Microsoft & Qualcomm -- Blame for Broken Arm Promises?

[@JeffGeerling]

I'm honestly amazed the Snapdragon Dev Kit is still not here... it seemed like the key component to getting devs to start working on their Arm builds for Windows. It feels like Microsoft shot first, and everyone's asking questions later-the consumer laptops shouldn't have launched yet with the state of Windows on Arm and Qualcomm Snapdragon X support today. So far I haven't found a person who bought a Snapdragon X and said "this laptop is so much better" yet. When Apple launched the M-series laptops, tons of people felt like it was a completely different and better experience than the laptops that came before.

[@kaltimoktober]

That was literally what the windows dev kit was or am I missing something?

[@AndreiAldea]

@@kaltimoktoberit was underpowered and wasn’t a 1:1 feature comparison with Snapdragon X so nobody jumped on it

[@kaltimoktober]

@@AndreiAldearealised that watching the video lol, I prematurely responded to comments

[@Lead_Foot]

I think apple m series made a bigger impact because Intel was so far behind at the time.

[@dirg3music]

@@Lead_Foot Yeah agreed, the m series impact was because of how dramatic the efficiency/perf curve was compared to the competition at the time, these days x86 (mainly AMD) isn't nearly as far behind as it was back then. Things are definitely different now so of course people are going to be disappointed. lol

[@CptMooney]

"We support Linux since we dont want to use Windows ourself..." Thank you sir!

[@dramaoppa7099]

I would buy a laptop with Linux pre-installed if it's available but the fact is it's not and Snapdragon laptops from other OEM's (Asus, Lenovo and Microsoft) are having problems with linux. BTW I already use linux

[@theworldoffun8997]

@@dramaoppa7099 Tuxedo prepares their own laptop that will most likely be 14 inch Tuxedo Pulse or an Infinity Book Pro which right now have quadhd+ 16:10 IPS screens, 60-70 watt hour batteries, dual speakers(i dont particularly like them, but they are fine) and the whole range of ports except only for ethernet and start from $1200. I will buy it when its released for sure

[@Raizan-IO]

@@dramaoppa7099 There are...

[@dramaoppa7099]

@@Raizan-IO I know, there are but not with an Arm or RISC-V CPU

[@Raizan-IO]

@@dramaoppa7099 why reply to me that you know now? Is clearly not what you stated. Just drop it next time if your original message was misconstrued and someone just wanted to let you know in case you didn't.

[@whalemonstre]

I'm an IT professional and I've been a Windows user since 3.1 / 386 days (about 30 years) and have just switched to Linux Mint. This vid is spot on. I'm sick of the data mining, the ads, the burying of privacy toggles, the erosion (or constant overriding) of user choice. Recall was the final straw for me (even though I'm not buying one of those PCs, and even though MS reneged on its being on by default) because the mere fact they tried to launch such a feature tells me something about the kind of company they have become; quite simply, a company no longer listening to users, that doesn't respect our choices or opinions, and one that has therefore forfeited my trust.

[@austinbaccus]

Amen

[@TressaDanvers]

Mint was a good choice for a prolific windows user. Good choice. :D

[@Josh-Barnett]

Can't wait for the linux support the death of windows 10 is gonna bring

[@subrezon]

If battery life and sleep were the main issues - desktop users wouldn't be pissed about Windows too. The main issue with Windows is that Microsoft is still coasting on the last time they had put in any thought and creativity. W11 is just Vista in 5 trenchcoats, the outermost one having ad posters glued onto its back.

[@potatorigs2155]

And the main issue with sleeping is clearly a windows and not a x86 issue because my steam deck can sleep for days and resume without loosing much battery

[@espi742]

It's kinda pathetic to say it like that, but Microsoft needs a new Vista. An OS that actually upgrades the internals and modernizes the OS. Windows desperately needs a new filesystem, new update method, a better way to manage applications, a new windowing system that can actually do HDR, deep color and scaling gracefully, a new true API that replaces win32. etc. etc. Microsoft has been getting by with half assed updates for decades now. They just keep piling more and more garbage on top of an antiquated OS.

[@purpledragon]

I would say Vista is much better than the modern crap they release.

[@subrezon]

@@espi742 never got the Vista hate anyway. I had it from the start and it was awesome. But yes, I agree. I think that the only way forward is to make a truly new version, like Vista was when compared to XP.

[@IdiotRace]

@@subrezon really the vista hate was that ms lowered the system requirements for the last minute so that a bunch of peoples experience with vista was with some underpowered piece of crap that really wasn't suitable but ms caved because oems wanted to sell a bunch of ewaste. Pair that with the constant uac prompts when you wanted to do something and it's no wonder it wasn't liked. But I remember trying it on one of the later builds on a well specced machine and wondering what people were complaining about. Even then Vista walked (after several uac prompts) so that Win7 could run.

[@wehavetogoback369]

Getting ads in an OS I paid for. Getting nagged about OneDrive. Search failing to exist as a functional part of the OS. Periphs trying to auto launch and install software. Recall. I made the switch to Linux. It works. It does what I want. It doesn't pester me. I have not booted into Windows in weeks. I'm debating on if I even need it installed on my next major build.

[@tedzards509]

Linux doesn't boot on the current Snapdragon devices though

[@ilovecatsandalsorabbits]

​@@tedzards509It boots, Linaro have a custom Linux image with drivers for the X Elite

[@TheFriendlyInvader]

​@@tedzards509 Yes it does? Hell the X Elite has been supported since 6.8, not to mention the other snapdragon chips which were also supported. The only thing that stops ARM from being trivially supported is the lack of standard ACPI on ARM platforms, but that applies to OSX and NT as well.

[@tedzards509]

@@TheFriendlyInvader Its supported in the kernel, yes. But I never claimed it wasn't. You simply cannot boot into Linux on the current SDX lineup.

[@TheFriendlyInvader]

@@tedzards509 which isn't even true either, I know of at least one person who's running Gentoo on an XPS 13.

[@N....]

I'm a professional developer for a game engine. Porting to Windows on ARM was trivial for us. Literally just added the ARM64 build configuration to the projects, it built first try, ran first try, hasn't had any ARM-specific bugs. Basically free. We have published games that have ARM64 ports running fine. The real holdup is the Xbox stuff - Microsoft has failed to port their Xbox game platform stuff to ARM64, and you can see this for example in how Minecraft Bedrock Edition has an ARM32 port but not an ARM64 port. Their latest and greatest "Game Development Kit" still does not have any ARM support (not even through emulation), whereas UWP has supported ARM32 and ARM64 and emulation for years. It is baffling. So, porting games to ARM64 is trivial right up until you want to actually integrate with Xbox Live on PC, at which point you're stuck waiting for Microsoft to port their stuff. For a long time I thought the Qualcomm exclusivity deal was what was holding back Microsoft, but it seems they're both failing each other since it was Qualcomm recently telling game devs how to port to ARM while Microsoft's GDK still refuses to even run through emulation on ARM. I don't get what the holdup is given how trivial the porting process was for our engine and games. In fact Microsoft has even broken things that used to previously work, for example the Xbox app and Xbox Insider Hub both used to work fine on ARM and let you install and play games. But over the years they've been updated to a point where they're completely unusable, the Xbox app on ARM only does cloud streaming now and the Xbox Insider Hub on ARM doesn't even launch anymore. How are they making things worse over time?? At least we did get Vulkan support on ARM finally, that's the one major thing I was wanting for years.

[@wendelltron]

No anticheat eh? That's a bit of a showstopper rn

[@N....]

@@wendelltron Anticheat isn't needed for singleplayer experiences. It's also not needed for multiplayer games with proper server authoritative networking. Plenty of Minecraft servers are successful without any clientside anticheat. Anticheat has always been an invasive crutch used by poorly designed software.

[@handlemonium]

Good to know 👍

[@flarebear5346]

almost every anticheat supports arm, the developers are the ones that refuse to support it

[@wendelltron]

@@flarebear5346 that is factually incorrect

[@lllongreen]

Almost all of the big youtube reviewers literally where praising the QC Elite while their own performance slides in the background told a completely different story. Never seen anything quite like this before 😂 The amount of QC marketing money and propaganda for the QC Elite is unreal 😂

[@Momfasa]

Was thinking the same. That hype buildup was insane.

