Live data from Hacker News

Apple Unveils M2

apple.com

51–60 of 782 posts

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#51
post #2

I can't help but wonder what Microsoft's answer to Apple Silicon will be going forward. They don't really make hardware, but selling Windows laptops gets harder and harder the further Apple gets ahead. It seems inevitable that there needs to be some ARM-based Windows laptops to compete in perf/watt to the M1/M2 but I don't know what company can provide an ARM chip that competes with Apple at this point.

Simply getting functional Windows on ARM would be helpful. The last surface ARM attempt went poorly.

Windows on ARM is basically completely different at this point, it's perfectly functional; they have x64 emulation as of recently and it just uses normal UEFI for booting, just like most other normal laptops. Honestly the emulation is pretty good even if it's not as fast as Rosetta2, and they even now have a new 64-bit Windows ABI and calling convention that allows developers to incrementally port their applications to AArch64 on an individual DLL-by-DLL basis (so the emulator can handle transitioning between an x64 app and an AArch64 DLL, or the other way around.) They aren't just doing nothing.

The biggest problem is the hardware: you're basically just buying a poorly performing laptop with probably lagging Linux support if you get tired of Windows, and you could just buy an M1 Macbook and get superior performance and battery life for the same cost, and you can even just run Windows on that using Parallels and still get good performance. The AArch64 laptop market is mostly just Qualcomm processors and Apple, and if you actually care about the performance profile, there's basically no comparison between the two right now with current offerings; the Mac is the winner, and you can even run Linux on it.

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#53
post #2

I can't help but wonder what Microsoft's answer to Apple Silicon will be going forward. They don't really make hardware, but selling Windows laptops gets harder and harder the further Apple gets ahead. It seems inevitable that there needs to be some ARM-based Windows laptops to compete in perf/watt to the M1/M2 but I don't know what company can provide an ARM chip that competes with Apple at this point.

Quick Google search indicates Windows still holds a 74% market share. Apple has a long way to go before they are really crunching on Windows in the general market. Hardware superiority does not guarantee success, for many people what they are already comfortable with is fine.

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#54
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have faith in MS software development - I believe they can get windows on ARM working - but as far as I can tell, all non-Apple ARM hardware implementations are significantly lacking in the laptop space. There are vendors making decent phone chips, but I've seen no indication of the ability to scale up to a laptop in the way Apple Silicon has.

Apple’s key advantage here, though, is one Microsoft would never voluntarily embrace: abandoning x86-64 in favor of ARM. Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind. Microsoft would never do that, so Windows on ARM will presumably languish in application support indefinitely.

x86 is dead, full of security issues and is energy-intensive

smartphones, even embedded devices, including cars nowadays are all on ARM, servers are building momentum too, not because it is shiny, but because of tangible gains on many aspects

> Apple is willing to force its partners and customers to make the switch or get left behind.

That's not true at all, the chip doesn't matter when you sell software, hardware and services

It's like changing the internals of your Camera to provide a better experience and quality, why do you care about it? in fact you don't! You want a better Camera, company will pick what's best for the better Camera

Apple provide a transparent translation layer to accompany the transition with Rosetta, it's effortless for the users

That's the problem of Microsoft, they are incapable of designing proper UX solution to accompany their customers to better solutions, instead they force their customers to be stuck with inefficient solution, Microsoft don't even care nor dare cleaning their OS to provide up-to-date solutions

It's a bloaty mess of 5 generations of different UI/UX

Choosing Windows prevents you from having a seamless experience from your Watch -> Phone -> Desktop -> Car

That's what Microsoft fanboy don't understand, they protect their poor decision making, their inefficient products and ultimately, it leads to the death of their products

Microsoft Windows consumers are stuck

That's why Windows Mobile, Metro, UWP, WinUI all flopped, the platform is no longer up to date

And it's not just a chip issue, it's the whole ecosystem and culture, always too late to make changes, and here, incapable of providing a transition path, hence they are failing behind apple

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a company full of bureaucrats who don't care about their product. Apple is going to take over the computing world here shortly.

Please talk to anyone outside of the start-up/tech world and ask them about the technology they use. A majority don't give a toss about M1 or M2 or ARM vs. x86 or anything else that seems to get so many in the tech world so excited. They care about Excel, they care about backwards compatibility, they care about centralized management. Apple _may_ take over the consumer space but this will be more due to the shift fro…

I agree that the world basically runs on excel, but given that, the world cares about excel’s performance. Especially as spreadsheets are only getting bigger.

And then there’s this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-office-for-ma...

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#58
post #30
post #2

I can't help but wonder what Microsoft's answer to Apple Silicon will be going forward. They don't really make hardware, but selling Windows laptops gets harder and harder the further Apple gets ahead. It seems inevitable that there needs to be some ARM-based Windows laptops to compete in perf/watt to the M1/M2 but I don't know what company can provide an ARM chip that competes with Apple at this point.

The theory some people have is that Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia last year was their attempt to get their hands on some desktop-class CPU cores (Nuvia was originally aiming for the server market), and Microsoft has largely partnered with Qualcomm on all their previous offerings. So that might be their saving grace if they can actually materialize something in the next year. But I agree. Apple is pulling ahead a de…

Nuvia by all accounts has an excellent team. IIRC, Qualcomm has redirected their efforts to laptop SoCs.

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#59
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. They're busy turning off their users with dark patterns, terrible UX, ads and spam in the OS, and endless amounts of unnecessary telemetry.

It's a false dichotomy. You could say the same about either company. Those are the inevitable consequences of proprietary software and vendor lock-in (my original comment was some rhetorical question, I edited it to be more direct and less passive-agressive)

I'm not even sure which company they're accusing of having those faults.

Re: Apple Unveils M2

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a company full of bureaucrats who don't care about their product. Apple is going to take over the computing world here shortly.

Please talk to anyone outside of the start-up/tech world and ask them about the technology they use. A majority don't give a toss about M1 or M2 or ARM vs. x86 or anything else that seems to get so many in the tech world so excited. They care about Excel, they care about backwards compatibility, they care about centralized management. Apple _may_ take over the consumer space but this will be more due to the shift fro…

I agree about the CPU architecture, people don't give a shit.

However, I think MS/Intel will start losing also corporate space. With the staffing problems, companies are looking for ways to score cheap points, and I'm starting to see "free choice of a laptop, including MacBook" as one of the benefits even in some big corps.

Post reply on HN