Windows 10X delayed, devices won't arrive until 2021

AppleInsider

Microsoft's initiative to produce Windows 10X has reportedly hit some roadblocks, with a report claiming devices using it won't launch until 2021, with dual-screen devices arriving in 2022.

Microsoft Surface Neo

The plan to try and reinvigorate Windows on tablets, notebooks, and smartphones was first introduced in late 2019, when Microsoft teased the Surface Neo, a tablet that used a pair of nine-inch displays on a 360-degree hinge. At the same time, it suggested a smaller version of the same style of device called the Surface Duo was also on the cards, consisting of a smartphone with two 5.6-inch screens.

While Microsoft initially claimed it was pressing for the two devices to ship by the end of the year, rumors from April 2020 indicated Microsoft wasn't going to be shipping the products in 2020 at all. Now, a report from ZDNet claims Microsoft's software for the project won't even make it to release in 2020.

According to the report, the first Windows 10X-based single-screened devices designed primarily for business use and education is tipped to ship in the spring of 2021. Dual-screen variants are thought to be coming out in early 2022.

Windows 10X is not Windows 10, but a variant codenamed "Lite" or "Santorini" that is more modular in its construction. Designed initially for the Surface Neo, but intended for use on many different devices from a variety of vendors, the operating system sports a simpler interface and various hooks in place to enable dual-screen computing.

The first release of Windows 10X will be more limited in usability, as it won't include support for Win32 applications being run within containers. As an alternative, it is thought support for Universal Windows Platform apps and web apps will be provided initially, though support for Win32 apps may still be provided by taking advantage of Microsoft's Cloud PC virtualization service, albeit in 2022 or later.

To spur development of Windows 10X, the sources claim Microsoft is considering limiting the feature updates for Windows 10 to one update per year, enabling developers to work on both operating systems at the same time. Speculation has Windows 10X feature updates taking place during the first half of each year, while Windows 10 feature changes would be set for the second half.

While the development of Windows 10X, as well as hardware like the ARM-based Surface Neo and Duo, will enable Microsoft to have a chance at competing in the mobile computing space, it does so while having to contend with Apple's products. Along with its existing work with ARM chips in the iPhone and iPad ranges, Apple is also wholesale making a shift away from Intel processors to its self-designed Apple Silicon, a change that is likely to cause massive waves throughout the computing industry.

The development of an ARM-based version of Windows offers some hope to users who take advantage of facilities such as Boot Camp in macOS to run Windows-based apps on their Mac. As Rosetta 2 lacks support for x86 virtualization, Boot Camp simply won't be available on Apple Silicon Macs, leaving consumers needing to hold on to Intel-based Macs for a while longer, to acquire Windows-compatible hardware, wait for an ARM-compatible Windows release, or hope that developers embrace Windows 10X which stand a far better chance of being supported.

mpantone

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

cpsro

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

Xed

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

Windows 10X competes more with Chromebook than it does Macs. Unfortunately for MS they’re having to fight on multiple fronts for both the massive low-end market and the profitable high-end market. Neither of these will be their undoing but it surely doesn’t help their bottom line.

sflocal

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

And how is that?  I doubt Apple has even minimal care about what Microsoft does with Windows.  Office365 already runs under iPadOS/iOS, so it will also then run on MacOS/ARM.  

lkrupp

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

Only in the minds of the  “Mac are worthless without being able to run Windows” crowd. Do you  really think for one second that Apple would wait for Microsoft to produce an Apple Silicon version of Windows?

KITA

AppleInsider said:

Microsoft's initiative to produce the ARM-based Windows 10X has reportedly hit some roadblocks, with a report claiming devices using it won't launch until 2021, with dual-screen devices arriving in 2022.

Microsoft Surface Neo

The plan to try and reinvigorate Windows on tablets, notebooks, and smartphones was first introduced in late 2019, when Microsoft teased the Surface Neo, a tablet that used a pair of nine-inch displays on a 360-degree hinge. At the same time, it suggested a smaller version of the same style of device called the Surface Duo was also on the cards, consisting of a smartphone with two 5.6-inch screens.

While Microsoft initially claimed it was pressing for the two devices to ship by the end of the year, rumors from April 2020 indicated Microsoft wasn't going to be shipping the products in 2020 at all. Now, a report from ZDNet claims Microsoft's software for the project won't even make it to release in 2020.

