> The firmware setup shall indicate if Secure Boot is turned on, and if it is operated in Standard or Custom Mode. The firmware setup must provide an option to return from Custom to Standard Mode which restores the factory defaults. On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enabled.
> Windows 10 for desktop editions (Home, Pro, Enterprise, and Education) x64
> Windows 10 for desktop editions (Home, Pro, Enterprise, and Education) x86
> Windows 10 Mobile ARM
> Windows 10 Mobile x86
> Windows Server 2016 x64
It's not clear to me that this document has been updated to reflect this release. Windows 10 Mobile is the successor to Windows Phone 8.1, while the article suggests that this product might better described as "Windows 10 for desktop editions ARM".
From The Verge: "HP and Asus' devices will include Windows 10 S, designed to only run apps from the Windows Store, but users will be able to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro free of charge (for now) to get access to the full desktop apps." https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/5/16737288/microsoft-window...
Translation: The ARM "computers" will only run software Microsoft blesses. Can we call it a computer anymore? It is more like a tablet when Microsoft demands digital restrictions management on the software that runs on the device.
> Translation: The ARM "computers" will only run software Microsoft blesses. Can we call it a computer anymore?
Why don't people take Apple to task for doing the same thing? You can't take an iPad and install Linux on it, or Windows for ARM. You're locked into running iOS. Apple doesn't even allow downgrading iOS.
Same with Android devices that come with a locked bootloader. You can't install anything other OS version/flavour than what the manufacturer dictates.
Yes, it's unfortunate that Microsoft has this policy, but why is it that people only complain loudly about locked bootloaders when it comes to Microsoft products?
Apply the same standard to Apple and Android products with locked bootloaders. Microsoft isn't the first one to do this, and they won't ship nearly as many devices as other manufacturers who lock down the boot process.
It's sad to see companies doing that (walled gardens, locked bootloaders). Unfortunatelly most normal people don't understand the differences. They buy the device like any other daily product and expect it "to just work". :( Lots of people don't even know about alternatives, as their software comes pre-installed. Big companies are more and more controlling users and it looks like they don't care?
The op is complaining about calling 'computer' rather than 'tablet' this ms product. The ipad and iphones and android phones are tablet and phones, not computers.
This has little to do with the 'technical' meaning of the term.
The big _practical_'distinction' nowadays between a 'proper computer' and a 'tablet/phone/etc' is between being open for modification, creation and alteration by the user, or to be a walled garden where only the manufacturer chooses what can be done and installed.
The Ipad Pro may be powerful as a computer, but we think about it as a tablet because it uses IOS and its walled garden.
The OP is complaining that MS is trying to push its new product into the computer space even tough it's locked down via Windows 10S. It's not true that nobody 'takes on Apple about this' - it's simply that Apple does NOT do that on its COMPUTERS (i.e. the Mac line).
Apple's entire business model is based on locked down systems like the App Store and iTunes and locked OS that void their warrantee when tampered with.
For most of it's life Microsoft has never put such restrictions on their Windows OS.
But I guess they have now realised, when it comes to making money, that Apple model is a much better way to go.
Further to that, you can't patch out the telemetry and other privacy-violating "features", without somehow finding an exploit. In fact, from that perspective this is no different than the typical locked-down iPhone or Android.
What's worse than a computer with preinstalled spyware? A computer with preinstalled spyware you can't remove.
When the Lenovo/Superfish thing happened, I commented at the time that it was at least something you could remove by reformatting and installing your choice of OS. Ideally we'd all buy computers with our own choice of software already, but if forced to choose, I'd rather buy one with preinstalled spyware I know I can remove, than one which claims to not have such software and be "more secure".
But this is the main reason why Surface RT bombed in 2012: Microsoft sold it as a "Windows" tablet - the connotation being that users could run Steam and Chrome on it, not specially-compiled apps running in the anemic Windows Store App sandbox.
I appreciate things are different now in 2017 with x86 emulation (or dynamic translation) and the ability for most Win32 programs to be repackaged as *.appx - but Microsoft misses the implication to consumers again: users expect the freedom to install and download software from wherever - just like their x86 desktop machines. No-one is asking for an iOS style App Store for Windows and it's starkly visible by how poorly the Windows App Store is still doing.
Cynically, I suspect everyone at MSFT is well-aware of this and they fully expect Windows 10-for-ARM to sink for these exact reasons, they're just doing this as a repeat of their protest moves to remind Intel not to take their x86 monopoly for granted, and the addition of x86 support is a particularly bloody (but ultimately harmless) fist to the nose.
I'll point out that there is a very obvious use-case for Windows-on-ARM: low-power rackmountable/high-density server hardware for applications like web-servers and IO (not CPU)-bound database servers. No need for a 300W Intel Xeon box, or even a 150W Intel Core i7 - a 20W ARM chip will do. If Microsoft announced a no-shit, just-like-x86 SKU of Windows Server with no artificial restrictions with the same 10 year support period then I guarantee that Dell and SuperMicro would jump at building and shipping ARM servers - but this hasn't happened, instead we got a ridiculously impractical "Windows IOT" SKU which feels more like a toy than the basis for business critical infrastructure.
