start to push enterprise (and anyone who wants legacy windows support) to using window365 this is a big future move for them as it turns a one off $100-$200 purchase into a $10 monthly subscription !

Again, the legacy support is critical for enterprise.

[hishnash]

6 hours ago, Jaesop said:

Enterprise users utilize software that developers literally made in the past, and can often use legacy hardware. Apple is not used in the enterprise setting like that. No one is using OSX software from 2004. Apple dropping 32 bit support did not dramatically impact their userbase. It would massively impact Windows.

For applications that have not been updated in 10 years there are other solutions, such as VMs. IT departments these days much prefer this (I have worked in a company selling software to the mining industry and a large number of our clients were full of legacy software thier IT teams really wanted to move all of that onto VM images for security and stability reasons).  But an app that contains a mixture of new apis and legacy apis is much harder to put in a VM as it might well have much higher performance hardware exceptions. 

You can see MS is going down this direction with windows 11 only supporting very new hardware, they intend to push companies that need legacy support to window365 and IT departments want to do this, many of them are already using solutions from Cisco etc.  These days most large `legacy` enterprise companies users never log into a physical machine they are loging into platforms like Citrix.  If you need to run some legacy software you are even given a dedicated VM image to run it within IT industry has fully embraced this as the solution for supporting the legacy world.

 

[RejZoR]

13 hours ago, Jaesop said:

M1 was not birthed into existence upon release. Apple has been building their silicon platform for over a decade now, and that custom silicon is the key to their success in running their desktop/laptop platform on it.

 

There is no planet where Microsoft stops supporting x86, nor should they. Windows legacy support is a massive feature and need of their enterprise clientele. Apple customers do not have that expectation, thus why Apple was able to kill off 32 bit and x86 support without much issue.

So? Neither has Microsoft's. It just means theirs was in R&D even for longe than a decade and it's still broken today.

[D13H4RD]

On 11/23/2021 at 4:08 PM, RejZoR said:

They worked together and did an incredibly bad job at it. Both, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Microsoft for trying for a decade to bring Windows to ARM and it's still garbage meanwhile Apple did the same in just 1 year and it actually works well even if there are some issues. And Qualcomm for releasing underwhelming chips that in combination with garbage Windows for ARM performed like absolute poo and all devices with them were horrendously expensive compared to AMD or Intel versions with similar specs on paper.

To be fair, Apple has one giant advantage in that it also has been slowly designing its ARM-based SoCs to be more powerful and capable in around the same time its software team was working on an eventual transition to ARM. It was definitely far from a "one year" project, but Apple had a lot of cards working in its favor, no least the synergy its products have with their hardware and software thanks to both parts being designed by their manufacturer.

 

That doesn't excuse the joke that Microsoft and Qualcomm have released though. Especially the latter.

[Jaesop]

9 hours ago, RejZoR said:

So? Neither has Microsoft's. It just means theirs was in R&D even for longe than a decade and it's still broken today.

Microsoft has not many any custom silicon. They've run Windows on off the shelf components with as most slight customization. That's the problem with comparing a hardware and software company to one that's largely software built for third party hardware.

[RejZoR]

9 hours ago, Jaesop said:

Microsoft has not many any custom silicon. They've run Windows on off the shelf components with as most slight customization. That's the problem with comparing a hardware and software company to one that's largely software built for third party hardware.

Again, so? How is that anyone's problem? It's not like Microsoft is some new startup who can't get any connections in the industry to roll things forward. They have all the resources, know how and connections, yet they rolled out this poo and couldn't make it work in a decade after it was released.

 

Apple was clearly aware there would be compatibility issues and they added x86 instructions to the ARM CPU's for purposes of emulation. They also used recompile approach on-install opposed to Microsoft's on-runtime.

[Jaesop]

7 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Again, so? How is that anyone's problem?

None of this is anyone's problem. We're talking about how each company has handled ARM. It's a discussion.

 

Quote

It's not like Microsoft is some new startup who can't get any connections in the industry to roll things forward. They have all the resources, know how and connections, yet they rolled out this poo and couldn't make it work in a decade after it was released.

Apple's investment into their custom silicon has been massive. It's been financially sound for them because they've used it for a decade for their phones and tablets. Microsoft doesn't do that, so investing as much as Apple has wouldn't see nearly the same ROI and would likely anger OEMs.

 

Quote

Apple was clearly aware there would be compatibility issues and they added x86 instructions to the ARM CPU's for purposes of emulation.

Right - their ability to design their own SoC has been critical to their success with the transition.