[@matthewstott3493]

The top tier QC Elite X isn't even shipping on any laptops yet. Only the midrange and entry level SoC.

[@jasonbelack6339]

Big Tech KZbinrs: "This is Microsoft's M1 moment! Windows on ARM is here!" Big Tech KZbinrs, in the same video: "Battery life is SLIGHTLY BETTER, and performance is... almost as good as an x86 CPU! (real quietly: as long as you're running native ARM applications. Running x86 code means you lose about 40-50% of the performance)!

[@roccociccone597]

@@jasonbelack6339 Microsoft tried to have its “M1” moment 4 or 5 times already. Each and every time they failed miserably. This time will be no different. Remember 2011 was the year M$ tried to get their OS onto arm for the first time. It worked about as well as the stuff does now. What changed? Marketing

[@Charles_-zw6zk]

I am using a Samsung GalaxyEdge right now. I am fine with it. Some apps that need emulation are not working well, the rest is just Win 11 with longer battery life. That is to say, I got a laptop for less $$ than last year with more RAM out of the box. I think that is a good effect of the QC chips. I hope MS will just keep on supporting x86 and ARM in the same way and let the chip manufacturers dish it out amongst themselves. If ARM is a better platform, it should win. If x86 can keep up with changes to its architecture, then go team blue and red. So, besides the point that Win 11 is Win 11, I don't really see a big problem (and yes, the dev kits should have been ready - this was rushed, they needed to be out before M4). One last note: This is not Surface RT. I owned and used a Surface RT. It was slow, it had Windows 8. It was quite different compared to what is happening now.

[@Geno1isme]

MS is just stuck with their cloud-first agenda since Nadella took over (similar to how Amazon is running in the wrong direction under AWS Jassy). But they've realized that Win11 hasn't worked to get people into the MS cloud (for various reasons), now they think that "AI" is something that people want and want to use that as leverage (which clearly also won't work). Made obvious by talking about getting CoPilot also on Win10. From their point of view this is just a marketing stunt for CoPilot. Don't think they care about the underneath platform, Qualcomm just had what they wanted from an NPU before Intel and AMD. The engineering resources at that point were available for free basically as clearly they're not doing anything useful anymore (WSA canceled among others). And of course they want to mimic Apples business model and more importantly profit margin for a long time (again, completely the wrong move).

[@fujinshu]

Most people never even wanted “AI”, they want a better ChatGPT that can do more stuff so that they can have it do their work for them while they slack off. Society was always looking for efficiencies that they can use to get more free time (or more money for dirty execs).

[@powerpower-rg7bk]

The only way to see a surge in Windows 11 adoption at this point is the end of formal support for Windows 10. There simply isn't a a strong case to upgrade form Windows 10 to 11 outside of support.

[@mockier]

I don't trust Microsoft with copilot. They have a track record of turning features back on with forced patches. I can't trust them at all anymore. Recall is a bad actors wet dream, preinstalled spyware on every PC. Now even though MS is walking back I can't trust them to not sneak this back into the OS later.

[@mockier]

@@powerpower-rg7bk I'd rather move to linux at that point. My upgrade path is either Windows 12 (If it's decent and better than 11), or Linux.

[@ihmpall]

Mr KZbin comment expert here knows how all trillion dollar companies should be run

[@ffp3]

Thanks a lot for the comprehensive talk. I started to feel paranoid, because I was reading similar feedback from the advanced users/developers, while all the reviewers are praising and misreading charts. Thanks for the reality check.

[@lllongreen]

Almost all of the big youtube reviewers littery where praising the QC Elite while their own performance slides in the background told a completely different story.

[@SyrFlora]

​@@lllongreenbenchmark on the cherry pick app that is arm native. Performance wise it's gud especially cpu wise. It is just Qualcomm hyping it up too much.. performance + battery at same time.. but u sacrifice one if u pick the other extreme. Lack of driver support. Thou the reason arm hype is not my liking because.. most of them come with locked bootloader or bios that dont usb boot friendly/os friendly. If arm window laptop experience the same as locked bios function as apple arm macbook.. Guess we in the world of if software is no longer supported.. u just got no option anymore

[@timothygibney159]

@@lllongreenEvery video I saw only focused on gaming saying how terrible it is. It’s a surface not a heater with a 600 watt 4090 gpu desktop. Tablets and netbooks have never been built for gaming. These reviews are ridiculous as I don’t bash my 3080ti and 7950x3d for portability and wattage.

[@Winnetou17]

@@timothygibney159 They weren't that ridiculous. They compared it to similar notebooks, which also didn't had any dedicated GPU. Much less a 4090 desktop. I'm not saying it wasn't ridiculous at all, since it was still somewhat comunicated that they're not exactly for gaming, that's the most I can give Qualcomm and Microsoft. Though nobody stopped Qualcomm to NOT brag that "games will run just fine".

[@TamasKiss-yk4st]

@SyrFlora not even good in performance wise, if you check the single core result (because 99,9% of the apps are single core apps..), but even if you check the multi core scores, they are used 12 power core for that, what is much closer to the 16 power cores in M1 Ultra instead of the 4 power cores in any basic M chip.. So they arenonly looks good performance wise if you blind and don't understandnnthat the 4 power cores with passive cooling will always use less power like the 12 power cores with active cooler.. so if any V12 car engine with turbo (12 power cores and has a cooler too) can barely keep up with an average V4 car engine without turbo (4 power cores and is fanless), is that really a good V12 engine..?

[@SamOnKBD]

Installing OS, 10 years ago: Windows: click a couple of buttons, enter username and password. Linux: Terminal hacking, downloading shell scripts from github. Installing OS today: Linux: click a couple of buttons, enter username and password. Windows: Terminal hacking, downloading shell scripts from github.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

Linux was like that more like 25 years ago, 10 years ago it had auto install like in modern times

[@Zawse612]

what do you mean by terminal hacking and shell script for windows? i still only need to click a couple of buttons to install windows, the same with linux if its installer has GUI.

[@gorudonu]

@@marcogenovesi8570 even longer than 10 years, I'd say at least 15

[@liblevi45s53]

@@Zawse612 Likely referring to the tools and scripts that need to be run after install to debloat the system. Windows 10 for the most part was just install and go(some things still needed to be removed). Windows 11 there is a lot more(including the MS online account bypass) that has to be done during and after install.

[@stephen1r2]

@@Zawse612 Do you want to avoid requiring an MS account on install? You may need to enter several not-so-secret codes, unless MS patched that again to prevent avoidance. Or you may need to rebuild the install image.

[@TheBrokenEclipse]

Microsoft is the sole actor making me consider Linux more and more - and I'm finding less and less reasons as to why I shouldn't switch

[@singular9]

Switch to mint and forget about it.

[@johncorn7905]

Linux is really nice once you get used to it, i tried to switch back to windows and felt lost and like i was shut into a box whereas on Linux i have control over my system and can do so much

[@celeridad6972]

​@@johncorn7905 I'm thinking of making the jump as well but it just feels like a massive deal, how can something that has like 20% of the OS market compete with windows? I feel that it will have many issues some will consider small but I'm not that tech savvy

[@drkwrk5229]

Just switch... why are you spending time writing here instead

[@spodula]

It takes a bit of getting used to, but i don't regret the switch. Now on the off times i have to use windows, it seems very clunky.

[@RaidOwl]

But wait...when I said in my video that my Snapdragon Surface Laptop had a terrible user experience I was told I was wrong!

[@Sopel997]

I got soooooooo downvoted on r/gadgets for saying it's overpriced and has a lot of issues. Marketing did a good job.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

Expecting rationality on reddit was your first mistake.

[@metavatar]

Just got my Lenovo x elite....you were wrong. Keep whining for more likes and subs. It's a decent product. No loss of functionality from my xps 13 Intel...as a photographer.

[@Sopel997]

@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 I have no expectations from the popular subs (well, except being trash), but it's interesting to sometimes probe for reactions to see what the general consensus is.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@Sopel997 redditors not sucking the D of Microsoft: challenge level [impossible]

[@Tuhar]

Microsoft: "People hate Windows - what could it be?" Honest Guy: "The ads and bloat?" - thrown out the window meme Pitch guy: "x86 battery life! That's the enemy!"