Server applications are much easier to port to ARM than desktop applications, given their lack of dependence on hardware associated with x86, like 3D graphics acceleration - or just users' expectation that a single executable binary should work everywhere. Servers are operated by businesses with professional sysadmins who know how to rebuild open-source applications for their machines or at least know the difference between downloading a program lablled "Thumb-2" vs "x64". Furthermore probably most server applications run on Java or .NET and can be trivially ported over to ARM.
The fact we haven't seen a true Windows Server ARM means that we can immediately dismiss consumer-level releases of desktop Windows for ARM for now.
> I'll point out that there is a very obvious use-case for Windows-on-ARM: low-power rackmountable/high-density server hardware for applications like web-servers and IO (not CPU)-bound database servers
...but why is this better than linux-on-arm? Windows server hasn't been generally very successful.
I think they did this because the anti-trust ruling from the early 2000s does not apply to ARM-based computers, only Intel-based machines. I guess the software lockdown proves that Microsoft hasn't changed and the late 90s Microsoft is still with us.
Not that I don't believe you, but is there a source for this (the anti-trust ruling being specific to Intel hardware)? I'd love to read more about the specifics.
> Microsoft's obligations under the settlement, as originally drafted, expired on November 12, 2007. However, Microsoft later "agreed to consent to a two-year extension of part of the Final Judgments" dealing with communications protocol licensing.
Sadly, I bet companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google see it more along the lines of "the free ride general purpose computing has gotten sharing hardware with our ecosystems should end".
Forgive my ignorance on this topic, but couldn't one use the windows boot manager to load a Linux distro? Or does Grub still need to signed once it receivables the hand-off?
It's more insidious than that. The big distros have been signed and will probably work, but recompiling your kernel, using less common distros, or using third-party modules won't.
If they're signing Ubuntu's ARM shim loader the same way they're signing Ubuntu's x86-64 shim loader, you can use it to boot an arbitrary kernel in non-EFI mode. I am using this on my personal laptop to to boot Debian stable with Debian's kernel - grab shimx64.efi + grubx64.efi from Ubuntu, put them in the ESP, and write a little grub.cfg that sets $root and $prefix to the Debian partition and runs `normal`. Since you're exiting UEFI boot services before running unsigned code, Microsoft (apparently?) does not care.
Also, if they're signing any Linux distro's shim loader, shim allows a physically present user to enroll their own key or disable secure boot. See method 3 at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UEFI/SecureBoot/DKMS .
In theory, if you enable signature checking in Grub, sign your kernel, add that key to Grub, sign Grub, import that key into the UEFI, delete all the stock (Microsoft) keys and use full disk encryption (use the luks module in grub and place an unlocking key in the initrd) .. then in theory, it should be very difficult for someone to reformat and fency your stolen laptop.
I've got the full disk encryption working with luks/grub (you do have to unlock the device twice, one for grub to read its stage2 and one in the initrd for the kernel), I just haven't gotten around to trying to re-enable secure boot.
I get that. But as you can surely see, this is not a common use case at all. Less than 1% (number pulled out of the ass) of regular consumers get their laptop stolen. Then among those, very little percentage of people actually care (enough to pay somebody to to secure the laptop properly) about the data stored in the machine. Mandating secure boot and making legit consumers to go through all that just to run their own os is simply bullshit. It's just a method to lock down the machine.
Your ass-pull laptop theft rate of 1% is still roughly four times the use rate of Linux in the Steam Hardware Survey. Installing your own OS is not a common use case at all, either.
That doesn't really change the point much, does it? Installing your own non-Windows OS on a machine is a very small part of the market. Providing security for the people who will never install a new OS on their machine (not even a new version of Windows) is serving a much larger part of the market.
Providing security for the much larger part of the market does not mean, that it is necessary to lock out the minority.
Otherwise, why have the antitrust laws at all? The dominant market players provide useful services, why should we care about the minor players? (Not only in operating systems, but in general).
It sounds like it makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of Microsoft wanting to hold onto the keys in case they ever want to lock the door.
And fair's fair, Microsoft was the one that pushed UEFI so hard.
Which? The first one (the one I'm running on my laptop) doesn't involve custom mode at all - I'm using an MS-signed bootloader to exit boot services and do some stuff, with no changes to SecureBoot or PK or any other variables. I have an actual Secure Boot-enabled platform with only Microsoft keys enrolled.
The rest involve changing EFI variables, yes, but my impression is that "Custom Mode" refers to a UI in the BIOS which permits you to change the variables, and those variables are always writable by code running in boot services. The requirements say, "On non-ARM systems, the platform MUST implement the ability for a physically present user to select between two Secure Boot modes in firmware setup: 'Custom' and 'Standard'." Nothing I'm suggesting involves going to firmware setup.
I know people have an axe to grind both with the old lame duck WinRT and the insulting locked down firmware on those devices, but let’s wait for the reviews and tear-downs before tearing into the news?
