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.

GeorgeBMac said:

crowley said:

linuxplatform said:

fastasleep said:

linuxplatform said:

Intel is trash and Apple Silicon Macs are going to be better in every way.

But ... go ahead and buy Intel Macs anyway because we don't want to see Mac sales nosedive.

Yeah ... sorry, no.

[ blah blah ]

So yeah, if I were a Mac guy I would definitely wait. Yes, the Intel MacBooks may be cheaper because of people waiting, but lesser expensive tech with an uncertain support future is what Windows and Android people buy, right?

You seem to have some fairly serious reading comprehension problems.

The ways in which Apple Silicon Macs' will have advantages for Apple over Intel Macs has been pretty clearly spelled out at WWDC. It's silly to assume this is not going to be the case without any evidence to the contrary. It's increasingly clear you haven't spent any time watching any of the videos that explain all of this. They're freely available, you know.

The arguments for buying an Intel Mac right now were pretty clearly not anything to do with preventing sales from nosediving. 

Gotta take a position and stick to it.

Yes, you seemingly do.

Yeah ... I am not going to adopt a position just because Apple - who has a financial interest in selling as many Macs as possible - and Apple fans/fan sites tell me to. I like to make my own decisions. One of the reason why I don't buy tech from a single company/platform in the first place. I have macOS, iOS, ChromeOS, Android, Ubuntu and Windows all running right now doing various things.

Here's the reality: in 2 years, Apple is going to stop selling Intel-based Macs. When that time comes, Apple's position will be that Apple Silicon is the best thing ever to happen in the history of computing and that Intel CPUs are the equivalent of fossil fuels. Intel-based Macs will be second-class citizens to be derided, mocked and laughed at. Yes, macOS updates will still arrive for Intel-based Macs but the best efforts with Apple's legendary full stack ownership optimizations are going to go to Apple Silicon. Intel-based Macs are going to get the "well I guess we have to create an Android port of our iOS app eventually" treatment.

It would be one thing if you had to wait 2 years for the Apple Silicon Macs. But you don't. Instead Apple Silicon Macs are going to be available in time for Christmas shopping season and a full range of Apple Silicon Macs for everthing but the i9 and Xeon Mac Pros and iMacs are going to be available by this time next year. So it is only a matter of deferring your purchase for a few months. Unless your MacBook is in such dire straits that it is barely functioning for the critical work that you need done and you have no spare or backup - and you are too poor to just go out and get a refurbished Mac Mini or a cheap Windows laptop during those few months to tide you over - there is no good reason to buy an Intel Mac and lots of bad ones.

This is not my sole opinion. Plenty of leading (pro Apple and Mac users) tech journalists have the same opinion. So do lots of leading Apple bloggers! Macalope has a dissenting opinion but I find his arguments in favor of buying a machine that will last 5-7 years that will be a second class citizen during nearly all that time AND have much lower resale value to be not particularly convincing. 

Sorry. No one should sign up to be the ones stuck with the slower, hotter, less full stack integrated (Metal? forget about it!) Intel Macs. Are you going to? No. Of course not. Your next Mac is going to be an Apple Silicon Mac, probably as soon as you can get your hands on one after it is released. But it is easy to make decisions with someone else's money, right?

Given that Apple Silicon Macs will not be able to dual boot Windows x86/64, and probably won't even be able to virtualise it, then I'd say that is a pretty compelling reason for a lot of people to buy a new Intel Mac while they are still available.  For many that'll probably be worth the downsides of being tied to technology that (according to Apple at least) will become obsolete.  The current line up of Macs are still very capable machines, and Apple will support them for at least a few years of OS updates.

Actually, it might come down to need versus want:

- How many people need MacOS?

- How many people need Windows?

If you need Windows, would it not make sense to invest in a Thinkpad that could last another 10 years?   Or a Mac with an expected life of about half that?

• 15 W Tiger Lake U with Xe graphics
• 16:10 QHD display
• <1kg weight
• Thunderbolt 4
• 5G

Beats said:

Razer is garbage. It only became popular because they paid a bunch of celebrities and artists to use their crap. Like how Samsung paid 14 Billion on ads to get attention.

I'm disappointed AppleInsider even covered that company.

