You are right. We can always dream. Is not what we have today, the dreams of yesterday? If anyone can do it and do it well, it is Apple. On the other hand, I don't have much confidence in Qualcomm and MS. I was
reading this PC Mag article about what you were talking about and that future doesn't look too rosy unfortunately. You
remember this from a few years ago? I was really rooting for this and then it just died and disappeared. In this day of technology somebody has got to be able make a mobile device that can also hook up to a keyboard, mouse and monitor and become a full fledged desktop. I am hoping for Apple but would also be happy if Samsung or MS could do it.
I don't have much confidence in Samsung replacing Dex with WoA, but I think WoA devices will improve a lot. That PC Mag article is pretty poor and jumps to conclusions based on experience with the worst WoA chip.
And as to the second link, I remember very well, it was the first test of Windows on Arm. It didn't die, far from it, it's still here, it went on with the poor phone chip SD835, then the not so much better 850 (a sort of improved version of the 845) and then with the 8CX, a dedicated version of the 855 with 3 times the TDP that was put in the Surface pro X, much better than the previous ones but still relatively weak for Windows, especially because it was handicapped by emulation. And they also made some pointless 7c and 8c chips. The second gen of 8CX was only marginally better, but the 3rd gen that just came out this year? Well that thing is almost twice as fast. Not on par with M1, but on par with Intel 10gen core chips. And Nuvia promises to outperform the M1 and be competitive with its successors.
The process has been slow and painful because Qualcomm didn't care. They were too busy selling phone chips and just repurposed them for Windows and sold them at outrageous prices. Apple meanwhile was decoupling phones and tablet chips to the point where the tablet chips became faster than Intel. But M1 was a big wake-up moment for Qualcomm and they quickly bought Nuvia and have been working hard in 2021 (and 8CX gen 3 is proof of that).
Sure emulation will be an handicap, but things like the browser or Office and of course the OS are native and if you have tried WoA on M1 it runs pretty well, despite a double layer of virtualization and emulation. And honestly they don't need to have M1 max performance. There is Intel and AMD for that. They need to be fast enough to provide great battery life in some form factors, like tablets, where battery life and low weight are important.
And I know that many people here, and maybe you too, hate Windows, especially on a tablet. But many don't outside the Apple world. And personally, if MS came with a surface pro that was as light as a the iPad pro, as fast, fanless and had similar battery life I'd buy it in a heart-bit...(I would happily trade the not so perfect touch experience for the added capabilities). But with Intel we are far from it and we'll probably never get there.
Now granted, Microsoft hasn't been nowhere near Apple in terms of quality for their tablets, but they are improving (and Surface pro 8 is a sign of that, even just looking at things like speaker quality).
And they have been slow with Windows on Arm, but they are making a lot of progress lately with Windows 11 on Arm, which has also been improved for touch.
And even for those that hate Windows, if WoA brings competition in the tablet world, by solving its real issues (which are heat, noise, weight, poor battery life, etc, not so much Windows in my opinion), that may push Apple to consider giving a "MacOS mode" to iPad pro/air.