[@tranthien3932]

Pitch guy #2: "And they NEED more AI. See how much money we can make?"

[@LordApophis100]

@@Tuhar Why do people like MacBooks? Because they use ARM

[@carisi2k11]

@@LordApophis100 Not even close. They like Apple because they Apple products and they have like a lot of screws loose.

[@Derpalerpa]

@@carisi2k11I quite literally bought my first ever MacBook because of battery life 😭

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@carisi2k11 Apple always puts bigger batteries in their laptops so they last longer. It's not hard, but laptop manufacturers prefer to save money on that

[@blafasel5331]

@33:49 Not only does the Start Menu go to the Internet. Periodically, the Internet access will stop working and as a result, the search function will stop working. As in completely not working, not even for local stuff. The result display is just empty because some error during Internet access completely broke it.

[@stephen1r2]

a German company O&O Software have the free Shutup10+ tool. It provides per user and per machine switches for this and other annoyances, like CoPilot.

[@SpiceFox]

Oh good, this is a known thing. Sometimes I would start typing and it just… Doesn’t work. I thought I was losing my mind

[@KyleDavis328]

I did a registry hack a couple months ago to disable Windows Search accessing the internet and it's been great. It's still not a functional search, easy programs it can't find because who knows, but it's fast and I don't accidentally open an edge window to a bing search anymore. But the dumbest part of all of this: Microsoft has already made a better and functional Windows Search, it's Power Toys Run, which is a Microsoft backed open source Windows copy cat of Spotlight Search, and again, it actually works! It's been around since the early days of the modern era Power Toys and why it didn't get added to base Windows 11 is beyond me, they're already copying MacOS for everything else...

[@chx1975]

ARM claims they gave Nuvia better terms because they wanted more server market share. This contract they wrote apparently had a clause to terminate when Nuvia got acquired. Qualcomm interpreted they have a broad ARM licence, ARM counters the Nuvia licence specifically excluded those.

[@scod3908]

The proof of the pudding is in the eating; how many "server chips" are on the market thanks to Nuvia?

[@systemBuilder]

ARM is so full of shit it's unreal. Qualcomm has an instruction set license, Nuvia had an instruction set license. ARM's own cores are shit - total broke-ass 2010 shit. Qualcomm is like, "here, take our money" and ARM is just saying "No". If ARM wins their case it could only be with a court as corrupt as the US Supreme Trump Court..

[@jozsefacs2224]

Qualcomm also have the architecture license and Nuvia also i can not understand why arm is trying to act like Qualcomm doesnt have it. Sorry my english is not the best

[@scod3908]

@@jozsefacs2224 licensed works under contract are not usually transferrable by default depending on how contracts are written, and Nuvia had licensing for server designs to my understanding. This suggests that if Qualcomm are using designs developed under Nuvia's server chip design licensing, they may be in breach of both Nuvia's non transferrable license terms as well as their own licensing terms. This would easily explain why they were sued. With backing from OEM's, it appears the classic rule of USA legal system is at play: he with the most resources bends the system to eventually prevail one way or another.

[@jozsefacs2224]

@@scod3908 thankyou for the explanation

[@jamescampbell6728]

Java: "we work on any platform!!!" *looks inside* *x86 assembly code*

[@marcogenovesi8570]

(angry developer noises)

[@Winnetou17]

To be fair, I don't think that's Java itself at fault there, but people/devs/companies who made apps in Java.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@Winnetou17 Java allows them to add assembler optimizations to their software/libraries, and it was sold as a language that "works on any platform". It's also at fault

[@Winnetou17]

@@marcogenovesi8570 Fair enough. I have now one extra point to not like it, w00t

[@ohokcool]

@@jamescampbell6728 is docker better? I genuinely have no idea please tell me lol

[@LordApophis100]

Dave Cutler and his team built amd64 Windows on spec. When they received the first 64bit test system from AMD they put in the disc and booted it. Really think Windows 2000 was peak Microsoft.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

Windows used to have seperate dev teams for consumers pushing features and enterprise focusing on stability. Unfortunately when they merged the teams for XP, the enterprise folks got sidelined and eveentually pushed into rebuilding the desktop release for server.

[@slvrscoobie]

Windows Nt was peak windows.

[@timothygibney159]

Windows has booted natively on arm for 12 years with no problem. Reviewers only think gaming and anti cheats is impoortant. Blame the drm on the vendors. That is not Qualcomm’s or Microsoft’s fault. I would say x86 crashes with drm anti cheats on x86 hardware as well I think for business arm on windows is fine on a surface including running old apps under x86 emulation unless it’s a cad program

[@aravindpallippara1577]

​@@timothygibney159anti cheat isn't DRM?

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

@slvrscoobie Windows NT is still in use. Windows 2000 was a public facing brand name for NT 5.0, XP was 5.1. Windows Vista - 8.1 were NT 6.x. And Windows 10 and 11 is the public name for NT 10.0.xxxxx. NT 7-9 were skipped to reunify version numbers with branding numbers, which they promptly broke again with Windows 11.

[@tschorsch]

The move to ARM is concerning. Microsoft has been trying to lock down windows hardware for decades. We need to make sure that this hardware is open to other operating systems.

[@MiGujack3]

If you are talking about Microsoft locking down their own devices, then they can go ahead and do that, they will simply suck and be forgotten (as always). However, if you are talking about MS locking down Windows as a whole for their own hardware... They would need to take hostage Snapdragon and potentially Mediatek, then nuke from orbit Intel and AMD and finally make a CPU able to compete with Apple. Last would be to somehow stop the power vacuum of losing of having a somewhat accesible platform, which would skyrocket Linux development. Why would you be concerned, anyway? Is a Surface that desirable to you?

[@Tim_Small]

Linaro already have Linux running on these Qualcomm Windows devices and are upstreaming the patches.

[@nickg63]

Honestly, if Windows pulls a move this boneheaded I would be quite pleased, as it would create a mass migration to Linux for those who want to use their own hardware, and along with it Linux support for many programs would skyrocket in quality.

[@onkz]

A really insightful video. A lot of us at work thought that the Windows on ARM launch was smooth sailing- but none of us actually own a Snapdragon device running Windows. This has really put into perspective just exactly how much effort Apple put into this transition. Despite their practises towards consumers, they’re the pinnacle example of software and architecture development in the industry right now.

[@themice42]

there are so many aspects of apple's demonstrated approach to their consumers that I HATE (will never own an apple device)... on this matter, however, you're right.

[@williamcopeland2617]

You do realize that it took Apple years to get damn near every program to work smoothly on those M processors, right? These new laptops just came out, give them a few months to get some app and firmware updates out and everything will be fine.

[@autohmae]

Apple obviously only had basically 1 device and 1 device only to support. It still should be easier to execute than dealing with multiple manufacturers. That said, this new Snapdragon release could have been the most single-platform like experience... but no.

[@onkz]

@@autohmae Yeah true, Apple has less devices to support, but at the same time, Microsoft have worked on Windows-on-ARM for at least a decade now since the Surface RT. A decade to support ARM properly, while still failing, is a genuinely terrible execution.

[@onkz]

@@williamcopeland2617 I don’t think that’s accurate. The nature of the Darwin kernel has always been multi-platform by design, and Apple has been known to be secretly compiling entire OSs for multiple platforms ‘just in case’. The sheer preparedness of their software team is not to be understated. Their support for all kinds of 3rd party creative tools like the Adobe Suite, DaVinci Resolve, VST/AU plugins from the past 20 years, etc, have been stellar during the M1 transition period. The same applies to dev tools like Xcode and various other environments. Devs were given test machines up to 2 years in advance for testing and evaluation. They’ve catered for their core user base and ensured that the transition appeared as smooth as possible. The reason Windows is different in this context is due to the sheer amount of legacy crap that Windows apps rely on. The stack of libraries behind most MS apps can trail as far back as 2 decades ago, whereas on the Apple side of things, they regularly tighten and deprecate older APIs/libraries/codebases to keep things efficient across the board, meaning there’s been less to maintain and transition. Due to the high amount of legacy code running through many layers of abstraction, these Windows apps will rely more heavily on x86 emulation and it will take MS many eons longer to complete this transition smoothly.