Devil's advocate here (but not really): it means it prevents your pc from booting on unsecured code, that it doesn't recognize. It's how you can fight stuff like the kernel root exploit that were starting to plague the windows world.
The issue here is that Windows at first was asking not to provide a way to disable it back on x86, we got a compromise (we can disable it, and big distros could get signed).
Now Microsoft is trying the same over ARM, so the fight starts again. Microsoft holds over ARM is mostly nothing though they're newcomers here and there are far manufacturers, so I'm sure they will end up losing their bet again.
Yes. From a computing freedom point of view, the only way I have freedom over my computing is if I control the code that's running on it. If I'm running code that I don't have source for, I don't quite control it as much as I'd like to. But if someone else is running code that I don't have source for, I sure as heck don't control it!
Running a closed-source bootloader on a platform with firmware enforcement of signed bootloaders is not good. But the problem is not the signature requirement, the problem is the closed-source bootloader. The signature requirement is only a problem in the case where (as on Windows-logo machines running ARM) it requires you to run a closed-source bootloader, or even an open-source one that you do not have the ability to make changes to. If you want to ensure your computing freedom, the best thing to do is to have your firmware ensure that you and you alone, or someone you trust and them alone (e.g. a vendor of a free OS that you think is reputable), can boot code on your computer.
But in the windows kernel rooting exploit were really everywhere before that started being deployed.
We can blame "everyone runs root all the time" and "disabling uac is a common tip on all windows site because users are used to be super administrator", and they all come back to Windows security model and default being complete shit until Windows 8 ((7 was still super admin as default user right?)), but I certainly won't blame Microsoft for finally cleaning that mess.
Go back less than a decade back and most windows system of everyday users would have some kind of crap running as super root, that was terrible.
I don't get why people focus so much on windows for this these days. I mean, if you can get more freedom there, great, but it's not like it's lacking at all there.
Apple and Google, and perhaps the telcos those are the companies that need convincing.
I think you're missing the point. It's not about you, personally. It's about the general users. It's what, 90% of all desktop? And the vast majority of those are an easy target for such things.
It's not really surprising that it gets some consideration.
But there are already more mobile computers than non-mobile. Anybody who thinks desktop still matters for the general population is kidding themselves. Especially Apple seems to like the very (VERY) heavy handed walled garden approach. FB is a bit nicer than them, and Google seems most flexible, using "soft" means (e.g. kicking adblockers and emulators out of the app store, or simply not promoting them).
Android is shit through and they don't have UEFI. MS mandates UEFI, which means being able to boot a standard Linux image instead of having all these different images scattered all over the place with totally non-standard garbage in them.
Having UEFI/ARM devices would be a huge game changer in the Linux world right now.
In Europe, the Samsung models are based on Exynos, which are unlockable via Developer Options menu. Then you can basically flash whatever you want, and if it isn't signed by Samsung, it will blow the Knox fuse, and that's it.
Huawei, Xiaomi and HTC allow for unlocking via their webpages.
So I would say, that the biggest vendors are covered.
Because they're not only trying to make a strong entry into the desktop computer, they're also about to finally go and fight Intel in servers (because Intel refused to make atom not suck)
> Microsoft holds over ARM is mostly nothing though they're newcomers here and there are far manufacturers, so I'm sure they will end up losing their bet again.
Yeah. Unfortunately Google (ChromeBooks) won the space, with virtually the same tactic, with the slight added advantage that they give you a hardware "break your warranty to unweld this hood" switch on most of the devices.
I miss the hell out of being able to be in control of the software on all my computers...
As far as I understand, they don't emulate the x86 instruction set, but instead cross-compile it to ARM native instructions. That means that whatever implementation details are behind the patented x86 instructions are irrelevant, since there is no emulation of those instructions, they are just replaced by equivalent ARM instructions. Intel will probably still sue, but I expect them to settle out of court.
"The real-time ‘Just-In-Time’ transcoding emulation that converts x86 instructions to ARM is done the first time you run the software, and then it’s cached by Windows"
Still sounds like emulation to me. It's a pretty fine line.
Isn't that equivalent to emulating it? Like emulators for video game systems that have both an interpreter and a JIT recompiler, the latter is just an optimization of the former. They both must interpret the instruction set of the target and run equivalent instructions on the host.
Patents have a funny feature, in that they (are supposed to) apply to a specific implementation. So "equivalent effect" is not enough for patent violation in the general case.
No, but they can do things like not optimize code paths and not work with Intel on power saving features. The average consumer is far more likely to buy a Windows laptop with an arm cpu than an Intel laptop running a different os. Intel won't win that fight unless it's in a court room.
It could cut support for the highest end x86 CPU's in desktop machines (ie. non-server). That would then make those CPU's un-sellable, since they're pretty much all used for gaming.
Obviously, they wouldn't say that - the way to market that is to release 'Windows Gamers edition', which costs way more and 'unlocks' the power in the latest CPU's. When in fact, non 'game edition' windows versions simply leave some cores disabled or sleep some of the time when they detect a 'too fast' CPU and a fullscreen game running...
> At some point I'd like to believe people would just stop paying Microsoft tax to play computer games...
