For years, Intel sat on its CPU monopoly and now the tide turns against them

Re:For years, Intel sat on its CPU monopoly and now the tide... by cwhiz on Saturday October 03, 2020 @10:28PM (#24676140)

I think that’s a short term take. Apple may be able to reduce the price of their laptops by hundreds of dollars, offer better performance, offer better battery life, offer more desirable form factors, and maintain their margins.

It seems unlikely to me that PC OEMs will just stand by and take it. Windows on ARM already exists and this may be the spark that really ignites that fire.

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Re:For years, Intel sat on its CPU monopoly and now the tide... by _ph_ on Sunday October 04, 2020 @06:46AM (#24677897)

That is my hope too. So far ARM on the desktop/laptop lagged both because of the lack of suitable hardware and software. There are a few interesting Windows on ARM laptops around, I had been eyeing the Galacy Book S, but they lag behind as there is very few native software for them. Which is a chicken and an egg problem. As long as the number of ARM machines is low, software companies are saving money by ignoring them. And this means, the numbers will stay low.

With Apple Silicon, the game changes a bit. Not only is there the prospect of the AS being really fast, as Apple is going to make a complete transition, software companies have to support AS, if they want to continue to sell to Mac users. And suddenly, any Linux user also has a great ARM platform to work on, via a VM running on the Mac.

This might even have a direct impact on the Windows software offerings. So far, they could sell to Mac users running a x86-VM. This will be no longer possible. As much as Mac users contributed to Windows verndors revenue, they have to either give up the Mac market, make a native Mac application or hope that Windows on ARM becomes available in a VM on the Mac. But then, they at least need to fully support Windows on ARM.

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