[@Liatin1]

Microsoft definitely lost the ball with windows in general

[@mrhassell]

What ball? They never had any to begin with. Just one giant, epic sized phallys, with more flaws and problems than is really right for any O/S to ever have and live. Upgrade by clearing your drive and installing Linux. Nearly everything runs perfectly, thanks to Steam and Wine.

[@Kvantum]

Windows is just a rounding error for MSFT now. All OSes are. Look where they're pushing things in Azure - serverless services, where you never touch an OS at all. Code runs in containers, databases run in Azure SQL, code runs in Databricks without really even caring what the OS itself actually is. You never have to touch the OS layer anymore if you don't want to. Azure, Entra ID, Microsoft 365, and SQL are the cash cows now, and all of Windows is a legacy product. It's as relevant to MSFT's bottom line as actual computers are to Apple.

[@MrPtheMan]

Microsoft, I've used it since a kid, 12. Opened, built pcs, and installed oses. And Windows Os always breaks after a year of use, and the solution is to reformat. Since Windows 10 auto update, it forces users to soft reinstall while keeping the apps installed intact. Because of that, people believe Windows is great lol is not. It auto reinstalls so your os doesn't break hahaha. Not kidding.

[@DarthAwar]

@@Liatin1 Focus too much on Office Suit and Cloud Storage not on the OS and what users wanted or needs, They also lost the plot for Xbox

[@DarthAwar]

@@MrPtheMan Moved to Linux

[@apefu]

The company I work at switched almost completely to Linux server side in the 90s. On the Client side Windows still reigns supreme even if there clearly is a movement to Linux/Mac going on in the client space. I ask the team every year if we shouldn't go all in, but they just laugh. I find this so interesting giving the increasing pain they experience managing the windows platform. Every other month something breaks with the platform cloud integration for licenses (we need to anonymize the users, so we have a "special" solution) and it is always a kerfuffle with information leakage. When are the big companies going to start saying "Enough!"?

[@kwrzesien17]

Next week?

[@seylaw]

Thank you for speaking out about this obvious failure of both Microsoft and Qualcomm to place the user experience in the center of their thoughts. If they really wanted to compete with Apple's quality, they really should have done a better job with their analysis as to what makes Apple's experience so much better and figure out a way to replicate Apple's formula. It would be a great start to bring the software and hardware people of the involved companies much closer together (e.g. with more embedded engineers at each other's firms as points of contact for problems the game dev talked about) and also improve developer tooling and support.

[@roccociccone597]

With Microsoft at the helm, nothing can ever be good quality. Their poor excuse of an operating system is the best piece of evidence for that.

[@OmniUni]

Another interesting point is that the modern Linux experience is actually very good if it's already installed. Similarly, the installation is something that people rarely discuss with Windows. I recently did a "from scratch" dual boot, and installing Windows was actually WORSE than installing Linux. It was a pain to make the install media (I eventually borrowed a friend's computer, and it still took two tries), and Windows would't let me continue the installation without the Internet, even though it had no wireless drivers on the laptop. I finally finished installing Windows USB-tethered to my phone, and I'll even ignore how long the updates took and the frustratingly convoluted process of doing basic things like preventing random apps from installing automatically. On Linux despite a bug with the boot splash (already fixed upstream) everything else worked basically perfectly. It took me about 1/3 the time to install Linux and more importantly the user experience now that it's done, is excellent. My computer runs smoothly, updates are very fast, even my games run well. I think soon we'll start to see more computers coming with Linux, and I think the user experience will feel surprisingly good when it's already installed.

[@danagoyette7932]

The Surface Pro X was good for the right price (deeply discounted at $600-ish), but at the original price, heck no. And for the longest time, the GPU driver screwed up the colors of anything running in OpenGL. These new machines similarly feel like they're priced too expensive for having so many teething issues.

[@stephenxs8354]

The funny thing is many of us would buy devices based on this processor in a heart beat for NON WINDOWS USE. Dear Qualcomm please focus on Linux and Android use.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

Linux doesn't even focus on Linux anymore.

[@TalynOne]

Why would you use Linux for desktop use, even Linus Torvalds says that's dumb. If you really want a Linux command line Windows Subsystem for Linux run natively under ARM and give you a full Ubuntu command line.

[@henrikoldcorn]

Ha! That's actually been running through my head quite a lot and I've seen quite a few comments saying "hey cool! please test Linux on it!"

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@TalynOne Who is Torvalds to tell me what to do? he has plenty of dumb takes, see also his opinions on ZFS filesystem. His job is coordinating kernel development and that's where his expertise begins and ends.

[@aravindpallippara1577]

​@@TalynOneBecause it's good to great as a desktop OS? Far more customisable than windows and macos. The boot times are insane, I choose when to update so on and forth.

[@MrDerpdog]

A few years ago I upgraded to W11 and quickly realized I didn’t want my desktop experience to be like my phone app experience where the first goal is to maximize shareholder value at the cost of all else. I’ve been on Linux since that realization. It’s not perfect, and there’s a learning curve involved for the specific niche things I want to have done (though gaming performance is usually indistinguishable from W11). I will take this learning curve and adjustment period over being subject to Microsoft making my own experience worse every time. My experience with tech giants leads me to believe they’ll first double down if their weird internal KPIs aren’t being hit.

[@noithinknot4583]

I literally have met no one who hates Windows because of anything to do with x86. Data mining, Data mining, many, people hate Windows because of data mining. Attempting to force Microsoft Account, thats one. Generally poor security overall compared to other operating systems. The list of good reasons for not liking Microsoft is too long for this post, but none of them have anything to do with x86 architecture. I would also question if Microsoft is planning to move it's end user operating systems off of x86. Leaving Windows x86 only available for enterprise. I'm not saying that's the case I'm saying I wouldn't put it past them.

[@giglioflex]

Yep, Microsoft have treated it's windows users like sheep thinking they take whatever Microsoft gives them but people are not blind.

[@carnivorebear6582]

I don't think they'll actually drop x86, especially while for desktop use x86 is so far ahead of any alternatives. When Intel's or AMD's highest performance consumer CPUs are ARM maybe they'll switch.

[@chugs1984]

You had me at MS telemetry and data logging as a major concern but you lost me at the security concern. Windows is just as secure or insecure as a linux platform, or the Mac fork. I blame the huge amount of poorly made software for most of the security flaws on windows. Linux was secure (ish) for years because there was bugger all you could run on it Same with mac OS. Outside of video and music editors (and even then there were but a handful), these machines were secure only through obscurity and uselessness. And don't talk to me about admin controls, linux had you running all manner of weird ass patches and updates and code from all manner of backyard operations. As we have discovered, using forums to help people fix applications issues on linux has been a vector for spreading malware. My house, whether it is made by Gates, Toval or Wozniak, is only secure if I'm smart enough to lock my doors and windows, have a gate, operate detection systems (fur or otherwise). But no matter what a guy with a hammer or knife can easily gain entrance, or hell left a tile Does this make windows on my houae useless or a major security vulnerability despite how easy it is to break them?

[@timothygibney159]

I hate how bing hijacks my once favorite feature of Windows Vista/7 which is instant search. I use my keyboard not the start menu to open documents. Now I get bing websites and edge looking for sites with my document names. Annoying af.

[@Winnetou17]

Well, technically, people DID complain about the battery life. And many see that as an x86 problem (I don't, but that's another story)

[@CoryMT]

Not specifically ARM related, but I'm a regular listener of Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott, and it pretty much convinced me to upgrade from Windows 10 to Linux instead of Windows 11. The Start menu loss of functionality, the ads, the ignoring of default browser in favor of Edge, the enabling of One Drive backup without consent, the way fixes for vulnerabilities seem to have been de-prioritized, and more recently the aggressive promotion of Copilot. I just want to retain control over my own PC. I'd love to see how Linux would run on one of these new ARM PC's, I just don't want the stupid copilot key on my keyboard.

[@tschorsch]

You can map the key to something else in Linux.

