Hacker News Reader

Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

Because WinTel is so tied to closed source, backward binary compatibility, and binary distriboution, Microsoft is forever trapped in the x86 space.

For Microsoft to move to ARM, they will need to the whole Windows ecosystem, and every software maker to create, and maintain ARM versions of everything.

ARM64EC is a very desperate move to try working around that.

On Linux, it's simple. ./configure, make, and go for a coffee break.

Their decision to go with binary-centric model now came back to bite them. They have no future in the ARM dominated world.

View on HN

> Because WinTel is so tied to closed source, backward binary compatibility, and binary distriboution, Microsoft is forever trapped in the x86 space.

Because Linux is so tied to open-source, just-recompile-everything software distribution, it will never take over the Desktop. Linux is forever trapped on the server (and embedded systems which break with the aforementioned assumptions).

> ARM64EC is a very desperate move to try working around that.

This is a narrow view. I wish software developers would spend more time in the "real world" to see how a lot of software is actually being used. Not everything is SaaS in a web browser.

> On Linux, it's simple. ./configure, make, and go for a coffee break.

Yes, and when you return, you will most likely find yourself with a set of build errors unique to your system, not a working binary.

> Their decision to go with binary-centric model now came back to bite them. They have no future in the ARM dominated world.

I don't think so. They'll actually make it work without breaking a lot of stuff. I value that. It's one of the reasons why I don't use Mac OS.

Microsoft have, for some years now, realised that shipping bytecode is the future, with easy cross-platform targeting; they've been gradually working towards that with C# and dotnet core. It just takes a very long time to turn the tanker around, and they care more about not forcing all their developers to do the work of transition and their customers to upgrade.

> ./configure, make

Nothing involving autoconf is ever simple.

But for simple apps, "dotnet build" now achieves that level of simplicity.

Microsoft will never achieve that thanks to WinDev political agenda against anything .NET, that is was already the original design of .NET when it was called Ext-VOS, that is why Managed C++ was part of the package since the early days.

Ext-VOS was supposed to be the runtime that would unify VB, C++, COM and everything else that was going to come.

Their sabotage of projects like Longhorn, Managed DirectX, XNA, Singularity, Midori, C++/CLI stagnation, C++ only APIs on WinRT, are a clear indication that it will never happen.

I would be gladly be proven wrong, but I have watching this movie since Visual Studio.NET was released.

Dotnet doesn't work on WinARM

Are you sure? It seems like that's at least at a working proof of concept stage, if not beyond.

https://sinclairinat0r.com/2020/02/05/compiling-net-core-for...

https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/issues/36699

It's in the RID catalog: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/src/libraries/Mi...

> They have no future in the ARM dominated world.

Beware: microsoft has so much money. Wars are lost, if you have enough money, the other side will eventually lose. I don't think they can be written off just yet. Even considering Linux has been running well on arm for a long time, the arm world is not irrecoverable for microsoft.

Nokia also had sooo much money

Yeah, that is why they are still around and own Bell Labs now, UNIX's birthplace.

The competition had more.

Apple was only about 90 days from bankruptcy when they finally brought Steve Jobs back. They then managed to get a loan, and scrape together the funds they had to bring us Mac OS X, then the iPod, then an iPhone, then an iPad bringing themselves back to stability. Cash isn't everything, talent, luck, and strategy plays a factor.

Cash isn't everything but it is definitely critical. If apple were 90 days shorter on money, the world today could be a bit of a different place.

Is not about closed or open source. It’s about MS past priorities. Apple is also closed source, but the need to transition from PowerPC to Intel, forced them to have multi-platform app packages (universal binaries). Nothing prevents MS to do the same. The legacy of Wintel apps reflects the MS priorities in the past. They have UWP, but in the usual MS way: ambiguous messages to the devs adopting the platform.

> Nothing prevents MS to do the same

There is a big difference between Apple's transitions between architectures and failed attempts by Microsoft - Apple is also a sole creator of its hardware, not only software. After they announced transition no more PowerPC would be sold few years later. Microsoft can only dream of banning hardware producers from making x86 laptops/desktops

> the need to transition from PowerPC to Intel, forced them to have multi-platform app packages (universal binaries)

Classic MacOS had them before that, during the transition from 68k to PPC.

NextStep called them Multi-Architecture Binaries since Next ran on 68k, x86, and a couple of RISC CPU flavors.

How would Apple be any different, in particular when talking about closed source and binary centric models? I think the core of Microsoft's difficulty lies elsewhere: two factors that come to my mind are fragmentation and willingness to maintain software compatibility ad libitum (kind of like Apple maintaining Mac OS Classic mode on Apple Silicon).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com