According to the report, the first Windows 10X-based single-screened devices designed primarily for business use and education is tipped to ship in the spring of 2021. Dual-screen variants are thought to be coming out in early 2022.

Windows 10X is not Windows 10, but a variant codenamed "Lite" or "Santorini" that is more modular in its construction. Designed initially for the Surface Neo, but intended for use on many different devices from a variety of vendors, the operating system sports a simpler interface and various hooks in place to enable dual-screen computing.

The first release of Windows 10X will be more limited in usability, as it won't include support for Win32 applications being run within containers. As an alternative, it is thought support for Universal Windows Platform apps and web apps will be provided initially, though support for Win32 apps may still be provided by taking advantage of Microsoft's Cloud PC virtualization service, albeit in 2022 or later.

To spur development of Windows 10X, the sources claim Microsoft is considering limiting the feature updates for Windows 10 to one update per year, enabling developers to work on both operating systems at the same time. Speculation has Windows 10X feature updates taking place during the first half of each year, while Windows 10 feature changes would be set for the second half.

While the development of Windows 10X, as well as hardware like the ARM-based Surface Neo and Duo, will enable Microsoft to have a chance at competing in the mobile computing space, it does so while having to contend with Apple's products. Along with its existing work with ARM chips in the iPhone and iPad ranges, Apple is also wholesale making a shift away from Intel processors to its self-designed Apple Silicon, a change that is likely to cause massive waves throughout the computing industry.

The development of an ARM-based version of Windows offers some hope to users who take advantage of facilities such as Boot Camp in macOS to run Windows-based apps on their Mac. As Rosetta 2 lacks support for x86 virtualization, Boot Camp simply won't be available on Apple Silicon Macs, leaving consumers needing to hold on to Intel-based Macs for a while longer, to acquire Windows-compatible hardware, wait for an ARM-compatible Windows release, or hope that developers embrace Windows 10X which stand a far better chance of being supported.

Windows 10X is NOT Windows on ARM.

Surface Neo uses Intel Lakefield, not an ARM processor.

Surface Duo runs Android, not Windows.

Surface Pro X runs Windows on ARM and has been on the market since late 2019. 

Rayz2016

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

You're going to have to explain the logic behind that one. How will this slow/undermine Apple's migration?

I think what's happening here is the same thing that happened with Google when Apple announced the first iPhone: Microsoft watched the keynote and decided that what they were planning to release was not going to cut the mustard.

Rayz2016

lkrupp said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

Only in the minds of the  “Mac are worthless without being able to run Windows” crowd. Do you  really think for one second that Apple would wait for Microsoft to produce an Apple Silicon version of Windows?

Wait. hang on … that's what he was thinking? That Apple would delay the plan just so they could get Windows running?

If that's the case then he's missed one of the key points behind all of this: Apple is done waiting for its 'partners' to get their sh*t together.

lkrupp

Rayz2016 said:

lkrupp said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

Only in the minds of the  “Mac are worthless without being able to run Windows” crowd. Do you  really think for one second that Apple would wait for Microsoft to produce an Apple Silicon version of Windows?

Wait. hang on … that's what he was thinking? That Apple would delay the plan just so they could get Windows running?

If that's the case then he's missed one of the key points behind all of this: Apple is done waiting for its 'partners' to get their sh*t together.

Well, since that user is a resident troll, that’s exactly what I think he was alluding to.

dewme

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

I don’t feel that there is any connection whatsoever between Microsoft’s ARM strategy and Apple’s ARM strategy. 

Apple is in a far better position than Microsoft when it comes to figuring out how to exploit ARM to its strategic advantage, most notably in the mass deployment of several generations of high performance iOS and iPadOS computers that constantly demonstrate increasing performance and greater power efficiency year over year. 

Speaking of ARM, I’m very impressed by the performance and usability of 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 beta) on Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer (8GB). There’s a pretty wide swath of people whose entire set of computing needs could be met with a $50 computer main board, especially if they grab the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from their existing claptrap laden Windows setup. 

If a $50 ARM based main board can deliver solid basic computing needs and be so pleasant to use, just imagine what Apple will be able to do with its massive engineering staff, resources, and experience in designing world class ARM processors. 

