Famous last words, stated one month before HP/Dell/Lenovo/Asus/Samsung launch the first Arm-Qualcomm laptops with UEFI, upstream Linux and Windows 11 support, including "AI" silicon and optional LTE modems. Hopefully they will be competitive in performance-per-watt with Apple M3, minus the walled garden.
You clearly never witnessed Qualcomm's MO. They're the kings of manufacturing proprietary bullshit standards paralel to the open ones, closed firmware blobs and providing next to no Linux support.
If this is what the PC future looks like, you can keep your ARM laptops, I'll gladly stick to ye' olde X86, where I can plug in a USB stick and install any OS I want without worries.
They have publicly promised upstream Linux support for Elite X at launch.
> I'll gladly stick to ye' olde X86, where I can plug in a USB stick and install any OS I want without worries.
We'll find out soon if these new Arm laptops can bridge that compatibility gap thanks to UEFI and Arm SystemReady.
We don't need to declare defeat before the starter gun has even been fired.
By several accounts, Apple is about to allow 1TB/$2000 iPad Pros to run MacOS VMs, which will likely expose silicon support for nested virtualization that can run Linux and other Arm VMs. Despite silicon support shipping for years in iPads, Apple has refused customer requests to enable VMs on iPads. Until 2024, where Apple delayed iPad Pro OLED launch to May 6th, ahead of Qualcomm/MS May 20th launch of Surface Pro with Windows 11 + Linux VMs.
It's a bizarre world where Qualcomm+Microsoft can offer the least-closed Arm laptop to run multiple bare-metal and virtualized operating systems, but here we are. If Qualcomm and PC OEMs can push Apple to be more open, all customers will benefit. If enough customers buy PC Arm laptops for OS flexibility and performance-per-watt of battery life, the revenue and OEM/customer pressure may push Qualcomm into a less-closed direction.
And virtualization works just fine in x86 land. Even GPU virtualization is supported by intel iGPU.
Qualcomm has a $30B+ pipeline in the growing vehicle market, they don't need to squeeze the declining laptop CPU sector. They can sell overpriced modems in PC laptops/tablets. The next hardware market is dedicated "AI" silicon, with Microsoft's "AI PC" roadmap requiring 40 TOPS on client devices, which Qualcomm is eager to provide and conveniently aligns with their automotive pipeline.
I rather they give us real programming manuals instead of poorly commented Linux code that diddles a black box.
Linux inst the only OS out there.
say no more https://semiaccurate.com/2023/09/26/whats-going-on-with-qual...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37709270
(it may or may not be true, semiaccurate's track record is... "checkered", and afaik reports were this doesn't seem to have shipped in the final product, but the fact that it's even a question...)
Sunlight is a good disinfectant.
We need more tech journalists to shine light on pre-production supply chains, early enough to improve GA hardware.
Especially these days if you get .net, electron and basic winapi working, that's a huge amount of office/productivity apps covered.
Best Buy customers will understand battery life, performance and shiny "AI" features, thanks to Microsoft marketing.