> It had a special version of Windows, and almost nothing would run on it, as very few applications are compiled for Windows on ARM.

That wasn't the reason. It was because Windows RT was artificially locked-down to only allow sandboxed "apps" from the Windows App Store to run. There's not much of a use-case for only glorified web-service clients on a machine with a desktop UI regardless of the ISA they're compiled for.

Had MS allowed arbitrary ARM code to run on the Surface RT, free of sandbox restrictions, I think the platform would still be alive today - probably as a successor to Windows CE for kiosk applications.

(Though there is now finally a non-locked-down version of Windows 10 for ARM... so let's see...)

Yeah, it required the Windows Store, and additionally at that time it could only have WinRT (unrelated to Windows RT; basically the old name for UWP) apps. These days you can put Win32 apps on the store. If Microsoft allowed Win32 ARM apps on the store, maybe Windows RT would have succeeded. Maybe. Software publishers probably wouldn't have wanted to lose that control.

Isn't the main problem with ARM the lack of a standard hardware architecture that supports of-the-shelf pc components?

Every motherboard has it's own size, it's own closed bios supporting only some kinds of memory (if at all, due to on die memory of most soc), which is fine for embedded use but leaves a lot to be desired if you try to use it as a "desktop pc" replacement.

PCs were very dissimilar until the IBM PC ate everybody else. Maybe something similar can happen to ARM.

PCs usually refers to IBM PC compatible systems. Which PCs are you referring to?

> Maybe something similar can happen to ARM.

During the era where desktop PCs are becoming anachronistic?

Last time I checked all the employees at boring companies still use desktop PCs (or IBM compatible laptops).

Funny you say that, MS just announced they're taking another stab at it.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/31/15711334/microsoft-window...

Interesting, was watching the video on the new MS Surface Laptop at the end, I saw 4 gig of Ram and shut down the page...

It's designed to run UWP / Store apps exclusively. In the default configuration, it will not run win32 programs at all.

Just to be clear, Win32 apps submitted to the Windows Store will run.

The new Windows 10 on ARM will run emulated x86 apps, so no changes needed from developers. Windows RT required UWP-only apps.

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171

As for "never reaching the same performance" as desktop Intel/AMD chips, I would say that depends. It's not that they can't do it with ARM chips, is that nobody has bothered to do it until now, because there was no point with so few UWP apps. The market would be way too small. What would be the point in making a Core i7-level ARM chip just for the Surface RT? The risk would be too big.

But now that Microsoft opened up the PC market to ARM -- truly -- ARM chip makers can begin to make some real desktop-class ARM chips. Chips that require 15, 30, 45, or even 90 watts of power.

But I do think this will happen gradually over several years, because first they need to see how ARM chips work under Windows 10 this time around and how people accept them. Then if that goes well, they need to start designing those 15-90W ARM chips, and then start selling them.

Someone like Qualcomm needs to be sure that if it does design a 90W ARM chip that's highly competitive with a desktop class Intel or AMD chip (at least in terms of performance/dollar), more than 10 million people will buy it.

We had ARM on the desktop: The Acorn Archimedes [1] ;)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

My Raspberry Pi does almost all things that I would like to do with a computer. I could definitely imagine buying an ARM based computer.

Because we have the sources for most of the software, it can be recompiled.

Not true for Windows, especially old closed source software.

Doesn't that make this an argument against closed source, not against ARM?

I agree the issues are related, but if us people in open source can switch in an afternoon and you people in closed sourced land can't ever switch it highlights a problem.

If the windows ecosystem magically switched to the OSS repo model then ARM would become instantly viable to the maximum extent, no doubt about it.

Apple switched processors several times. They provided an emulator for old programs, so they could run without the user noticing anything (except worse performance). You could probably do the same for ARM.

And Windows has done the same thing for ARM. I think it was posted here in the last month or so.

Edit: found it,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14318406

It's worth understanding the Mac software ecosystem is mostly made up of people who love the platform and OS.

Windows just isn't the same, lots of devs making software the same way the made it 15+ years ago and not wanting or even caring enough to change no matter what the benefits.

also, apple do a really good job on compilers etc to make it easier to write code and systems that jump between systems quite well. Lots of people dev on windows without using the latest tools from Microsoft this is just not how it works with apple.

I wonder if it's possible to use some kind of translator, like Apple did with Rosetta to run PowerPC code on x86. This is of course not interesting for the Surface but it might be a nice solution for a desktop transition to ARM.

Its not really the actual limit. Nobody is writing architecture-specific code anymore. Being able to binary translate x86 won't change the fact that the program you are trying to run is trying to invoke a thousand libraries for a proprietary OS that will never open up or otherwise become portable, that is also compiled against a system call interface specific to only that proprietary non-standard OS.

If Windows on ARM allowed generic binaries, almost everything in the Windows ecosystem would be on ARM. For Windows.

Like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta_Crusoe ?

What made the RISC or ARM processor popular in the past was the ability to do graphic rendering and complex math. GPU's put a dent in that. Making a i386 CISC system with the addition of a GPU have parity with the old SG systems, but substantially cheaper.

That's why an ARM64 Windows desktop is unlikely (unless microsofts x86 emulator is magical). But ARM64 chrome books or android books are practical; I have 5 year old ARM 32 chrome book and it is still useful for browsing and emailing.

It's already happening, Microsoft's using its WOW64 subsystem to emulate Win32 calls on top of native Windows 10 for ARM.

Source: https://channel9.msdn.com/events/Build/2017/P4171

When I wrote "magical" I meant "sufficiently performant". Which I will only believe when I see in action.

Why restrict it to those limited OSes? Seems like an ARM64 laptop running Linux ought to work just as well as the AMD64 laptops running Linux I've been using for the last few years.

I've been using Linux on my desktop (without windows even in a VM) since 2004 and I totally agree - however until Linux is considered a viable option by non-enthusiasts, it's not relevant to this discussion. (I agree it is already relevant and more useful than Windows for the vast majority - but they refuse to even try)

Here's an off the shelf 32 core ARM desktop: https://www.avantek.co.uk/store/arm-desktops.html

> as very few applications are compiled for Windows on ARM.

Why is that? I mean what is preventing anyone to just compile those apps to arm64?

Well they also pushed the Windows Store hard, which hasn't exactly been a resounding success.

Is that the case for Linux OSes as well? I thought that ARM was a first class citizen for Debian based distros for many years.