I wish I could. The games I like aren't released anywhere else.
> Then I remember people pay tons of cash for their rigs that are obsolete within two years anyway.
This is false. A moderate gaming PC can last longer than a console. I used my previous rig for 4 years and now my wife is using it perfectly fine. It still has better visual fidelity than a console.
Expensive gaming rigs - a bit less so than PC, but for equivalent hardware, about $400 cheaper at introduction, about equal once 1-2 years pass.
Obsolete in 2 years - check
Expensive software - much more so for consoles.
So right now the situation is that if you go for PC gaming instead of console, you'll have about the same expense, but 100 games for PC (and a powerful general purpose computer), and maybe 5-10 on console.
Almost certainly. There may be small corner cases where the translated code is faster but I’m sure they’re the exception.
That said, people may not care. ARM can be very fast. My iPad is faster than many low end laptops.
So you get in the situation where a low cost laptop with ARM may be as fast or faster going through emulation than a low end Intel chip from 4-6 years ago while providing WAY more battery life.
People may be willing to make that trade.
I’m guessing it’s not 20% speed on most tasks. Probably 80%+, depending on the age and power of the Intel chip.
I think 20% is more likely than 80% for raw compute tasks - ARMs are competitive with intel in performance/watt, but are not much better at it (and definitely are not competitive yet in absolute performance). People are going to buy it for the 20-hour battery, and then run the CPU at 100% to run emulation which will eat the battery in 3 hours.
However, most people run a small selection of programs most of the time (web browser, word, excel, outlook), which will likely have an ARM native version sooner than later, and the long tail of programs they must have are often not compute intensive, and spend 85% of their time in the OS doing graphics/io which are native. So overall, even if the CPU emulation is 20% speed, the overall feel is likely going to be 80% or better for most people.
I don't see any mention of x86_64/AMD64 in the article. I would expect a version of Windows which can't run x86_64 apps to result in a lot of nasty compatibility surprises--it's been awhile since developers had to support 32-bit-only hardware--so I'd expect Microsoft to support it if at all possible.
You're right, the posted Anandtech article does not mention x86_64; however, other prior and recent coverage of this topic does confirm that x86_64 is not supported, such as this Ars Technica article [1] from the same day.
There's no support for x86_64 binaries. Windows 10 is still available in 32-bit editions and almost all apps are still available for 32-bit, so I don't think this is a big issue.
I assume any kernel drivers will need to be compiled for ARM64 though. This might not help corporate adoption--VPN client, 3rd party anti-virus/full disk encryption, etc.
Also one thing that is x86-64 only is WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
I think most Windows applications which are truly 64-bit only are either too large to run on a machine like this, or likely to be rebuilt for AArch64. For the time being, I think IA-32 support is enough to tide them over, and it has the benefit of being thoroughly out of patent (except some fairly common extensions, like SSE2, which will expire soon).
There's still a lot of Windows devices that run x86 Windows, and new devices still ship with it, mostly low-memory or low-disk-space devices. Thus apps need to support it.
The Intel patents for up to SSE2 should expire soon, and hopefully the AMD64 patents should be licenseable from AMD (if they are interested in that). I would not be surprised if this already emulates up to SSE2, given the likely release date and the fact that recent versions of MSVC already enable /arch:SSE2 by default.
> I would not be surprised if this already emulates up to SSE2, given the likely release date.
Yeah, even if they could be sued, they could settle for a couple years damages max, or quite possibly win, since they're doing DBT (no different from QEMU or loads of other x86 + SSE2 emulators).
though it's worth remembering that QEMU developers do not have the deep pockets that MS has -- and it is the depth of the pockets, rather than the (alleged) violation that drives law suits and threats.
My most important difference is whether Microsoft is going to stop supporting it a couple years after selling it like they did with Windows RT--leaving their customers with thousands of dollars of useless, unsupported machines.
I still can't believe they did that. Discontinuing software is one thing--you can find replacements. But discontinuing Surface RT tablets OS right after selling them is insulting and I will not be recommending them to my clients until Microsoft proves it will actually provide a long-term platform.
I hope and expect Apple to watch this closely. Playing with the iOS 11 on an iPad pro 10.5 suggests a bit what a Macbook Air might look like in 'appliance' mode with one of their customized ARM processors.
The really interesting bit however is whether or not ARM notebook computers can become a 'thing' for real. There have been a couple of runs at it by people without the resources to do something competitive with the thin and light laptops of today, doing it "for real" has always seemed a bit out of reach.
It becomes more and more clear to me that something like a Chromebook type OS and a walled garden app store is a really attractive proposition for people who don't do development on their machines.
I've got both a Surface Pro and an iPad pro and it would be a Surface with an ARM processor, sort of. The sort of comes from the fact that the windows resources are remote in the iPad case which allows for faster response and more media/storage on the remote machine. The Surface Pro doesn't last quite as long on battery power as the iPad does and it can be constrained in its storage space (I've got an additional 256MB SD card plugged into mine and its still tight).
But the interesting thing for me are the two approaches to window dynamics. The Surface Pro is difficult to operate with a finger, ok with the stylus.