[descendency]

On 11/24/2021 at 12:04 PM, Kisai said:

I'm saying that Phone 8 was way too late to matter.

 

Apple, had the iPod as a base.

There is no such thing as being too late. Counterpoint: the iPod. The iPod launched 5 years after many trusted market leaders (like Sony who had the Walkman that everyone wanted/had) were already launched MP3 Players. 

 

It lost because they couldn't make people want it - and frankly there are obvious reasons for that. 

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, descendency said:

There is no such thing as being too late. Counterpoint: the iPod. The iPod launched 5 years after many trusted market leaders (like Sony who had the Walkman that everyone wanted/had) were already launched MP3 Players. 

 

It lost because they couldn't make people want it - and frankly there are obvious reasons for that. 

I thought the iPod was stupendously popular.  Which model might matter.  There were a lot of them.  The last iPod I saw in use wasn’t even used for mp3s, but more as a sort of internet phone to avoid network charges.  A poor man’s cellphone standin sort of.

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

I thought the iPod was stupendously popular.  Which model might matter.  There were a lot of them.  The last iPod I saw in use wasn’t even used for mp3s, but more as a sort of internet phone to avoid network charges.  A poor man’s cellphone standin sort of.

That's the impression I was under. iPod did so well they were able to turn it into a very successful phone line.

[descendency]

17 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I thought the iPod was stupendously popular.  Which model might matter.  There were a lot of them.  The last iPod I saw in use wasn’t even used for mp3s, but more as a sort of internet phone to avoid network charges.  A poor man’s cellphone standin sort of.

The point is that Windows Phone didn't fail because Microsoft was late. The iPod was late by about 5 years. It was massively successful. The iPhone was brought into a market with the blackberry. etc. 

 

It has nothing to do with being late.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, descendency said:

The point is that Windows Phone didn't fail because Microsoft was late. The iPod was late by about 5 years. It was massively successful. The iPhone was brought into a market with the blackberry. etc. 

 

It has nothing to do with being late.

iPhone stuff was exceptional though.  All the phones before it were sort of built off the pager/pda model.  iPhone did a different thing. So for what it did it’s arguably early not late.  iPhone still isn’t as good at pda as some much earlier long dead devices.  It only even just got list stuff and that is primitive and just a subset of notes.  It’s particularly poor at ring tone allocation.  This is I think androids greatest strength.  Because if it’s more open system it can port some of those old apps like pimlical which is a holdover from palmOS. It does several things I have found I simply can’t do with an iPhone. Even with expensive subscription 3rd party apps.

Edited November 27, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Zodiark1593]

32 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I thought the iPod was stupendously popular.  Which model might matter.  There were a lot of them.  The last iPod I saw in use wasn’t even used for mp3s, but more as a sort of internet phone to avoid network charges.  A poor man’s cellphone standin sort of.

I remember thinking how awesome it was being able to carry and watch anime on my iPod Nano 3rd gen. I still have that iPod around. Use it for music in the car sometimes (the Bluetooth adapters suck to use), though nowadays as I listen to a lot of content on YouTube, it doesn’t get much use. And its obviously is in need of a new battery. 

[gjsman]

On 11/23/2021 at 3:28 AM, leadeater said:

Apple Silicon Macs are entirely different, Apple HAS to do something and that namely being actually create Windows drivers for their hardware.

You are aware that Boot Camp on Intel actually has Apple-developed Windows drivers, right? Heck, a few months ago, Apple added precision touchpad support to their Windows drivers:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/11/22529493/apple-windows-precision-touchpad-support-boot-camp-update

 

So it's not like Apple hasn't gone out of their way to support Windows previously.

[Paul Thexton]

46 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

I remember thinking how awesome it was being able to carry and watch anime on my iPod Nano 3rd gen. I still have that iPod around. Use it for music in the car sometimes (the Bluetooth adapters suck to use), though nowadays as I listen to a lot of content on YouTube, it doesn’t get much use. And its obviously is in need of a new battery. 

Also use an iPod nano in my car because the USB+Line In adapter functions as an iPod accessory, meaning I can select playlists/albums/shuffle directly from the car stereo. 

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

 

Apple was clearly aware there would be compatibility issues and they added x86 instructions to the ARM CPU's for purposes of emulation.

Technically they did not have any x86 instructions to thier cpus (this would get them into legal issues). All they did was ad a mode switch (that can be used per core) to change how the memory access happens so that it is the same as x86.

The rest is all handled by Rosseta2 (this is sort of like re-compile but a little different) it is commonly called `lifting` were the binary x86 binary is read from disk and covered into a high level platform independent machine code that is then compiled down to ARM64 instructions.