[@CoryMT]

@@tschorsch Yes, of course. It's not like Linux has copilot functionality built in that would be launched with that key. What I'm saying is that I don't want Microsoft's newest marketing tramp stamp on my keyboard.

[@Kwazzaaap]

Welcome to actually being able to search your files by contents without your machine turning into a pentium 2

[@legendaryzfps]

Tux Sticker ​@@CoryMT

[@turbolenza35]

Hey there. I have financial difficulties and my desktop is not compatible with Windows 12. Next year October 2025 windows 10 will reach EOL I have no choice : Linux.

[@aelaan12]

There was so much pressure on co-pilot with the re-call "feature" that people forgot that these laptops are being sold. I walked into Staples (because BB did not have the 15 inch) and asked for the 15", which I knew they had two in stock. Sales person was like, are you sure you want to buy this?

[@Crackalacking_Z]

People use Microsoft products, not because they want, but because they have to. MS really just bends these hostages into their business model.

[@siddhj2206]

That is the sad reality. I wanted to get a Macbook but had to go with a windows laptop as the Mac was double my budget. Trying out linux rn but a few of my programs don't work.

[@night_h4nter]

this. i literally have to have a windows machine somewhere (on a vps, on a local vm, or on some small metal box) just because people keep sending me documents in ms formats, that i have to edit, print, sign, etc. no other app lets me even open them correctly, let alone edit/save in ms formats. while linux gaming has drastically improved, it sill lags behind windows (10, at least) significantly. so, if i cared enough about games, i'd have to either dual boot, or, more realistacally, have a separate windows machine to run games on. there's a bunch of other stuff like cads, daws, etc. i'm much less familiar with them, but i know they're mostly unsupported outside windows

[@cooltwittertag]

I still like Windows a lot more than macos from a ui perspective but i'd use linux if all the apps i need worked on it properly (+games)

[@Xyler94]

People use Windows because laptops come with Windows, and so there's less incentive to write Linux code because it's got such a low user base, so without software support from the likes of Nvidia, AMD (yes I know AMD's open drivers, but the AMD Adrenaline software isn't on Linux), and many others, Windows just reigns supreme.

[@ckckck12]

It's the same for Android and Apple. Nobody is actually happy with them if they critically think about it.

[@meh.7539]

Good call bringing Matt in on this. I really liked having his "on the ground, in the trenches" perspective.

[@peacemaker9807]

By the time ms would actually fix arm software issues, x86 from amd would probably already have figured out lower power x86 instead

[@TalynOne]

Intel has been nothing but broken promises for the past 15 years. But I'm sure Lucy will let you kick the football this time Charlie Brown, you just gotta hope enough in your heart.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@TalynOne that's why he said AMD, are you aware that AMD has been the main driver for x86 development and has been whipping Intel since Ryzen dropped?

[@Seekee]

@@TalynOneIntel made what you use now to bash them ….. Intel is the Prometeu of microchips

[@TalynOne]

@@marcogenovesi8570 AMD is faster, more efficient and less stable. Their motherboard chipsets are garbage, super sensitive to memory timings and so many patches and bios fixes had to come out for compatibility until they became even semi stable. If my computer crashes more than once every 6 months I consider that unacceptable, AMD has not been able to get over that hurdle in my testing, Intel has, but they have their own issues. A friend has a top tier gaming desktop based on AMD and their BIOS is still broken by Asus's self admission, random reboots once in a blue moon.

[@slothnium]

Even from an end user standpoint, forking over $1000+ to beta test X Elite is not something I want to do. If the cost were $600-$750, I wouldn't mind as much.

[@Tuhar]

I think this is a big factor. Why did they decide to charge such a premium price when the gaming performance isn't there, it's a new entry to the market - so first impressions matter, and they're pitching a total environment shift from x86 to arm? Intelligent users know they're beta testing at some level, why pay a premium for a beta experience? 600-750 is a perfect range for this new entry.

[@Fractal_32]

For a beta product I would pay $300 max, I knew windows on arm was going to be terrible given Microsoft’s track record.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

I would expect THEM to pay me 600-750$ to test their stuff, not pay it myself

[@TalynOne]

Yep, also made no sense when people bought Apple M series when they were new, why beta test a broken platform while paying double the price?

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@TalynOne what was broken about Apple M on release?

[@Kleptophobia]

They're marginally better than current Intel and AMD chips in some ways. But I don't really want to deal with lack of AVX2 support and there are new promising Strix Point, Lunar Lake and so on right around the corner. Will they be better than chips launching around the same time?

[@fujinshu]

Great, because Game Porting Toolkit 2 is solving the AVX2 problem!

[@vyor8837]

Qualcomm ain't gonna beat that stuff.

[@roccociccone597]

@@fujinshu it’s not just games mate

[@mademedothis424]

There are a bunch of improvements the techbros aren't talking about with this iteration of Windows on ARM beyond the battery life that I'm curious to see if they can replicate in the new batch of laptop chips. The start menu is faster, touch inputs are faster, video playback is faster, UI animation is snappier. I don't know if it's down to dedicated hardware on Qualcomm's part or to additional optimization from MS when porting out of X64, but the Windows UX is noticeably better on equivalent hardware. That doesn't help with game performance or compatibility where that's an issue, or the lack of developer support, but in specific spaces, like the Surface Pro line, the experience is night and day. The question for me is even if the battery life gap is closed on Intel, will the UX continue to be better on ARM going forward? Because I don't care who's making the CPU on these, I care that as a lightweight media consumption device the ARM Surface Pro is a significantly better product than the Intel Surface Pro.

[@BillyONeal]

ARM has NEON which should do the kinds of stuff AVX2 does in theory.

[@pacifico4999]

I'm one of the many people migrating to Linux. It used to be my secondary OS, but now I use Windows only for games

[@TheHangarHobbit]

I honestly don't see a point, I mean why would I buy a Snapdragon laptop and risk my software or devices not working with it when if your focus is battery life you could just get one of the midrange AMD APU based laptops where everything works and the battery is more than "good enough".

[@BrockGunterSmith]

Great video! Seriously well done, thanks for putting in the work to do a thorough job. I believe one of the biggest challenges (similar to what you point out) is that Apple designs their ARM SoCs based on the needs of the software they want to deliver to the end user, rather than building hardware and trying to get the software to use it as best it can. It’s a subtle but very critical difference in design philosophy that results in a nuanced, but yet very important difference to the end use because software comes first. I’m not saying to copy Apple, but rather it highlights why there is a disconnect between Windows for ARM and Qualcomm’s SoCs. There isn’t the same equal and mutually supportive partnership between the two of them and even more importantly with the developers. I do hope Qualcomm and Microsoft are able to quickly make strong strides to building trust with developers, giving them the support they NEED, and focusing on what matters most at the end of the day…users sitting down and being delighted because their computers “just work” to do whatever they want to do with them. 👍

[@AlexSchendel]

This is why I have been running Linux on my desktop for some five years now. Microsoft has done nothing but make Windows more restricted, more expensive, more buggy, and more monetized

[@rhoharane]

Thanks for posting this info, Wendell! It's weird how some outlets are a bit overly focused on gaming (though it is a symptom of legitimately worse things about the platform and hardware) or saying there's no problems with it at all. Your trusted expertise on it is really valuable especially because you caught a bunch of things nobody else seems to be talking about. And what's going on with battery life benchmarks? Some people say it's a huge difference. Some people are seeing it's only a couple of hours worth better than the best last-gen AMD stuff (while suffering huge compatibility problems).

[@headphonesuser1234]

Microsoft keeps reaching new levels of incompetency that I never knew were possible. Great video, extremely fascinating and depressing lol

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

The way the print money shows they're obviously not incompetent. They just don't care about desktop Windows.

[@Deliveredmean42]

@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 More like they got lucky with similar minded folks... Can't say they are smart tho.

[@rightwingsafetysquad9872]

@@Deliveredmean42 Not sure what you mean by similar minded people. Almost every person on the planet uses Azure, even if indirectly. Probably about 40% of people use Office. The last time Excel had a serious competitor was Lotus 123 in the 90s.