Well, no - I realized I have iPad mini, and so for me, iPad = 8.9" screen, 300 grams, can be taken in any bag anywhere, lasts a whole conference even half-charged.
Surface is 2.5x heavier, it's the 'I must remember to, and want to, take a full computer with'.
Which app were you using for this? the MS RDP app? I was trying it but couldn't get it to work in my LAN when my windows 10 was using usb tethering. Maybe I'll try again with a proper access point.
That is why I think the Macbook and iPad Pro are overlap. iPad Pro should take whatever role the common 80% of user using the Mac. And let the Mac and Macbook be a powerful computer doing the 20% which is never intended for an iPad / Tablet / Appliance Computing.
I agree with this but I also recognize that if that separation is successful and we have the 'user' Macbook and the 'developer' Macbook, the latter may become more expensive still as it will have much lower volumes of manufacturing.
Shouldn't the developer be in the Macbook Pro camp?
I think iPad Pro, with iOS 11 has shown what tablet is really capable of. And we are only just getting started.
Hence why I wish Apple will just leave the Mac as a PC. A PC with macOS. Stop dumping it into Appliance, give more choice and better flexiblity, heck even iPhone has more choices and model then the Mac.
I expect Apple would either switch entirely, or not. But fracturing the desktop doesn’t seem like something they’d do. ARM would have to be the clear path forward.
Mostly I don't have the feeling they want to invest more into MacOS. I feel they would much rather push everyone into iOS, a locked down platform where they have full control on what people can do or not and monetize every single step (whether that is realistic or not).
That's how light bulbs actually worked way back when. And now you have practically light bulbs that live for 10+ years and are 10 times more energy efficient.
Remember when you had to reinstall windows XP every few months? Yeah, i haven't reinstalled my windows since windows 8 came out. I've done upgrade to 8.1, 10, 10 CU without re-installation or "refresh".
Your analogy is pretty hilarious when you realize old light bulbs last WAY longer because they're not as bright and there are old bulbs over 100 years old still glowing.
That's how light bulbs actually worked way back when. And now you have practically light bulbs that live for 10+ years and are 10 times more energy efficient.
Even with Vidta and 7 I never had to reinstall my OS. I had the same Windowd 7 install from 2012 till 2015 ~ and I think I stopped because I wanted to use Linux from then on instead.
Is that because Windows is better, or you're just better at dealing with it?
XPs big problem was IE and malware infections, other than that it was as reliable as any current version of Windows today. Once you have to manage 3500 PCs and you see the same stupid issues coming up over and over, you realize it's not really any better. Computer stores may not be as busy cleaning malware from desktops and laptops, but my team is every bit as busy cleaning up bad updates, fixing BSODs and trying to find documentation that doesn't exist for whatever feature was released last week.
This might be a non-issue. The only people who are likely to care about installing alternative operating systems are power users, and power users may still prefer to buy more powerful Intel systems.
As a power user, I'm still looking for a good ARM battery efficient 2-in-1 to use as a light laptop and tablet that runs Linux. Not to use as a production machine but for content consumption. Being able to continually read a book or article while coding or performing a task on production machine would be better then having to swap between the two on one computer. Wouldn't choose Intel for that.
Having more shipping ARM devices gets you closer to that, even if these devices have a locked bootloader. The more robust the ecosystem around ARM with UEFI gets, the more the parts become commodity and if there's enough demand, someone will start shipping them with Linux or unlocked bootloaders.
(Hate UEFI all you want, but standardizing on something is much better than the Android world where every SoC requires a custom bootloader and if the manufacturer doesn't support the kernel you want to run, tough. Having a standardized platform to run on means you can have a Linux distribution that supports running on any device that supports the standard.)
>The only people who are likely to care about installing alternative operating systems are power users, and power users may still prefer to buy more powerful Intel systems.
Traditionally, one of the ways people got into Linux was inheriting an old box and sticking Linux on it. You won't be able to do this anymore.
And as Intel will become more and more niche, it will get more expensive.
Can't help but think this was just a marketing error. Had they called the OS something like SurfaceOS instead of WinRT, perhaps the expectation would have been something more accepted, akin to iOS and MacOS.
Sadly they keep making that mistake by pushing for "Windows" for their mobile OS and as you mentioned, ARM OS as well. They really should not try to push "Windows" where it's not really wanted, but instead re-brand for other platforms, and allow it to all come together.
"Allowed" is a funny way of phrasing this. The technology Microsoft has built to run x86 Windows apps on ARM didn't exist when Windows RT was released.
I think that "allowed" is correct. A developer couldn't just recompile their desktop-style app into an ARM binary for RT, for example. They'd refuse to run, and not because of the CPU architecture. The only way to get third-party apps was through the Windows store, which only supports Metro apps. Metro apps had a limited API available to them.
I wish they launched an OS that has bare minimum interruption with things I do not care about. I seriously do not need anything from an OS than just a super lightweight interface to interact with applications and filesystems. Why is it so hard?
The mail.app vs outlook is a great example of useful and useless UI. Both app does the same.