Just for laughs:
An iKnockoff user called Razer's CEO "the next Steve Jobs" because he said "One Other Thing" or something similar.....

rob53 said:

The A12Z Bionic is up to 8 GPU cores. The Most powerful and expensive GPUs have cores in the thousands. What would it take for Apple to create its own separate 500 core GPU SoC or maybe only a 100 core GPU with the ability to use several of them in a blade setup. There's nothing stopping Apple, other than patents, from making whatever they want to any way they want to. Look at the Mac Pro. It's a fantastic workstation. 

After Effects

While Macs often perform fairly well, in After Effects there is simply no argument that a PC workstation is both faster and significantly less expensive. Compared to the $20k Mac Pro we tested, a $4k PC using an Intel Core i9 9900K and NVIDIA GeForce 2080 Ti ended up being about 5% faster overall, while a $5.5k PC using an AMD Threadripper 3960X is about 18% faster. Even compared to the much better priced iMac Pro, a PC that costs $1K less is going to be about 35% faster.

What this means is that you can get the same or faster performance from a properly configured PC at a quarter (or less) the cost of a Mac Pro. With an application like After Effects where you can distribute renders across multiple machines using plugins like BG Render Max or RenderGarden, this isn't even about just getting similar performance at a lower price point. You can decrease your render times by 4-5x by purchasing multiple PCs and using network rendering to split up the work between each system. This only improves render performance (not live playback), but also gives you a ton of flexibility to have renders running on multiple machines while simultaneously working on other comps on your primary workstation.

Or, you can simply save that $15k and spend it on a new car, home remodel, or a really, really fancy vacation.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/After-Effects-performance-PC-Workstation-vs-Mac-Pro-2019-1718/

Photoshop

Since Photoshop is largely unable to take advantage of higher CPU core counts, there often isn't much of a difference between most modern mid/high-end CPUs - and that applies for a Mac just as much as it does for a PC workstation. Overall, if Photoshop is your primary concern, you can get about 10% higher performance from one of our $4,200 Puget Systems workstations with either an AMD Ryzen 3900X or Intel Core i9 9900K compared to the $19,599 Mac Pro (2019) we tested.

Now, is 10% going to be a game-changer for your workflow? Probably not - it is right on the edge of what you might be able to notice in everyday work. The main takeaway here is not necessarily the performance alone, but rather how much you have to pay to get it. Even if you forget the Mac Pro and go with the much more reasonably priced iMac Pro, you are still likely to pay about twice the cost for equivalent performance.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Photoshop-performance-PC-Workstation-vs-Mac-Pro-2019-1716/

Premiere Pro

Since there are so many reasons why either a Mac or a PC may be right for you, we generally try to focus on the straight performance results and not tell you which you should purchase. But in this case, the Mac Pro is so underwhelming that it is hard to not simply say "Don't buy a Mac Pro for Premiere Pro".

This isn't like our Photoshop testing where the Mac Pro was only a hair slower than a PC, or our After Effects testing where a PC can easily be 20% faster at a much lower cost. This time, we are talking a PC being up to 50% faster on average for 1/3 the cost. We understand that there is a lot of benefit to staying in the Apple ecosystem if you also have an iPhone, MacBook, etc., but that is a huge amount of performance and cost savings you will be giving up to get a Mac Pro.

By skipping the Mac Pro and going with a PC, you could easily save $14,000 which could be used for a host of other things to improve your workflow. Maybe you can finally upgrade your reference monitor to a really nice Eizo or Flanders Scientific model. Or use it as an opportunity to move to a central NAS storage unit from LumaForge. Or just take a couple months off to recharge. And this isn't taking into account the amount of money you might be able to earn due to the higher performance of a PC.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Premiere-Pro-performance-PC-Workstation-vs-Mac-Pro-2019-1719/

Beats said:

jonahlee said:

If they come up with some new port it instead of PCI it will likely only mean Apple cards work with it, and it will mean the expansion is a joke. And while an Apple GPU might be decent, it is not going to compete with AMD and NVIDIA mainly because of driver support, because of the smaller market share unless Apple can magically beat the GPU giants at their own game without making something super hot and without a huge power draw, that is also so much easier to program for.

Oh goody this again. Happens every time.

"Apple is not going to beat out market leaders."