[@roccociccone597]

@@rightwingsafetysquad9872 they’re milking everyone for every penny they got. It’s not like their products are good. It’s just because they literally force corporate customers to use their buggy rubbish everywhere. Teams is the worse piece of shit I’ve ever used in my life… well right after windows 11

[@By_Rant_Or_Ruin]

There's a bug in the latest windows 11 pro with the taskbar settings. When you set it to hide the taskbar, the desktop icons rearrange based on a 1080P screen even when you are in 4K. They have also broken HDR. My monitor is a UHD HDR TV. When it boots Windows it shows me it is HDR. But windows settings shows me it it isn't compatible and so keeps me in SDR on EVERYTHING until I play a game. Then it uses whatever the game settings are. But when going back to the desktop - poof - back to SDR. I have an AMD 6900XT and a 2nd gen Thread-Ripper. They also refuse to play HDX in Mozilla Firefox or any browser based on Chrome. So they are forcing me to use Safari (uh-dude it's a PC) or in my case ONLY EDGE which is based on Chrome! And all in the name of stopping Linux from playing HDR 1080P and 4K content. The only reason i use Windows is software that is only available on Windows like music production and video production. I have invested so much money in production software that walking away is very difficult to accept. It all seems like a class action law suit to me.

[@BillyONeal]

In fairness, desktop elements kind of *should* remain SDR; there’s no reason for them to be blinding, or dim, or outside of the Rec.709 color space.

[@irvingchies1626]

I only wanna know if I can keep installing windows by myself whenever I need to, else I'll just rather migrate to Linux asap, between new architecture and windows 11 recording everything I do Linux has never looked so compelling as an option

[@tomo8037]

All I can say is...Yup!, converted our family to Linux Mint and kids complain when using Win11...…"why the expensive laptop has all these ads in the start menu...why switching between drives takes so long....the cheapo minis net top running mint, miles faster"....and that is common in my house 😢....ahhh Microsoft....that dive from greatness will not give ya any lift...

[@TalynOne]

I have WIndows 11 and zero ads. You can recompile your kernel but can't figure out how to check a box in windows for no ads? Weird.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@TalynOne there is no check box for no ads, only a checkbox that makes the ads "less targeted". To disable the stuff you need to run regedit scripts and/or install Windows Pro instead of Home

[@Fractal_32]

@@TalynOnerecompiling a kernel is easy but also unnecessary for 99.9% of desktop Linux users.

[@tomo8037]

@@TalynOne what does the kernel have to do with poor UI and greedy telemetry? Don't get me wrong, I would love to use Windows...sans the constant nagging for a cloud account....NO, and Noooo thank you....when did it became a sin to wish for local accounts, only....seriously, I just want to have my kids laugh programs and see previous projects from the start menu...no cryptic news of wars and cosmetics with similar names to videogames, etc....and the nagging about cloud this, cloud that...c-mon...enough...don't get me wrong, I drove macs for a decade for work, but mint reign supreme since this cloud everything 'line must go up' push ...man...

[@TalynOne]

@@tomo8037 First time I tried Linux I had to patch and recompile the VPN client to get it to work right. Second time I tried Linux all accelerated video drivers were broken for all web browsers so videos from KZbink, etc.. ran like crap (known issue), third time I tried Linux they didn't have the right drivers for my laptop and it failed to power save properly and killed my battery. I think I'd rather deal with with a few registry hacks to get Windows to work perfectly than deal with Linux again. You can still create a local account, they just hid the documentation for it, which is still easier to find an answer for than some random Linux issue that 99.9% won't apply because you're running a different distro or build revision. I just want my operating system to work, is that such a big ask?

[@GibberishRight]

I'm still not sure arm has legs.

[@alanandfriends-s2o]

I'm watching the ARM hardware with great interest. I used a macbook air m2 for work for a while. As far as the hardware, performance, and battery life go I loved that thing. I'd be far more interested in getting ARM's battery life in a slick, light weight, performant Linux laptop than I am emulating x86 executables and seeing microsoft give me ads even though I paid money for the license.

[@Atomhaz]

I work in iOS and Android app development and I constantly have to remind PMs that just because the line goes up on a dashboard doesn’t mean the users like the new feature.

[@Fakeman]

Reading comments sections of various public forums, it is incredible that people delude themselves into thinking that Snapdragon is flawless and as good as an M3 laptop when stuff like AVX2 doesn't work in Prism, or graphics driver bugs, or laggy emulated applications, or having to disable all power savings via terminal to get "full performance" (like they did in the announcement for these processors). Apple Rosetta had issues too, but they were minimal compared to the dumpster fire we have today on Windows. I don't understand why people are going crazy for these ARM chips when they are quite buggy. Is super good standby time and slightly better battery life worth the buggy experiences and crashing? And it's a good point you bring up with Windows RT, Windows Phone 10, the SQ1 and so on. They have had plenty of time to break into ARM and failed every time. At least this time has emulation that works sometimes. Good news imo is that we are not as beholden to x86 as much anymore, where only 3 or so companies can produce chips. An Exynos Windows laptop, MediaTek, Nvidia, heck even an AMD or Intel ARM chip. Just so disappointing that Microsoft is leading this ship.

[@TalynOne]

Everything I care about runs, there's probably 4-5 non native apps that run on my task manager, and they work just fine in emulation. Tech KZbinrs are not real people. If your primary concern is gaming on an ultrabook i'm just going to dismiss you as grossly ignorant.

[@Fakeman]

​@@TalynOne Qualcomm was advertising how their chip had "flawless" game compatibility, yet artefacts in many games or flat out refuses to launch. They said it could do it, and it can't. On AMD ultrabooks you can play games acceptably at 1080p, it is not unreasonable lol. Many people report issues with programs not launching, printers not working or missing features, bad performance in emulated apps, and countless others. The software is obviously incomplete. Be realistic.

[@TalynOne]

@@Fakeman Mixed marketing, I admit their messaging was a bit schizo. LTT did a gaming test video today and he said when both Microsoft and Qualcomm heard about the video he was doing they both wanted to remind him that these aren't for gaming. I have the Lenovo Elite, with a native ARM Ubunutu command line through Windows Susbsytem for Linux. Maybe 4 to 5 apps are not native and they still run great. Visual Studio 2022, VS Code, Node, Git, etc... all have native ARM builds. This has been the best ultrabook I've ever owned, it doesn't get hot, it's basically silent, the screen is amazing and the performance is great.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@TalynOne sorry but "everything I need works" only tells us you have very basic bibch requirements. As another example: 40% of random old VPN clients that I need to use for work to connect to clients don't work on ARM, even "emulated" they just don't run.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@TalynOne wow a handful of developer IDEs, Node's engine and the major linux distros support ARM, too bad that most computer users aren't developers so they don't care about any of that. The issue is random applications in the ecosystem that are sometimes old and rely on the retrocompatibility to still work, you know the feature that distinguishes Windows from Linux in most cases

[@NobleHays]

What's worse is unless the asahi team decides to start playing with the snapdragon laptops, we've returned to a point where the ditching of these by M$ and vendors means their dead e-waste. Sure not all x86 laptops handle a linux installation perfectly, but at least most are _functional_ after they get old. It's like the nastiest step towards planned obsolescence they could take. It's junk the day you buy it.

[@HUEHUEUHEPony]

asahi team has nothing to do with this

[@mateuszsa7]

Computers are like air conditioning. They become useless when you open windows...

[@hugevibez]

Thanks for the insight, Wendell. Sometimes the z-list janitor that fixes things has the experience and knowledge to give the right answers. Everything surrounding this launch has been perplexing to me. I think if Microsoft had initially focused on just getting a robust foundation for their ARM platform we would be in a much better state. But it seems to me that in recent times there was a pivot to have a bigger focus on the Copilot+ shenanigans, when these later months are oh so important to work out the weird kinks like the extremely long compile times, driver crashes, etc. As with anything Microsoft has ever done, the problem here is a lack of focus. Qualcomm really hasn't been the best or open either historically, so nothing surprising there. Also, do we really know if the Nuvia IP was any good to begin with? We had a lot of promises, but no products. Does their core scale at all to this usecase?* I'll be very interested to find out what is going on with this chip. *the fact that dual core turbo is limited to their high-end SKUs is telling

[@baltmatrix]

I would kill for Linux on the Surface tablet &/or the Surface Laptops. Wendell, which distro are you running? Obviously KDE, but which distro? Kubuntu?

