Ah yes, the Microsoft NUC.
You'd think the actual NUC would be the ultimate perfect WinTel machine—I mean, it's right there in the name!-but I can't even get the Windows installer to boot my NUC.
Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
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Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#152800$ in Canada, at that price point it’s impossible to justify buying it instead of an M1 Mac Mini for 100$ more as a general use machine, especially given the sorry state of Windows-ARM.
Given it’s a dev kit companies won’t care about cost, but I can’t see many being sold to independent/small developers, the excitement just isn’t there.
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#153And here's the difference between Microsoft and Apple: When Apple switches to ARM, people believe them. When Microsoft switches to arm, people ignore them. Why? Because Microsoft only ever half-asses such changes (see the terrible SOC in this).
They have no better choice. Name me, today, a desktop class ARM SoC that isn't made by Apple and represents the median performance band of the class.
Fundamentally, ARM Holdings is what Antitrust legislation was supposed to break down. They own the "ARM" name and control who can license the ARM IP and most importantly, how.
Ampere, the folks behind a lot of ARM servers, are by contract barred from getting into the market of making ARM chips for phones, desktops, or otherwise. That's the form of their license: Server-grade 96-core behemoths running at 3+Ghz and with the thermal output of a small space heater.
ARM holdings sets all sorts of weird restrictions and forces market segmentation to make sure that nobody "Accidentally" makes something that they don't immediately approve of. Qualcomm is basically locked into making phone SoCs for all eternity until they renegotiate their license with ARM holdings. They're in a shit situation because they have competition all over the place (Allwinner, Rockchip, a legacy Intel series, NXP, and Samsung to name a few), letting ARMHoldings bully them into not making something that rocks the boat too hard.
Apple pulled a massive show of force in making ARM license them desktop grade chips. You see, Apple has been a license holder for ARM for a bit now (with the Ax series chips) and makes up, ballpark, 15% of worldwide phones and now >50% of US phones. Apple had already idly said "we could... you know, not use an integrated solution" when they fiddled with Intel's radio baseband.
For ARM to try and sue Apple for breach of contract for developing the Mx series of desktop class ARM processors and get away with it, they'd be putting their market share dominance in four different major markets at risk. Qualcomm can't do that.
So that leaves Microsoft, who does not want to get into the processor fabrication business and who is still reeling over the antitrust lawsuit 20 years ago (which, I'll point out, was mostly over a shared text mangling library, for what it's worth) out in the dust looking for options, and the option they get is "Whatever Qualcomm will ship them."
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I'd argue that Microsoft entering the mobile OS market is worse than having a duopoly We need something. I’ve lost all faith in the hardware direction of iPhone. The 14 Pro (let alone Pro Max) is an absurd monstrosity. And Google clearly has no interest in innovation beyond copying Apple.
How do you mean? Im curious as to your thoughts
>How do you mean? Im curious as to your thoughts
They've lost any sense of maintaining a cohesive design, or keeping things sleek and convenient. Performance has plateaued to a level of diminishing returns, so the only way they can get people to buy a new phone every year since iPhone 7 is to say "hey we put a bigger camera on it".
Product ran free with that mandate, and now we have this abomination: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/trevor-raab-ipho...
I have this recurring fantasy of an alternate history timeline where Steve Jobs never died, and when an engineer brought him the first iPhone 7 prototype, he held it in his hand, flipped it over, felt the camera bump, and said "You're fired. Get rid of the bump". I just refuse to believe he would have allowed this to happen, and I refuse to believe that we can't have good cameras without bumps.
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#155The difference here is that the M1 in the M1 mac mini is faster than Apple's phone SoC (the A16). The Qualcomm 8cx gen 3 (what a terrible name) in this machine is NOT faster than even Qualcomm's phone SoC (the 8 gen 1), let alone Apple's phone SoC. It's absurd to be selling a desktop PC that's weaker than a phone.
