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Comment by vdnkh | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad they didn't move to ARM for the Surface. I bought my mom one for Christmas to replace her iPad 1 (her main computer at the time) and she loves it. Having arthritis, a touchscreen hybrid works really well for her. Not having full access to Windows apps (because of ARM) would probably make it a non-starter though.

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The Surface family started with both ARM and x86 models. The x86-based Pro was the only one that met with any success. The non-Pro Surface used NVidia Tegra for the first two generations before switching to Intel Atom.

Regarding the full access to apps on ARM:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/7/13866936/microsoft-windows...

That was Windows RT, and I don't think Surface has had ARM versions since 2-3 years ago.

Any future ARM Windows devices will have full compatibility with all programs.

> Any future ARM Windows devices will have full compatibility with all programs.

How would they pull off that miracle? Emulating Intel on an ARM chip would be sllloooowwwwwww.

I read somewhere it would be a binary translator. As you have the WinAPI calls natively on ARM, they translate x86 to ARM on the fly and store the result. Not sure if that's true or not.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/8/13881800/microsoft-demonst...

...You were saying?

I admit, I didn't realize they'd already done it with some success. Proof will be in the pudding, however.

It does not seem slow here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_GlGglbu1U.

They tried that with "Surface RT" and it was a total market failure.

RT was a great product. If the OS wasn't named Windows, I'm certain it would have performed much better in the market.

People who bought RT devices EXPECTED to run x86 software but couldn't.

To understand the power of expectations, consider Surface.

Ms originally positioned the Surface as an iPad competitor. And that singlehandedly doomed the Surface until it was repositioned as a MacBook competitor in subsequent releases.

My mom bought a Nokia Windows RT tablet a few years ago — without expecting to run x86 software.

It still sucked.

You're stuck with Windows 8.x, Office 2013 and IE 11. The Store actually has some useful apps. But, like, there's no Firefox, even.

Yeah, those are not much good for anything, at this point. The one I have for work labors to process the Office 365 Outlook webapp and our ticketing portal when I take it to meetings. The $40 Amazon Fire tablet I have feels snappier.

Works fine as a remote desktop client though :D

Couldn't you install Windows 10 ARM?

No?

There's no official update and the device is very locked down. I haven't heard of an unofficial way to do that.

Wouldn't Microsoft send all the devices a free Windows 10 upgrade? Or was that Intel only?

Sorry for being so pedantic but Microsoft ORIGINALLY positioned the Surface as smart furniture.

Pixel Sense used to be called Surface until Microsoft switched the names around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense

Didn't Surface go the other way? They started with the ARM-based Surface and the Intel-based Surface Pro in the Windows 8 era, but seem to have stopped iterating on ARM-based designs.

That's what the windows on ARM version is supposed to solve.

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