The other advantage that I believe Apple has over Microsoft is that they’ve done a major architectural change before. I’d imagine they had to refactor and “genericize” a fair amount of code in the process. Microsoft has been camping on x86 for so long that I’d bet that the level of cruft in their code base is quite thick and gooey. 

linuxplatform

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

That guess is wrong. This may come as a shock to you but Microsoft is the dominant force in PC computing. They are not in a position to where they have to respond to anything that Apple does until Apple's marketshare like triples. It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings ... let me state this again. Microsoft has 90% of the market. Because of software compatibility and other issues, they have no reason to believe that ARM-based Macs are going to lead to this massive shift. Apple designing its own desktop chips is a huge deal to the Apple fandom but outside of that nobody cares, just like most people really don't care about Intel vs AMD on the Intel side.

linuxplatform

Xed said:

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

Windows 10X competes more with Chromebook than it does Macs. Unfortunately for MS they’re having to fight on multiple fronts for both the massive low-end market and the profitable high-end market. Neither of these will be their undoing but it surely doesn’t help their bottom line.

Both the low end market and the high end market are profitable. Selling 10 items at a $1 margin is the same as selling 1 item at a $10 margin. Especially since you can also sell services to those 10. Also for Microsoft the "high end market" is servers and cloud where Apple doesn't compete at all. And please realize that Microsoft sells PLENTY of Office 365 licenses to Chromebook and MacBook owners. So either way they are fine. The Windows desktop market could completely dry up for them and they would still be a Fortune 25 company. In other words, this isn't the Gates/Ballmer Microsoft. 

linuxplatform

dewme said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

I don’t feel that there is any connection whatsoever between Microsoft’s ARM strategy and Apple’s ARM strategy. 

Apple is in a far better position than Microsoft when it comes to figuring out how to exploit ARM to its strategic advantage, most notably in the mass deployment of several generations of high performance iOS and iPadOS computers that constantly demonstrate increasing performance and greater power efficiency year over year. 

Speaking of ARM, I’m very impressed by the performance and usability of 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 beta) on Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer (8GB). There’s a pretty wide swath of people whose entire set of computing needs could be met with a $50 computer main board, especially if they grab the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from their existing claptrap laden Windows setup. 

If a $50 ARM based main board can deliver solid basic computing needs and be so pleasant to use, just imagine what Apple will be able to do with its massive engineering staff, resources, and experience in designing world class ARM processors. 

The other advantage that I believe Apple has over Microsoft is that they’ve done a major architectural change before. I’d imagine they had to refactor and “genericize” a fair amount of code in the process. Microsoft has been camping on x86 for so long that I’d bet that the level of cruft in their code base is quite thick and gooey. 

The only "major advantage" that Apple has over Microsoft is that the former is a hardware company and the latter is a software company. Being a hardware company Apple can just say "here's our hardware - which we will support 100% for the next 7-10 years - and you run whatever you want on it." But being a software company Microsoft needs to provide backwards compatibility to a huge customer base that is still running old software. It isn't that Microsoft doesn't have the technical capability to ditch x86. They could do it yesterday. It is that they can't afford to lose the customers that it would cost them were they to ditch support for the legacy code. Because if Microsoft stops supporting their legacy code, what will they need Microsoft for anyway? Why bother with Windows? Linux does the exact same thing and is 100% free. Why bother with SQL Server? MariaDB and PostgreSQL ... again free. 

linuxplatform

All right people. This is what is going on. Microsoft has an initiative going on that might finally work. Shocker ... it is based on what they have learned from what Google does with ChromeOS and is going to do with Fuschia.

ChromeOS: takes the stripped-down OS that was minimal Linux plus graphics libraries and the Chrome browser - able to run well on 2 GB of RAM and a 15 year old Intel dual core processor - and added Android and Debian(esque) Linux containers to significantly extend the functionality. Fuchsia: is going to be a completely modular micro-kernel based OS (all well known OSes today run monolithic kernels).

So, Microsoft created Windows CoreOS. To Windows CoreOS they can add modules to allow it to run what a device needs, or leave those modules out if the device doesn't need it. Windows 10, then is just a flavor of Windows CoreOS. Windows for XBox ... another flavor. Windows 10X ... another flavor.