I’ve seen firsthand the amount of work that goes into building a complex, scalable system and the problem with your statements are that
1) It’s hard to measure at scale what each of your users cares about. This is especially true with “lightweight” interfaces - simpler UI means you have to carefully decide what you want to expose.
2) Generally the older software is, the more bloated it becomes - this is inescapable. The only real solution to this problem is full rewrites which rarely happen because they’re so expensive and time-consuming. By the time you ship an OS it might already have some bloat.
3) People like what they are used to. Remember the backlash with the Metro interface? Windows users would never get behind a major change to the Windows UI - everyone has been using it for almost 20 years now.
I agreee with the interruptions - I don't understand how they can accept popping up reminders over full screen games, or asking me whether i would "recommend windows 10 to a friend" etc.
But the mail/outlook comparison doesn't work: outlook is an old and enormous enterprise piece of calendar/mail thingy. Not a mail application. Even though many use it for just email, that's not what it is - and they can't change that.
"I wish they launched an OS that has bare minimum interruption with things I do not care about. I seriously do not need anything from an OS than just a super lightweight interface to interact with applications and filesystems. Why is it so hard?"
Monetization. Linux distributions can be produced at very low cost and don't need to make a profit, but a version of Windows has to make money to be worthwhile for Microsoft, so features that are effectively adverts or tie-ins for other products and services are inevitable.
I’d say that Mail.app and Outlook have different use cases. Mail is much more lightweight and can be used for simple personal email. Outlook was designed with enterprise in mind - eg meeting room scheduling, wider confidentiality settings, event scheduling, etc.
The Windows 10 Mail app is actually pretty decent. The Metro style deterred me at first (most UWP/Metro apps I tried were underpowered and had clumsy interfaces), but I saw some colleagues use it recently and gave it another chance. It works really well, and does exactly what I need and not much more or less.
On Mac, I rediscovered Mail.app, and on Windows the Mail application. Both look very different, but fullfil the same function: You can manage multiple accounts from one place, they support conversations and archiving flawlessly, the interface is clean and efficient. Thanks to those two, I use desktop clients instead of webmail again.
So in otherwords, you want a Linux machine but with app compatibility for Win/Apple/whatever.
- If you do mostly web stuff, Linux fits all the bills.
- If you NEED compatibility (Office/Photoshop/whatever), you can often still run many programs with "Wine" in Linux.
I really recommend trying it by downloading a "to go"/"live" version to a USB drive. Ubuntu (the most popular user flavor of Linux) is really user friendly out-of-the-box. Being on a USB drive it'll be a little slower to load, but yeah. I use it every day on a Chromebook converted to Linux.
Does anyone know if/when Windows 10's x86-on-ARM thing might come out for phone(s)? I don't really care for the emulation on laptops but I need to upgrade my phone and this is a factor.
The rumor mill is full of stories of future Windows devices that are in the form factor of a phone and have cellular networking. Just don't call them "phones." Just today, Windows Central is claiming we should expect to see the Courier in 2018 [1].
Basically a Windows 10 phone-sized full computer that has docking features that make it conceivably the singular computing device in your life that covers all mobile and desktop contexts.
Microsoft gave up on Windows RT to go back to the drawing board and build Windows on ARM. It's the same with phones: they gave up on Windows Phone so that they can have a "Surface Phone" do-over in the future. This allows them to introduce hot "new" products rather than updated versions of failed products. There are many examples of Microsoft doing this.
I thought it was supposed to be for phones. That's what I read last year: "I'm hearing this Cobalt [x86-on-ARM] technology is aimed at phone and possibly tablet/desktop devices." [1] I'm confused when it became a laptop thing at all.
It's always been something of a laptop thing? Microsoft since Windows 8 has made it somewhat clear they think Windows needs a strong presence on ARM tablets to A) avoid Intel hegemony, B) remain competitive with the iPad in that space. "It doesn't run any of my apps," was perhaps the biggest complaint about Windows 8 ARM tablets, so it makes sense that x86-on-ARM was a big strategy push before the next attempt.
Beyond that, rumor has it that Microsoft hopes selling tablets/laptops with ARM will open the Windows ARM space enough in the meantime while the Windows team is finishing the next version of key Windows shell components (nicknamed the "Composable Shell" or CShell), which would be make the Continuum experience for say Phones stronger because instead of switching entirely different shell applications (start menu, taskbar, et al) between form factors, the same applications responsively adapt themselves.
I'm confused, I just quoted an article from 2016 saying it was about phones and possibly tablets/desktops, and you say it's always been a laptop thing? Anything you can quote from 2016 to that effect?
The Verge's article from 2016 says "laptops are expected to be the first devices", and brings up Windows RT as the predecessor, just as I mentioned it:
Possibly, but they have not given up on Windows. They came out with Linux for Windows. I can see them coming out with something like Windows for Android - a compatibility layer allowing e.g. Office for Windows ARM to run on Android phones.
You will be forbidden by DRM from running linux on it. Their policy is clear on only permitting Microsoft signed OS to boot and forbidding the device manufacturer from permitting you to run an OS not crytographically blessed by Microsoft.
