Why Windows isn’t ready for Arm developers | ZDNet
This article pretty much nails it. OTOH the old chicken and egg problem is valid here as well. In other words, if there were a ton of WOA devices in the market with commensurate sales, there would be a financial incentive to create these tools
Microsoft has the cash to both:
It will take both at this point to move the needle. I suspect the greater ambivalence at M$ is what to do about Intel if you commit to WOA.
I agree, though there seems to be some deeper problems. Rightly or wrongly the public perception of WOA is that it’s slow, incompatible with a lot of software and expensive.
All those factors translate to death at retail which IMHO is where WOA if it ever does start to take off, will start there.
And you’d think that MS better than anyone would have learned that with the failure of the original Surface.
The X factor in this is Qualcomm. We haven’t gotten a firm date, but at least for now, we understand that the majority of the exclusivity agreements are set to expire this year.
Of course, it’s possible that MS and Qualcomm will renew them, though we’ve heard that it’s not likely.
If they do expire, it would open the door to a bunch of other ARM chip makers. Most intriguing of which is IMHO Samsung and their new Exynos chip with AMD graphics. That could be, to use an over done term " a game changer".
Samsung allegedly has privately shown some possible devices to some key developers and even a couple of OEMs, but the emphasis should be on “allegedly” though I suspect the real reason is exceptionally tight NDAs
And there was a thread over on XDA, about a couple of engineers getting WOA to run on Googles Tensor chips, though that thread very quickly disappeared 
Agreed. FWIW: Is it just me, or has M$ fumbled/abandoned/ignored Chromebooks share of the educational market? Why not monkey see, monkey do? I also wonder what industry verticals could do with long battery WOA devices at point of sale, warehouse, data intake uses against an Azure architecture that corporate analysts access on PCs for delivering reporting and RPA to an enterprise.
@Bishop Yes exactly. I know of at least one customer of ours that would buy 50 WOA devices if they could hit three criteria.
In theory an ARM based Windows device should be able to hit those criteria easily IMHO
And FWIW, especially in k12, MS reps are totally obsessed and freaked out by the success of chromebooks. And early feedback is that the new Education surface, though it got fairly glowing reviews in some of the tech blogs, has been a flop with customers
Never used a Chromebook, so I’m just speculating, but could it be the Google app experience from mobile to Chromebook and back is more seamless, consistent and simpler to move between?
No screen size requirements?
That was one of the surprises, that all vendors chose to keep these ARM devices relatively large (and thus heavy).
Actually from what we here the big appeal of chromebooks besides cost (which the new education surface at least hits that mark) is the ease of management and speed of recovery.
Simply put the management console (aka a single pane of glass) is far more intuitive and straightforward than the byzantine console(s) involved with Active Directory.
BTW: Completely off topic, but something that I’m so glad has made the transition to the new board is the ability to have thoughtful non rancorous discussions. Not to mention the "let me see If can help " ethos toward new members.
It’s a great start to this board
Yeah that’s another mystery. We were expecting and even encouraged by both MS and QUALCOMM to expect a wide range of sizes and configurations.
That most certainly hasn’t been the case with arguably the Galaxy Book 2 coming even somewhat close to that.
PS: @JoeS the customer I mentioned would love an ~11 inch semi surface like device, though even a clamshell laptop would work if it was light weight and long battery life
Speaking of which, Win10 on the GB2 still happily tells me that my device can run Win11, but there’s no sign of the official update to Win11. Pretty poor showing by Microsoft. Any news on what’s causing the delay?
@JoeS yes, and you aren’t going to like the answer we’ve heard.
Allegedly the hang up is with needing some engineering work from Qualcomm, specifically around 64 bit X86 emulation which has basically suspended all “legacy” efforts until the fate of their current exclusivity agreements with MS have been resolved.
We’ve even heard rumors that it’s likely " to end in tears" aka multiple lawsuits
Sheesh, now there’s a real barrier to native WOA support. Time for MS to push out an S1 ARM Chip to compete with the M1…
Ultimately, I think if Microsoft really thought that the game was up and that Arm/RISC had won that they’d pivot pretty fast for a company their size.
But they have deep knowledge of what chip designers are doing and planning well into the future. I reckon that from that knowledge that they know that x86/CISC is going to at least remain competitive enough for it not to be worth completely turning their company around.
Of course, they still dabble with Arm/RISC to keep up with how it is going and as a failsafe.
BINGO! I ask my perennial WOA question - WHY? It’s not just battery efficiency and 5g - that is not of a reason to keep fiddling with ARM. Intel needs to (and may be) getting it’s **** together and produce more efficient processors. With M$ so hung up on the cloud (Windows 365 anyone) and services, why should M$ continue with this failed experiment and just keep chugging along with x86. Come one come all - Windows, MacOS, iPadOS, Android, Chrome, Linux, you name it. In the words of Khan:
I don’t understand why they would be engaging in this right now, with WOA still in its nascency.
Don’t lawsuits like this usually hinge on there being actual revenue streams to be plundered? Wait till WOA becomes big—then sue. At this point, it just hurts QC just as much as MS.
Two parents bickering over custody, while the baby dies? 
It’s M$ applying FUD to Intel. It also occurs to me M$'s real inertia in making that flip is more about existing end-user hardware. I’m not a programmer (I just play an engineer at work) but the GRAIL here would seem to be a single codebase that runs against RISC and CISC allowing a streamlined change management burden and a unified UI/UX for its users. Wait, wasn’t that what PWA was supposed to be? 
Not surprised.
(later, in the Mutara Nebula following a torpedo strike from Enterprise)
JOACHIN (to KHAN): “Yours is the superior intellect…” (DIES IN KHAN’S ARMS)
KHAN: “I shall AVENGE you!!!”
Two farmers arguing over ownership of a cow, while two lawyers busily milk the cow at the same time…
FTFY. Cow hasn’t started producing milk yet. 