Legacy Windows and the applications that their customers need that is written in it and will never be updated is Microsoft's biggest hurdle right now. CoreOS deals with that hurdle by leaving legacy Windows out of it. So you will only buy legacy Windows support if you need it. If you don't, you can buy another flavor of Windows and face the future instead of fighting it. 

So Windows 10X is Windows 10 without the legacy applications. Can it run on ARM? Yes. Can it run on Intel? Of course. Why not? So can Linux. So can ChromeOS. So can Android. A software company would be crazy to limit itself to a single architecture in this era. But here is the deal: Windows 10X on ARM would not need to run in emulation because there would be no x86 apps to emulate. It would just run UWP apps as well as Linux apps via WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). Yes, utilizing Linux to make up for the "app gap" on your native OS is something that Microsoft learned from Google. So again, if you need your old apps, you can buy an Intel or AMD-based machine and run the version of Wndows that has legacy support. If you don't, you can buy the Intel or AMD-based machine ... or you can buy a Qualcomm ARM one. 

Also, Google is working on the legacy support on ARM too. WIndows CoreOS supports containers - or the Windows equivalent - so they are going to try to run x86 as a layer inside a container - similar to what Google does with Android and Linux - on ARM devices. If they can get it to work, that should give much better performance than emulation. At the very worst, only apps x86 apps will need to be emulated. Which isn't a problem since legacy apps - written back when 2 GB of RAM seemed like science fiction - won't use much resources anyway. So long as emulating the containerized/sandboxed/virtualized x86 apps doesn't slow down the UWP apps and everything else - which is the case with Windows on ARM currently - then they are fine.

Microsoft is delaying it because they haven't worked out all the issues yet. See, Microsoft isn't Google. Their products get used by serious enterprise customers. So they wouldn't be able to get away with having a major feature in beta for two years, as Google has done with Linux on ChromeOS (and for that matter they are still resolving issues with Android apps on ChromeOS and that's been out for 4 ... and with there are even some issues with tablet/touchscreen support which ChromeOS has allegedly ahd for 6). 

And no, this isn't something that Microsoft has undertaken because of a fear of macOS. (If anything it would have been because of a fear of Google.) Instead, looking for ways to modularize operating systems has been the rage with operating systems ever since containers took off in 2013. Put it this way: Google's original plan for Android apps on ChromeOS? Install them in the browser the way you do extensions. (No, seriously. They called it ARC Welder with ARC standing for Android Runtime for Chrome. So people with Chrome browsers on their Windows and macOS desktops would have had full Android apps embedded in them. Which isn't as big a deal as you think ... most mobile apps are no bigger than browser plugins, plus the average person has like gigabytes of data in their browser cache files - more than the entire 16-32 GB storage space of a mobile device - anyway). But then Docker and their containers blew up and they were like "yeah we'll do that instead." Which led to them doing a bit more digging until they rediscovered microkernels - an idea that has been around since the late 60s but has never taken off in a commercial OS - for Fuschia.

Windows CoreOS isn't a microkernel OS, but it conceptually implements the same idea: start with a core small enough to power an IoT sensor and scale up to a massive server that provides SaaS to thousands of simultaneous customers through the cloud. Curiously Google created - and Microsoft quickly adopted - the microkernel concept for APPLICATIONS with node.js but are now drilling down to do the same with the operating systems itself.

So if you think that Microsoft - and for that matter Google - are scrambling to keep up with ARM-based Macs, you need to pay more to the distinction between software and hardware companies. Instead, Microsoft and Google - as well as Red Hat, Ubuntu etc. - are working on next generation operating systems (even if they are based on an old idea) where things like CPU architecture and instruction sets flat out aren't going to matter (much). 

canukstorm

linuxplatform said:

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

That guess is wrong. This may come as a shock to you but Microsoft is the dominant force in PC computing. They are not in a position to where they have to respond to anything that Apple does until Apple's marketshare like triples. It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings ... let me state this again. Microsoft has 90% of the market. Because of software compatibility and other issues, they have no reason to believe that ARM-based Macs are going to lead to this massive shift. Apple designing its own desktop chips is a huge deal to the Apple fandom but outside of that nobody cares, just like most people really don't care about Intel vs AMD on the Intel side.