That is talking about Windows mobile. Windows mobile != Windows 10 on ARM. While it may apply to w10 on arm, we don't know yet as none of that documentation has been released. The reason it was a hard requirement on mobile is thanks to the carriers. That being said, please don't spread fud, it helps no one. If you have an actual WoA document we can complain up ms about, great. But this is not that.
I'm not a fan of ARM CPU but I'm quite curious about the x86 emulation on Windows 10 ARM platform, does it run like qemu-user-static-x86 just like how Wine did? (while all x86 syscall/WinAPIs have direct replacement on Windows 10 ARM)
Should someone generously share some articles, I’d really appreciate that help.
> So QCOM is being sued right and left (Apple, Intel, and governments all over the world)?
For what it's worth, if you do competitive business like Qualcomm does, there will most likely be at least one pending lawsuit against you at any given time.
Empty threats, I think. Either way, I think Intel is long overdue another anti-trust lawsuit from the EU for its GPU bundling in laptops, as well as other things. Don't worry, the EU has an anti-trust case against Qualcomm already.
Low-end PCs in China, India, etc. Intel is selling even its Atom-based Celeron and Pentium chips for laptops at quite the premium (about $110 and $160 MSRP, respectively).
I wouldn't expect these very first devices target that market, though, possibly because Qualcomm wants to be associated with more premium devices, but I think we'll see these chips in lower-end cost-competitive devices, too.
Windows RT was not a failure because of ARM, or because the hardware was not capable. Windows RT was a failure because, once again, Microsoft showed that they are completely incapable of reading the market. They tried to market a Windows experience to consumers and then did not deliver on the Windows experience.
You might be replying to the wrong comment. I didn't say anything about Windows RT being a failure. The only meaning I was trying to convey was that Microsoft DID try to push an ARM platform many years ago.
Ah yes, the version of Windows with zero software.
Nothing about Windows RT was done in a way that indicated that they were serious about pushing it. How could you possibly sell people on a version of Windows that does virtually nothing that people would want to buy Windows instead of Android or iOS for?
This is unlikely. Apple's CPU budget for it's devices is likely much higher than anything Qualcomm's customers are willing to pay (vs the current snapdragon pricing). Apple's CPUs are very very large and consequently relatively expensive. As an example, a latest gen snapdragon 835 has 3 billion transistors, while Apple's A11 has 4.3 billion.
And those numbers severely understate the difference since, IIRC, a much larger fraction of Apple's SoC transistor budget is devoted to its application processors.
EDIT: Found an image. More a simple understatement than a severe one.
Of course competitors want more powerful options, and they certainly have the budget for it given the pricing of premium Android devices.
Qualcomm simply fell behind. While Apple went for powerful, enormous cores in small numbers, Qualcomm and friends bet on simpler, smaller cores. Apple has started copy/pasting their fantastic cores, yielding the enormous transistor counts.
I admit to being a skeptic when Apple went off to do their own thing, sure that a whole industry (and options like the Tegra) would make them eat their hat. Apple executed and are in a remarkable position now.
Why would that be the case? Do you foresee this putting a great deal of performance-related pressure on Qualcomm that wasn't there before, despite them being a top-shipping smartphone CPU vendor?
Given Qualcomm's just-announced partnership with AMD [1], Qualcomm is clearly pursuing multiple strategies to compete with Intel, but they can leverage AMD to cover their weaknesses, instead of trying to outpace Apple's A-series in places where the market seems fine with the current Snapdragons.
> Do you foresee this putting a great deal of performance-related pressure on Qualcomm that wasn't there before
Possibly. Although I don't doubt Apple may have superior expertise in designing ARM chips (which sounds strange when comparing to the #1 ARM chip maker), I think one of the main reasons Qualcomm hasn't been able to match Apple is that Qualcomm has to optimize its chip for a variety of OEM needs.
Apple on the other hand, could even push the TDP by 20% on its chip, if it know that it can make up for that loss of efficiency with more optimized software that's developed specifically for that chip.
The AMD partnership is very interesting. I hope they double down on that.
Fun fact: Qualcomm wanted to buy AMD in 2015, but because of some terrible management and engineering choices with the Snapdragon 810, which led to a sales slump that year, the board was so furious that i wanted to sell Qualcomm's chip business! (and sell just modems).
Of course, that would have been a terrible idea, business-wise, which is why if Broadcom buys Qualcomm I hope it does get rid of that board and Qualcomm's CEO from day one.
Another fun fact: Qualcomm's Adreno GPU is AMD's old Mobile Radeon GPU division, and Adreno is an anagram of Radeon.
I've been hoping someone like Qualcomm or Samsung buys AMD. Perhaps it may actually do that eventually, with or without Broadcom's help. Then we can see some real competition against Intel, and AMD alone simply lacks the funds to compete head-on with Intel in many areas.
Also, now I'm starting to wonder if Broadcom knew about this deal and it's why it wanted to buy Qualcomm now.
> I think one of the main reasons Qualcomm hasn't been able to match Apple is that Qualcomm has to optimize its chip for a variety of OEM needs.
