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Comment by xmodem | Hacker News Reader

When Apple announced the M1 Pro/Max, I predicted that they would now hold a monopoly on good laptops for the next 5 years, based on where the PC market was at the time. (Good defined as high-performance, long battery life, and without other serious compromises such as weight)

We haven't seen independent reviews of these Qualcomm chips yet, but not even 3 years later and it sure looks like the entire PC market is about to leapfrog Apple. Intel's Lunar Lake looks like it's getting pretty close too.

Being a fanboi for a particular company/tech helps no-one except shareholders. Capitalists don't need to invest in competing if there's no-one competing with them.

I suspect this is more of an ambit claim from ARM to extract better terms from Qualcomm

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> We haven't seen independent reviews of these Qualcomm chips yet, but not even 3 years later and it sure looks like the entire PC market is about to leapfrog Apple.

How? There is barely any software for Windows that is made for ARM, much less drivers for all the various kinds of gadgets people have or the various anticheat crapware, and without a solid runtime translation layer similar to Rosetta and backing for it in hardware (memory access orders, other acceleration stuff) any Windows effort will fall flat on its face as it did some years ago.

Qualcomm has shown off demos to the media of Baldur's Gate 3, video editing, music production, OBS, etc. Microsoft has claimed their translation layer is "as good as" Rosetta. Support for anti-cheat is not relevant unless you want to game online, which I don't. Driver support for third-party peripherals is a valid concern for a significant number of users, but not something I personally care about in a portable device.

It's perfectly reasonable to be sceptical of Qualcomm's claims, but you can get a feel for how confident a company is in their product by how they approach marketing - and we are seeing a level of confidence here from Qualcomm and Microsoft that we have not seen with previous Windows on ARM pushes.

I am personally inferring from this that the products are probably pretty good, but this is speculation. I won't be ordering one until I see some test results from independent reviewers.

> Support for anti-cheat is not relevant unless you want to game online, which I don't.

More than enough crap these days wants that for DRM reasons as well. We don't own anything any more these days.

I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I think it's unlikely to matter for the adoption of Windows on ARM in the long run.

Gamers are a major force behind technological advancements. AAA game makers didn't take mobile or Linux gaming seriously first until the Switch came along (that had enough firepower to run older AAA games) and finally Steam Deck provided actual console power in a mobile form factor.

Gamers are what gave Steam the financial incentive to get Proton to an entirely new level. And a platform that brands itself as the future must have gaming support.

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