It's a chicken or the egg dilemma. Non-Apple ARM is too slow, so nobody wants Windows ARM, and nobody wants Windows ARM, so nobody is seriously working on consumer-targeted ARM. It will probably fail because Microsoft is generally bad at managing and marketing their hardware projects and coordinating with manufacturers and retail partners. Also, yeah, the pricing and performance is abysmal. But there is some sense to…
> Microsoft is generally bad at managing and marketing their hardware projects and coordinating with manufacturers and retail partners
X-Box would beg to differ since 2002.
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#156I want to install Linux on one of these and use it as a low power consumption home server.
I don't know why you would buy one, even if it were available, unless power-efficiency was a crucial component for a server. Can you imagine what you could get, on eBay, in a small form factor, for $600? I made off with a i3-8100T (about 3/4s as powerful, 35W TDP), with 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD in an ultra-small-form-factor case for less than $150. For $600, it makes absolutely no sense against anything used. Let…
Imagine for a second there are other countries in the world.
Now let's say in Europe, just one of them was called "The United Kingdom", where after a recent (temporary) energy price cap, electricity prices rose to _only_ 36p/kWh (41 cents US at current rates), and further rise are expected, and the cap had an end, bringing us potentially to double the current uni rate, then do the maths again and see why it might be a "crucial" component for many.
Running old, cheap hardware with high power usage has been impractical here and many other parts of the world for quite some time and that was before recent disastrous rises.
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#157Maybe I am missing the point, but why wouldn't you rather buy a NUC instead of this slow box? I get it MS wants to be like Apple, meticulously copying anything that pops up there, but their brand is associated with different "experiences" and their main value lies in backwards compatibility and open hardware ecosystem.
I doubt this is going to feel slow in actual use. You've got 8 big arm cores with a lot of memory, fast storage, and active cooling.
Having worked with Windows on ARM in the past, I _hope_ you're right. But my experience has been that a ton of code is still going through the x86 emulation layer, which IMO is woefully lacking in performance, particularly compared to Apple's Rosetta 2 (which is a magical marvel of engineering).
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#158Why would anyone buy that before Windows users are actually using ARM?
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a list of things that are worse with 11? I had it pushed on one of my less frequently used devices and so far all that has been annoying has been the Explorer context menu which hides "less used" items (some of which I frequently need, of course) behind a "More" entry.
For me personally - Taskbar cannot be pinned to the side on my widescreen monitors - Items on taskbar cannot be un-grouped - Cannot show text on taskbar - News/weather widget is awful, full of clickbait news and tiny Weather widget, which is vastly inferior to having a live tile that opens to a full screen weather app - Reduced start menu customization (live tiles / grid are replaced with folders that add an extra cl…
> - Items on taskbar cannot be un-grouped
Oh my god, so much this one. It's driving me insane. I keep hoping that the next round of Start menu "improvements" bring it back, but I keep getting disappointed.
Re: Available Today: Windows Dev Kit 2023 a.k.a. Project Volterra
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> I'd argue that Microsoft entering the mobile OS market is worse than having a duopoly Would please you elaborate your argument? Personally, I think having more choices would be better. The Apple vs. Google duopoly is limiting for consumers and developers. Would you rather have an expensive device that you barely control or a cheaper device that spies on you? More choices and competition, please.
So what exactly are “consumers” clamoring for that are not currently being delivered?
>> So what exactly are “consumers” clamoring for that are not currently being delivered?
Until other choices are available, people tend to accept the default or keep on doing what was done in the past.
There is a segment of consumers that would like choices beyond Apple and Google mobile operating systems:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2019/jul/04/c...
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/smartphones-5-alternativ...
https://www.pcmag.com/picks/break-away-from-android-ios-7-fr...
Personally, I would like to see more "convergence" devices that let the little computer I carry around with me be anything I want it to be: a programmable general purpose computer, a streaming media server, or whatever else I want.
There are some projects that offer such functionality, but most require expert knowledge to setup or are not very widely-adopted or not very mature:
https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
Walled gardens are not where innovation happens because the gardeners uproot whatever does not meet their vision.