Surface Pro X and Windows 10 on ARM reviews review: a developer perspective | Hacker News Reader

Surface Pro X and Windows 10 on ARM reviews review: a developer perspective

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32 pointsMikusR8 comments

Something that confuses me about the corporate culture at Microsoft where stuff like this happens all the time. Let's imagine that an entire team of people worked tirelessly to design, engineer a $1.5-2k device, and manufacture something that most likely took a couple of years. Now how on earth did they release this thing and not have an earnest plan to also ship their own first party ARM64 binaries with it?

I cannot think of any other company where this is remotely acceptable. I'm not even comparing them to Apple that sets the gold standard for all the various organizations working together.

Can you imagine if Google released their Pixel 4 but instead shipped the 32-bit Android OS with it because the 64-bit version required some extra drivers?

> Now how on earth did they release this thing and not have an earnest plan to also ship their own first party ARM64 binaries with it?

Didn't they? Is the OS itself actually running through the translation layer? It also appears that they built Edge for it.

But for apps, there's a real chicken-and-egg problem that happens with every weird architecture or embedded devkit: third parties can't really work on it until you have hardware. So of course at launch there's going to be no third-party support unless you delay for months waiting for your partners to catch up.

If they're serious that ARM64 is going to be a first-class Windows platform in the future, and that they've given up on the RT nonsense, then there has to be a first ARM64 device to bootstrap the process.

The built Edge for it, but somehow didn't release even a public beta version for Pro X users. It's kind of nutty.

There is no chicken and egg problem. Deliver hardware, then software and then give the ecosystem a chance to grow. Microsoft is still struggling with step 1 after two years. It's pathetic.

Windows 10 Mobile on the Lumia 950 XL was 32-bit on a 64-bit SoC... because MS did not get an ARM64 OS ready

That’s because you’re supposed to format it and install Linux on it.

Seriously though, I had no idea it was this bad. Just shooting themselves in the foot. Again.

I’ve spent a few evenings trying to get openjdk compiled, but have given up. Everything runs fine, but when non native apps do anything intensive things get slow.

Honestly it is okay if you do most of your work through WSL as arm64 is supported there.

Having previously owned a Windows RT device, I think I will wait a while.

I don't even understand why this move is needed. You are just trading performance and compatibility against, at best, 20-30% better battery life.

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