Converting to ARM Tepidly or Boldly

PC Life After Apple Silicon. by Jean-Louis Gassée | by Jean-Louis Gassée | Nov, 2020 | Monday Note

Over the years, Microsoft’s adoption of ARM has been tentative.Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 running on 32-bit ARM hardware introduced in 2011, didn’t “take”. In 2016, Microsoft announced a partnership with Qualcomm to run 32-bit Windows software on ARM architecture hardware. In 2019, Microsoft shipped the Surface Pro X, followed by a 2020 version that promised to finally run native 64-bit Windows software.

The difference in how Apple and Microsoft have moved to ARM-based machines could not be more different. Apple has clearly made more progress and with much better results in one year than Microsoft has in the past 8.