This just makes no sense at all. So you are saying some OEM's want slow chips? No, of course not. Or are you saying that Samsung S8 has different needs to LG V30 or to the Google Pixel? No, of course not. There needs are all the same.
Well, Apple and Qualcomm have taken different approaches. Having a (successful) desktop/laptop product will cause them to make architectural decisions which don't make sense on a smartphone in general.
Why would this partnership have any significance on the performance of Qualcomm SoC's? Qualcomm doesn't really drive the performance of the architecture they license - that would be ARM. The next generation Snapdragon, Exynos and Kirin SoC's will all use ARM's new A75 and A55 core dynamIQ reference designs and their performance will be the same.
The A11 is running at 2.4Ghz. The i7 in the single-thread test at 3.1Ghz (actually up to 4.1Ghz). Cycle for cycle the A11 is faster than the fattest Intel chip.
Which is insane. I am no Apple booster, but this is quite an incredible switch up. With a fatter TDP budget (the A11 has a TDP of something like 5W, the i7-7920HQ a TDP of 45W) they could not only increase the clock ceiling, they could start copy-pasting the big core.
A few years back people were talking about Apple starting to move their chip designs to their laptops and desktops. It sounded insane. Now it's actually entirely possible if they can get their software stacks and targeting all working.
Interesting that the multi-core score is a lot lower. Probably you're seeing thermal management in that multi-core score, meaning a macbook with active cooling should be able to reach much higher multi-core numbers.
The A11 is way too overpowered for a phone or tablet. Apple is clearly in the awkward phase where they've almost gotten the right CPU to put in their laptops. The A12 will be a no-brainer. Same performance as i7, way better battery life, way cheaper to produce.
Note that the A11 has two "big" cores, and four much slower but power efficient "little" cores. If they were making an A11 variant for desktop use they would have the power profile to use more big cores.
I think we are headed into the world of multi-cpu world. I see the ARM being helped by a CUDA power efficient co-processor with I/O similar to Power9. The issue is our tools as developers wouldn't be able to take advantage of this for a while. 95% of people's applications don't take advantage of multi-threaded processors.
It's obviously not easy by any stretch of the imagination to port something as complex as Windows to a new platform, but I'm still surprised it took THAT long to finish this.
Who says that it was just finished recently? There are a large number of things that go into projects like this, Windows could have been ported years ago, but they were not ready.
The code is there in Visual C++, and people could already built native ARM applications to run on (jailbreaked) Windows RT. But reading between the lines, it seems that MS will not currently offer that option, but rather encourage people to write UWP/Modern apps, and emulate x86. MS themselves are compiling Office natively for ARM (like they did for Windows RT, and like they do notepad, calc, ...).
I wonder how UWP apps work technically on ARM. I heard apps will be compiled on the fly to run on ARM. Managed code (C#) just runs on the CLI or can be AOT compiled. But C++ is also a first-class citizen. Will you ship x86 code that is emulated/recompiled, or will you ship both x86 and ARM, or some kind of intermediate representation (like I think you do on iOS)?
Eh kind of? qemu can be used with binfmt-misc to do CPU emulation while still passing syscalls to the running kernel, but it's a long way from perfect - there's various corner cases that cause problems.
> Also, I wonder the internals of that x86 emulation, if a linux program can leverage it?
It could probably be adapted for that, but since either Microsoft or Qualcomm is in control of it right now, and it generates a competitive advantage, I doubt either would be enthusiastic to publish it in such a form.
For what it's worth, if about 1/3 native performance (not sure, but I figure the QCOM/MS DBT gets maybe 1/2-3/4 native, from the way it seems to work with applications in the demos) is acceptable, QEMU can do more or less the same thing already on Linux: running x86 userspace programs on AArch64 (also some other architectures). In fact, you can add a binary format handler to your system to have it transparently load x86 binaries in QEMU.
Of course, this means having to set up a separate PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and a few other things.
From the same people that brought us Windows RT and ARM Surface tablets... got many of my clients to buy them... and then magically decided "Windows RT and ARM sucks. We don't support them anymore."
So I'll hold my breathe before recommending ANY of my clients use this.
1. How can Intel sue MS for emulator, but linux(qemu) can get way with it?
2. Why MS tries to push the emulator, when they can just port their programs (already ported to Win RT I think) and provide developers some tools to port their apps?
There are zillions of old Windows programs whose developers are long gone. They're never getting ported. The only serious way to do this is to emulate/translate old apps automatically.
This is a big difference between os x/iOS and windows/Android. On the apple platforms developers are expected to keep doing all kinds of things in response to apples directives. Nobody will do that for windows and Android.
Size aside, I tried installing Win10 To Go on a USB 3 flash drive recently (just a typical 'high speed' flash drive, not the external eSATA drives they certify) and the performance was beyond unusable. I can't imagine anything would run off an SD card.
> The firmware setup shall indicate if Secure Boot is turned on, and if it is operated in Standard or Custom Mode. The firmware setup must provide an option to return from Custom to Standard Mode which restores the factory defaults. On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. Only Standard Mode may be enabled.
[0]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/com...