[@jja2000]

SoC support is improving, individual devices need to be supported though, but the community is working on that and already has some devices working in out of tree patches.

[@jack8407]

actually in the video that's win11 look at the bars. Next level trolling lmao

[@Level1Techs]

@@jack8407 why not both with the magic of vfio which we are known for *spongebob rainbow meme*

[@baltmatrix]

@@Level1Techs 🤣

[@baltmatrix]

@@jack8407 I cannot believe I missed that.

[@slaynnyt8130]

Forget Windows, what I'm really curious about is the potential of these chips using Linux. Really wish people talked more about that. I guess it's still not booting in these laptops right?

[@Kris-od3sj]

Tuxedo (a Linux PC company) recently showcased a laptop with the X Elite SoC at Computex. They expect to ship it at the end of the year.

[@flcnfghtr]

it seems to be that as a startup, Nuvia's work was done with ARM developmental assistance and had a higher license fee attached as a result... and QC wants to run the IP that ARM paid to develop under /their/ license that has cheaper pricing, but ARM wants to be paid (via licensing) for the R&D they kicked in on. The rest is just escalations and legal posturing etc, the licensing disagreement is really the core issue, how much is ARM going to get paid per chip for Nuvia IP. Hence the reason why QC was so intent on removing /all/ ARM IP from their products (to the extent of re-engineering some parts that were even exact duplicates of what ARM provided, so they could say it was in-house).

[@nadtz]

I'm one of those that finally got so fed up with windows I moved my main machine to Linux. You hit the nail on the head, I'm not particularly interested in the stuff MS has been adding, really don't like them trying to force using an online account to use my local computer and don't care about copilot. That said I'm not surprised MS screwed the pooch once again.

[@harambeduck4110]

Well, I have happily ditched my last Windows installation last month and all my machines run now on Linux (Server, over Desktop to Embedded). And no plan on ever switching back. (I could also convince my employer, or projects, where I participate to work there with my linux stuff)

[@googlesucks6029]

Wait the people at Microsoft think x86/x64 processors are the problem? Do they now do a reverse aptitude test when hiring managers?

[@user-th4hr9gt7t]

Great video Wendell, very important insights. Thank you

[@JethroRose]

Exactly: the CPU is not responsible for the end user experience. Apple has had great power management and user experience since before they were using intel, during intel, etc. its because whatever people might say Apple actually give a shit about said user experience, and aren't 100% focused on making arbitrary KPI line go up. Sure, bespoke ARM silicon can help with some things, but it is NOT the solution in itself.

[@b2gills]

Microsoft is making the same mistakes that movie studios make when it comes to sequels. They don't understand what people liked about the original.

[@71Jay17]

Just switched to a totally configuration based os, nixos from Windows and it’s been a breath of fresh air.

[@eliotrulez]

Amazing video! I am so happy to have switched to Linux after the End of Windows 7 :) Alone the time I saved with updates is incredible :)

[@devent5181]

Hi Wendell!!! Thank you for your feedback on the snapdragon situation. I knew it would be kinda good but some how I thought it was too good to be true. I look at it like AMD chips when they first launched they weren't perfect but they got better over time to the point of not only surpassing Intel in performance but in price as well. I believe the same can happen for Snapdragon, but it wil take time for the to really work out the bugs and features. Sidenote: I bought the livemixer z790 a few months back and really like it alot. My build is 13500, 64gb ram TCreate, 6700 xt. I do plan on jumping to a 13700k or 14700k when the time comes but one thing is on my mind about the build. I'm currently using 2 HDD and a SSD for my os but I'm wondering if I can take all of those out and just use x4 solidigm p44 pro? Any feedback would help, Thank you

[@tranthien3932]

The moment when you find out game porting to Steamdeck on Linux is better (easier(?) considering if it doesn't break Proton) than Windows on ARM

[@CedricGniewek]

31:18 I think you meant Intel or ARM ;) And I agree with you : the Windows 11 start menu is so bad I have to install Start11 to get a good user experience. I didn't feel the need to do this with Windows 10.

[@Aquineas]

Same. But Start 11 is pretty nifty.

[@vyor8837]

what makes it bad?

[@WokeSoros]

Great work here. Windows Total Recall moved me off their platform for good. PopOs and loving it. No spying. No ads. What Steam has done with proton is remarkable. I never thought I’d see the day. Aside from games, all my production apps either run on Linux or my MacBook. Affinity Products for the win if you need off Adobe. Those, abelton, and TouchDesigner all run on Mac. Linux can run Resolve.

[@Kris-od3sj]

Do Affinity products work well in Wine? It doesn't seem like they provide Linux builds of their software.

[@EximiusDux]

@@Kris-od3sj I think a lot of newcomers to linux don't know that proton is a slightly altered Wine. Most people seem to think "proton" was completely made by Valve.

[@Kris-od3sj]

@@EximiusDux That is irrelevant to my question.

[@systemBuilder]

Microsoft doesnt build operating systems; they build ad platforms. The platforms can sometime launch programs - sometimes not!

[@bennett_quack]

39:05 - That chuckle has me in tears!

[@elginhenantier7714]

thank you Wendell! we will remember, be sure of that!

[@TheoneandonlyRAH]

Man. I'm considering apple for the first time after this

[@themadoneplays7842]

Dont. They are overpriced pieces of shit that cant be upgraded and can only play a handful of game. When linux plays more games than MacOS you know its shit. Dont line windows 11? dual boot

[@giglioflex]

Apple makes low quality devices that only look nice on the outside that aren't designed to last or be repaired that just so happen to give you very little for your money and are expensive to boot. I could go on for days listing issues apple device have but Louis Rossman already has that covered as a former Apple repair tech (former because Apple forced anything with integrity out of the business of Apple repair) in a 5 hour and 2 hour video. Yes it's that long because Apple has had that many issues. Literally any other choice is better than Apple. Spending $1,200 on an 8GB macbook is insane in 2024.

[@henrikoldcorn]

@@themadoneplays7842 Your points are true but also for the vast majority of people pretty irrelevant. Very few people actually ever want to upgrade their laptop; they want to run Chrome and Netflix and have the battery last a long time, and that's it.

[@Winnetou17]

@@giglioflex I hate Apple with a passion too. But they don't have low quality devices. They're medium quality, but priced as being high or very high quality. And for a lot of people their OS + ecosystem does actually work.

[@neebuandsocanyou7557]

Apple is anti-consumer, but Macs are the best laptops. Most of the people here just parrot the same non-sense about Macs all the time: tHeY'Re lOw QuAliTy, aNd NoT cUsToMiZaBlE. They're totally fine. Rossmann hates them cause he's a mac repair man and will obviously see more broken macs than working ones. I'm not even sure what people mean by customizable tbh: you can customize Macs as much as windows and they don't come with weird windows ads. You can't beat 18 hours of battery life, a sleep that actually works and a working search. On top of that, they come with a bash terminal rather than power shell. Also they don't commit suicide if you update the kernel randomly. Its a nice usable cinnamon DE and linux-like OS with lots of software compatibility.

[@TaroKamome]

The dev being interviewed makes some VERY good points. Quite a lot of folks buy a laptop in order to do something. Folks assume that if they buy an Apple laptop it will be reasonably built, and will, in general, work. Many folks have little interest in the underlying hardware. ARM, X86, PowerPC, whatever - many folks just want it to work, and run the software they want. My offspring has a modern Apple laptop - she got it because she found modern HP laptops are not that durable (I also have had that experience - my HP laptops seem to be held together with gaffer tape by the time I replace them!) My most recent laptop purchase was an x86 machine - but that was because I wanted to leverage my existing software collection. Next laptop, and I may migrate to newer software, or just run older stuff under emulation, and I may or may not actually care about the underlying architecture. Tbh, the AMOLED screen was the "big" thing for my laptop, not the processor architecture. Better experience while watching films, AND, the brightest laptop screen I have yet owned (which is handy in brighter environments). Fundamentally, I, like my daughter, want to RUN stuff on a laptop, and we are less concerned with the processor architecture. For "spec", I have a "desktop" PC I assembled myself - now THAT is all about spec. But I use my laptop FAR more often - it is just more convenient, uses far less power, and belts out less heat (a factor when the weather is rather warm - such as now!). I guess I am "Mr Average" - a "tech" device for when I want "tech" (Desktop), and a "user" device for when I just want it all to work (laptop) 😀

[@benjaminlynch9958]

I love how Wendell looks at his watch right before the 2:00 mark and then says: it’s now 10 YEARS later.

