I agree with much of what you said except the “who cares” part. I care very much to see meaningful innovation and competition in silicon. I’ve only been buying AMD and Apple silicon for many years now because intel has just been “meh” imho. This is great to see. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a windows laptop, but if I were, this would probably be on my short list of products to consider.
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Microsoft Says Windows Laptops With Snapdragon X Elite Will Be Faster Than M3 MacBook Air
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We will see. There are often many moving parts here. Hardware, OS, software support etc. It definitely helps that Apple controls so many layers of that stack.
I personally feel that for as long as Microsoft tries to have their cake and eat it too, their efforts won’t really go anywhere. Bet hedging won’t get any them anywhere. However, I don’t see Satya Nadella going onto stage and announcing that Intel PCs are going away within X months and are never coming back and that is why I am not really holding my breath here.
I personally feel that for as long as Microsoft tries to have their cake and eat it too, their efforts won’t really go anywhere. Bet hedging won’t get any them anywhere. However, I don’t see Satya Nadella going onto stage and announcing that Intel PCs are going away within X months and are never coming back and that is why I am not really holding my breath here.
I believe its really good news for both Microsoft and Apple users alike. Yes its very likely it will not compete on energy efficiency, and some will say 'who cares'.
What I believe it will do, is keep a real sense of competition where both have to start thinking about consumers needs rather than their own.
I believe Apple has sat on its worthy laurels for quite a while, and its endemic in many large organisations. This competition may herald a better deal for consumers, where real competition should be the consumers best friend.
No doubt Apple will compete, and may be forced to compete in terms of base configurations, and I still believe the iPhone which you can understand motivates Apple more because of sheer numbers, also assists in diluting the potential of Apple's computing equipment.
It should also help Apple too, inasmuch as it makes the action against Apple by the justice department look less likely to succeed.
Apple's revenues now look to services and where I believe it was suggested to be 25% of its revenue where its expected by 2025 that figure will be around $100,000,000,000.
With the best will, I don't believe Apple have sought to produce the most powerful devices for the last few years, and have in some instances curtailed potential performance, so perhaps that might change too.
If they really want more service revenue for games, then they will have to ensure the devices used are up to the job, and whilst great improvements have been made, they are not there yet.
Similar situation exists in computing and graphical power, but perhaps that will have to change.
What I believe it will do, is keep a real sense of competition where both have to start thinking about consumers needs rather than their own.
I believe Apple has sat on its worthy laurels for quite a while, and its endemic in many large organisations. This competition may herald a better deal for consumers, where real competition should be the consumers best friend.
No doubt Apple will compete, and may be forced to compete in terms of base configurations, and I still believe the iPhone which you can understand motivates Apple more because of sheer numbers, also assists in diluting the potential of Apple's computing equipment.
It should also help Apple too, inasmuch as it makes the action against Apple by the justice department look less likely to succeed.
Apple's revenues now look to services and where I believe it was suggested to be 25% of its revenue where its expected by 2025 that figure will be around $100,000,000,000.
With the best will, I don't believe Apple have sought to produce the most powerful devices for the last few years, and have in some instances curtailed potential performance, so perhaps that might change too.
If they really want more service revenue for games, then they will have to ensure the devices used are up to the job, and whilst great improvements have been made, they are not there yet.
Similar situation exists in computing and graphical power, but perhaps that will have to change.
Good point! It's this doublethink they want plurality, diversity, democracy all these universal principles yet at the same time they want 1 company 1 chip maker and 1 system. So it's universal but doesn't apply to technology. It's like we have Apple why do the likes of Qualcomm, Android or Microsoft even exist
Apple already lost the thinnest game (Google pixel book is much more thinner than apple MacBook Air)
I'm hoping for a more-or-less level playing field amongst computers, lessening the ridiculous brand fanatics that started with the 6ers vs the 8ers back in the 1970s. We're getting closer all the time, but it's going slowly.
The only loser here is Intel 😂
This is good news to have CPU competition again for both Macs and PCs!
This is good news to have CPU competition again for both Macs and PCs!
Exactly. If you need that level of performance you don't need an Air. That is why they have MacBook Pros. Or for that matter desktops.
So many laughing at this, forgetting how many people buy laptops for basic work stuff. There was a time when you walked into a Starbucks and all the laptops were Mac. Now the vast majority of them are Windows. When we eventually get Win laptops with good battery life Apple will have a fight on its hands.
Curious to know if the Snapdragon X Elite is an all-in-one chip or if RAM is separate and upgradable as a result … if both, then that would add value over Apple’s MB Air. Less energy efficient, yes, but faster and upgradable.
Microsoft will advertise that its upcoming Windows laptops with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite processor are faster than the MacBook Air with Apple's latest M3 chip, according to internal documents obtained by The Verge.
"Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that it's planning a number of demos that will show how these processors will be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation," the report says. Microsoft believes its laptops will offer "faster app emulation" than Apple's Rosetta 2.
Introduced in October, the Snapdragon X Elite has Arm-based architecture like Apple silicon. Qualcomm last year claimed that the processor achieved 21% faster multi-core CPU performance than the M3 chip, based on the Geekbench 6 benchmark tool.
There are a few caveats here, including that Microsoft and Qualcomm are comparing to Apple's lower-end M3 chip instead of its higher-end M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. MacBooks with Apple silicon also offer industry-leading performance-per-watt, while the Snapdragon X Elite will likely run hotter and require laptops with fans. Since being updated with the M1 chip in 2020, the MacBook Air has featured a fanless design. Apple can also optimize the performance of MacBooks since it controls both the hardware and macOS software.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Apple's competitors are making progress with Arm-based laptops. Microsoft plans to announce laptops powered by the Snapdragon X Elite later this year, including the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on May 20.
Article Link: Microsoft Says Windows Laptops With Snapdragon X Elite Will Be Faster Than M3 MacBook Air
Intel is working on it too. We will see if they can catch up though, there's a lot of competition in this space, whereas they had a duopoly with x86.
They will if ARM for Windows grows enough, and it will. Microsoft are investing a truck load into this bandwagon.
It can't happen soon enough. There's plenty of us macOS lovers who have use for VMWare or similar, and miss it since M1. So far, I can remain developing software on my MBP, due to MS moving .NET to cross platform (well before M1, thankfully), and Docker and AWS/Azure becoming ubiquitous in the software world, allowing me to run things such as Sql Server on my MBP on a Docker container (The container has an ARM Linux running on it, and SQL Server can run on that - what a life saver!).
I can assure you, native ARM Windows software will be huge.
Some of us use both macOS and Windows. For myself, it's a case of macOS at home, and often, Windows at work. Having Windows work on laptops with comparable performance/efficiency to Mac laptops will be huge.
Even a "poorly" designed Arm chip will run circles around x86 as far as performance-per-watt is concerned.
Fast yes. But will we be able run Windows 11/12 apps to full take advantage of the Snapdragon X Elite SoC? And what will be the power consumption compared to the Apple M3 series of SoC's?
Especially running essentially Win64 code that takes advantage of the Snapdragon X Elite in native code.
