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Comment by SilverElfin | Hacker News Reader

It all sounds good on paper. But I have trouble believing Windows can be a good platform for this. Microsoft has lost all trust after inserting ads into windows, slowly removing power user features, and exploiting every dark pattern they can. And for years, the ARM based Windows laptops have been useless due to app compatibility issues. Why would this change now? Is it priced to be a lot cheaper than Apple’s laptops? Or is this a niche product for AI developers basically?

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Anecdotally Windows ARM works fine for me, although to be honest most of my work is command line + browser anyway. WSL works like a treat. Steam installs and most lower end games also play fine on my ARM laptop too. Games that require kernel anticheat don't work.

I think they make a great "second device" where you have something meatier to fall back to if something doesn't quite work right. I'm not sure if it's ready to take on the "main device" role just yet. But it's a far far better experience than the Surface RT days.

The "gaming" take is a strange one indeed for an ARM platform. Hopefully they (Microsoft or Nvidia?) put some real effort into the translation layer. They claim modern AAA games, but it is possible they strongarmed the developers to make them an ARM build for a few select titles...

Yep. I noticed the press releases talk about all the partners they have. It seems like a desperate attempt to manufacture a consensus to invest in this new hardware instead of leaving it sort of abandoned like the other Windows ARM stuff. But the problem is that these attempts end up having a few very visible apps working on the architecture and others not actually doing anything substantial.

Sure the graphics capabilities are probably very good. But if you’re a game developer who has traditionally built on Windows on x86 chips, would you want to invest in this new chip or invest in making games for the Apple ecosystem? Aren’t there more new customers to reach in the Apple world than this new Nvidia world?

> But if you’re a game developer who has traditionally built on Windows on x86 chips, would you want to invest in this new chip or invest in making games for the Apple ecosystem?

Windows and the new chip. Higher developer productivity and higher chances of a substantial audience.

It's clear gaming was not a major concern, it's just "good enough" for someone running AI models and occasionally wants to play some games, not made to primarily play games.

Who cares about Windows, the goal is to run local AI models similar to AMD Strix Halo and Apple Silicon machines. The OS is honestly a distant last concern as long as the models work well, as you could put Linux on these too, but not sure how well wake lock works.

Hopefully MSFT would look at this as a do or die system, and go all in on improving the user and ownership experience. Will they? Not so sure.

Microsoft sees windows purely as a platform to sell AI products these days.

That's what they're working on, in theory, with Windows K2.

I would never trust Microsoft. Their next drama is revoking Office 2019 perpetual licenses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRnno9VIZx0. It never ends with them because they know they have you by the balls.

I trust them on a daily basis. No issues thus far..

A lot of the app compatibility issues on current machines are down to Qualcomm's poor drivers - the actual core bits are mostly okay.

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