[@gskiii15217]

So nobody ever got fired for buying IBM used to be a thing... Where will the tipping point be for MS as the go to software for businesses?

[@OsX86H3AvY]

if softbank...ahem...i mean ARM is going to be litigious with their key partners like they seem to be doing with Qualcomm here then maybe these companies should be looking to RISC-V as an architecture...if Intel added some RISC-V cores into their silicon somhow and allow for code from either arch to run on the same OS, o man that'd be something amazing

[@roccociccone597]

I have a feeling that Apple will move to RISC-V or its successor in the coming 10-15 years. They can’t live without processor architecture changes XD

[@david-6110]

In a sense, good thing that Anti-cheat soft are not yet ported : those kind of soft running at kernel level is somehow egregious in itself...

[@renerebe]

Well summarised, thank you for your service!

[@wilfridtaylor]

Main problem with Windows is the business structure they setup at Microsoft. Having so much control from the Bing team means we get all this useless crap that no one wants like ads. While its structured like this we are just going to see bad decisions keep happening.

[@sebastians.8503]

After a lifetime of windows I am ready to bite the bullet later this summer. I am preparing to move to linux mint and leave Windows behind me. Most stuff works in a browser anyways and I hope linux gets all the bits and pieces right, that crop up ever so often.

[@thafluu]

I think this could be a great opportunity for the Linux ecosystem if it manages to provide a good ARM experience in time. It would be so funny if major games would run well on Linux on ARM before they run on Windows on ARM.

[@rainmannoodles]

As an Apple Silicon user, I really hope these do improve. It’s about time for some competition. I really want to see how Linux runs after removing the malware (Windows). 😂

[@DioTheGreatOne]

Installing Windows be like: **Loading Screen** Would you like to create a Microsoft Account? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to use Cortana? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to use Copilot? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to use OneDrive? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to use Edge as your main browser? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to send all your data to us? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to optimize your computer for touchscreen? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to turn on real time location? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Would you like to sell your soul to our Lord and Saviour Bill Gates? Clicks no **Loading Screen** Are you really sure you don't want to create a Microsoft account? Clicks no **Loading Screen for 4 hours** Your computer is ready! We ignored all of your previous inputs and forced all of those useless features on you anyway. Enjoy your brand new Windows Machine! 🥰

[@kimeraevent]

KDE Plasma has some pretty wallpapers.

[@JureRepinc]

Not just wallpapers, But some very cool and interesting and powerful features too. KDE Plasma is easily the best desktop environment today, counting all on all platforms.

[@lohlundgames]

Yup, I really like the new default wallpaper of KDE Plasma 6.0. Its the one i use now :) Unfortunately the PC in the background is running Windows 11 from what i can tell…

[@ruxcooking]

You know what really grinds Wendel's gears...

[@grenskul]

Such a good video. Finally. Everyone things windows 11 is shit. But instead of fixing it Microsoft just went "nah it's the customers who are wrong" and surely switching away from x86 will change their opinion. Instead of just giving us what we want. Offline usage, fixed bugs, stability, no ads or intrusive spying

[@Dracossaint]

Pretty sure people have thought Windows 11 is shit for a long time. The slow adoption rate is a great example of that.

[@Saturn2888]

I never once thought x86 is an issue in Windows, it's the OS itself. ARM is a nice to have.

[@mannyc19]

Brother in law took is back to BB yesterday.

[@sasmitha8446]

Just bought a Microsoft Surface Pro 11. Man this is depressing.

[@kalef1234]

I am looking at the Lenovo Yoga Snapdrgon X Elite and you can get it with a 3K OLED, 64GB RAM 1TB NVMe for $1300.....like the value seems so good but the more I hear about it, the more I am hesitant. BUT I think it's a great start. I really wish Windows on ARM could get to the same state Apple is at.

[@__aceofspades]

Or you could get Zen 4 or Meteor Lake same 3k OLED, 32GB of RAM, 1TB, for $1000 and absolutely no software problems. To me its clear that existing x86 laptops are the better deal, and prices of them will continue to drop as Intel's next gen Lunar Lake and AMD's Zen 5 mobile are right around the corner

[@danielclark6033]

I thoroughly enjoyed your addition of Halo's Jeff Steitzer "Betrayal" :)

[@Lars-ju9pw]

Are we going to see a Level1Linux video with a snapdragon x elite laptop and Linux anytime soon? Please?

[@geraldhenriksen3664]

Not soon. Qualcomm is still working on getting all the relevant stuff into the Linux kernel. They did a blog post about a month or so ago

[@Fractal_32]

I would expect that on Level1Linux although I believe Wendell said he has already purchased a bunch of gear this year for the channel so he may need some extra funding for this experiment.

[@vogonp4287]

I'd be interested in seeing how Linux performs on it, as that could give a better idea of how things stand in terms of performance and stability. Windows has always had problems with ARM.

[@BAD_CONSUMER]

You give them too much benefit of the doubt wendel.

[@supersat]

As far as I can tell, the tl;dr: of the Arm/Qualcomm lawsuit is that Qualcomm acquired Nuvia, another Arm licensee, to make the Arm cores in their next-generation Snapdragon SoCs. However, Nuvia started out targeting the server market (a market Arm wants to break in to) and so they acquired their Arm license at a discount compared to what Qualcomm pays. I suspect Nuvia acquired licenses related to the new Arm Neoverse microarchitectures, with Qualcomm incorporating that into their Snapdragon X Elite SoCs. Arm's position is that the scope of the end product changed for Nuvia's licenses, so Qualcomm now owes Arm more. (Additionally, they may try to argue the licenses are not valid because they aren't "transferrable", even though the entire company was acquired.)

[@benjamin3044]

Wendell, fam, you are legit the furthest thing from a computer janny.

[@XDeadzX]

21:15 "How are you handling security?" "And the answer is like, no." Yeah...

[@LordApophis100]

Microsoft does not have a vision for Windows. They just want to keep it relevant somehow and squeeze some ad revenue from it it seems.

[@szirsp]

I feel like Microsoft is definitely not building Windows for the end user experience, but rather for gathering data and making money that way, and turning the OS into an advertising platform while removing more and more user and developer choice. So there is definitely a problem there. I refuse to accept their EULA that says Microsoft decides what runs on my machine instead of me who paid for the hardware. I don't want to run a botnet for MS. On the other hand I think we are glossing over game anti-cheat too quickly. Why do we want to let many random gaming companies to install kernel level drivers/anti-cheat? The game should work with emulation! Now we are at the point that even single player games that have no business having any anti-cheat sneak in these back-doors. We don't want Microsoft to spy on us, but are we fine gaming companies doing it? Some of these anti-cheat rootkits can be used to read any memory containing private information. Is the future of PC gaming to turn the PC into a console and use a dedicated PC for just running games and use a separate PC to log into your bank account or do any work...

[@SuperFranzs]

If single player games have anti-cheat, it's harder to pirate the DLC and microtransactions for it.

[@doofus9007]

excellent video, documenting the enshittification of MS, also great to remind everyone about sleep I AM SUPER ANGRY ABOUT IT!!

[@aloharay]

So many good points here. Microsoft is designing around corporate needs, not user needs. 47:00 yes, x86 is not the problem.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Companies are so focused on Active Incompetence they're forgetting they're not developing devices for robots to use.

[@JureRepinc]

Yup that Annoying Idiocy has gone way too far. About time the hype bubble bursts before they dehydrate and burn earth with all the resources it uses and pollution it brings.

[@ferdinandkunz4400]

Love how Wendell nails it, calm, knowledgeable and on point