MS is the dominant force in enterprise computing, not the consumer market.

canukstorm

linuxplatform said:

dewme said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

I don’t feel that there is any connection whatsoever between Microsoft’s ARM strategy and Apple’s ARM strategy. 

Apple is in a far better position than Microsoft when it comes to figuring out how to exploit ARM to its strategic advantage, most notably in the mass deployment of several generations of high performance iOS and iPadOS computers that constantly demonstrate increasing performance and greater power efficiency year over year. 

Speaking of ARM, I’m very impressed by the performance and usability of 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 beta) on Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer (8GB). There’s a pretty wide swath of people whose entire set of computing needs could be met with a $50 computer main board, especially if they grab the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from their existing claptrap laden Windows setup. 

If a $50 ARM based main board can deliver solid basic computing needs and be so pleasant to use, just imagine what Apple will be able to do with its massive engineering staff, resources, and experience in designing world class ARM processors. 

The other advantage that I believe Apple has over Microsoft is that they’ve done a major architectural change before. I’d imagine they had to refactor and “genericize” a fair amount of code in the process. Microsoft has been camping on x86 for so long that I’d bet that the level of cruft in their code base is quite thick and gooey. 

The only "major advantage" that Apple has over Microsoft is that the former is a hardware company and the latter is a software company. Being a hardware company Apple can just say "here's our hardware - which we will support 100% for the next 7-10 years - and you run whatever you want on it." But being a software company Microsoft needs to provide backwards compatibility to a huge customer base that is still running old software. It isn't that Microsoft doesn't have the technical capability to ditch x86. They could do it yesterday. It is that they can't afford to lose the customers that it would cost them were they to ditch support for the legacy code. Because if Microsoft stops supporting their legacy code, what will they need Microsoft for anyway? Why bother with Windows? Linux does the exact same thing and is 100% free. Why bother with SQL Server? MariaDB and PostgreSQL ... again free. 

Steve Jobs will disagree with you on that.  From the mouth of the founder himself.  And no one, then or now, knew Apple better than he did. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEeyaAUCyZs

canukstorm

linuxplatform said:

dewme said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

I don’t feel that there is any connection whatsoever between Microsoft’s ARM strategy and Apple’s ARM strategy. 

Apple is in a far better position than Microsoft when it comes to figuring out how to exploit ARM to its strategic advantage, most notably in the mass deployment of several generations of high performance iOS and iPadOS computers that constantly demonstrate increasing performance and greater power efficiency year over year. 

Speaking of ARM, I’m very impressed by the performance and usability of 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 beta) on Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer (8GB). There’s a pretty wide swath of people whose entire set of computing needs could be met with a $50 computer main board, especially if they grab the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from their existing claptrap laden Windows setup. 

If a $50 ARM based main board can deliver solid basic computing needs and be so pleasant to use, just imagine what Apple will be able to do with its massive engineering staff, resources, and experience in designing world class ARM processors. 

The other advantage that I believe Apple has over Microsoft is that they’ve done a major architectural change before. I’d imagine they had to refactor and “genericize” a fair amount of code in the process. Microsoft has been camping on x86 for so long that I’d bet that the level of cruft in their code base is quite thick and gooey. 

The only "major advantage" that Apple has over Microsoft is that the former is a hardware company and the latter is a software company. Being a hardware company Apple can just say "here's our hardware - which we will support 100% for the next 7-10 years - and you run whatever you want on it." But being a software company Microsoft needs to provide backwards compatibility to a huge customer base that is still running old software. It isn't that Microsoft doesn't have the technical capability to ditch x86. They could do it yesterday. It is that they can't afford to lose the customers that it would cost them were they to ditch support for the legacy code. Because if Microsoft stops supporting their legacy code, what will they need Microsoft for anyway? Why bother with Windows? Linux does the exact same thing and is 100% free. Why bother with SQL Server? MariaDB and PostgreSQL ... again free. 

You also know who else has a huge customer base? Apple.  There are 1 billion Apple users that use iPhones or a combination of iPhone / iPad and yet it has no issue with respective to being aggressive when it comes to cutting off backward compatibility.  And it does it relatively smoothly.

Rayz2016

linuxplatform said:

Xed said:

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

Windows 10X competes more with Chromebook than it does Macs. Unfortunately for MS they’re having to fight on multiple fronts for both the massive low-end market and the profitable high-end market. Neither of these will be their undoing but it surely doesn’t help their bottom line.

Both the low end market and the high end market are profitable. Selling 10 items at a $1 margin is the same as selling 1 item at a $10 margin. Especially since you can also sell services to those 10. Also for Microsoft the "high end market" is servers and cloud where Apple doesn't compete at all. And please realize that Microsoft sells PLENTY of Office 365 licenses to Chromebook and MacBook owners. So either way they are fine. The Windows desktop market could completely dry up for them and they would still be a Fortune 25 company. In other words, this isn't the Gates/Ballmer Microsoft. 

linuxplatform said:

Xed said:

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

Windows 10X competes more with Chromebook than it does Macs. Unfortunately for MS they’re having to fight on multiple fronts for both the massive low-end market and the profitable high-end market. Neither of these will be their undoing but it surely doesn’t help their bottom line.

Both the low end market and the high end market are profitable. Selling 10 items at a $1 margin is the same as selling 1 item at a $10 margin. Especially since you can also sell services to those 10. 

Nope. 

The people who buy $1 devices are not willing to pay for services, or software: they’ll stick with the free tier. That’s why Apple sticks with the higher end of the market, and why developers tend to focus on iOS even though there are less iOS users than Android users. 

Secondly, there are other factors other than price which steers people towards a particular product, especially when you can buy that product with an interest-free loan. 

Rayz2016

linuxplatform said:

All right people. This is what is going on.

Unfortunately, after a solid month demonstrating your ignorance, you don’t have the credibility to open with that.

dewme

linuxplatform said:

dewme said:

cpsro said:

An intentional delay of 10X might be a strategy to slow/undermine Apple's migration to ARM.

I don’t feel that there is any connection whatsoever between Microsoft’s ARM strategy and Apple’s ARM strategy. 

Apple is in a far better position than Microsoft when it comes to figuring out how to exploit ARM to its strategic advantage, most notably in the mass deployment of several generations of high performance iOS and iPadOS computers that constantly demonstrate increasing performance and greater power efficiency year over year. 

Speaking of ARM, I’m very impressed by the performance and usability of 64-bit Linux (Ubuntu Mate 20.04 beta) on Raspberry Pi 4 single board computer (8GB). There’s a pretty wide swath of people whose entire set of computing needs could be met with a $50 computer main board, especially if they grab the monitor, keyboard, and mouse from their existing claptrap laden Windows setup. 

If a $50 ARM based main board can deliver solid basic computing needs and be so pleasant to use, just imagine what Apple will be able to do with its massive engineering staff, resources, and experience in designing world class ARM processors. 

The other advantage that I believe Apple has over Microsoft is that they’ve done a major architectural change before. I’d imagine they had to refactor and “genericize” a fair amount of code in the process. Microsoft has been camping on x86 for so long that I’d bet that the level of cruft in their code base is quite thick and gooey. 

The only "major advantage" that Apple has over Microsoft is that the former is a hardware company and the latter is a software company. Being a hardware company Apple can just say "here's our hardware - which we will support 100% for the next 7-10 years - and you run whatever you want on it." But being a software company Microsoft needs to provide backwards compatibility to a huge customer base that is still running old software. It isn't that Microsoft doesn't have the technical capability to ditch x86. They could do it yesterday. It is that they can't afford to lose the customers that it would cost them were they to ditch support for the legacy code. Because if Microsoft stops supporting their legacy code, what will they need Microsoft for anyway? Why bother with Windows? Linux does the exact same thing and is 100% free. Why bother with SQL Server? MariaDB and PostgreSQL ... again free. 

Way too simplistic and narrow minded. I totally disagree with your assertion that Apple is a hardware company. Apple is a system company, supplying hardware, software, and services in an integrated product that lives within a thriving ecosystem they manage at all levels. To imply that Apple is just a hardware company, e.g.. like a Dell or Acer, is absurd. Microsoft is no longer just a software company either. In addition to getting themselves heavily invested in systems from Surface to XBox, they are a tremendous player in services like Azure, cloud storage,  and Microsoft Office online services.