According to Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:

Chicken-and-egg situation, and no way to break out of it.

A possible way would be to offer the ARM-based systems much cheaper,
making the hardware attractive to users who do not use
architecture-specific ISV software. ...

Microsoft doesn't make PCs, and it is not clear to me how they would
bribe OEMs to do that without running into competition issues.

Apple has switched CPUs on the Mac three times, from 68K to POWER to
x86 to ARM, quite successfully since they control both the hardware
and software. Each time they provided software emulation of the
previous CPU, and the new systems were enough faster that the
emulation speed was adequate. Since nobody writes anything in
assembler any more, these days building a version of software for the
new CPU needs little more than changing a few switches and
recompiling.

On my newish M2 Mac, the only thing that doesn't work is an add-in to
the calibre ebook package. Calibre is written in python, and includes
its own copy of python so you can install it as a single app. That
works fine, most add-ins work fine. The one add-in that doesn't calls
an external crypto library, but the copy of that library on my Mac is
ARM while calibre and the add-in are emulated x86. If I cared more
I could probably figure out where to get the x86 version of the library.

Someone else pointed to a press release about ARM chips in Microsoft's
cloud. Keep reading and it becomes clear that they mostly expect
people to run linux on them.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly

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On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 19:17:49 -0000 (UTC)
John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

According to Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:

Chicken-and-egg situation, and no way to break out of it.

A possible way would be to offer the ARM-based systems much cheaper,
making the hardware attractive to users who do not use >architecture-specific ISV software. ...

Microsoft doesn't make PCs, and it is not clear to me how they would
bribe OEMs to do that without running into competition issues.

Of course, Microsoft makes PCs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
I think, it is one of the reasons OEMs are not enthusiastic about
Windows on Arm. They don't want to compete with their OS supplier.

I asked google "What is a market share of Microsoft Surface?"
The answer was "In the Personal Computing Devices category, Microsoft
Surface has a market share of about 2.4%."
It means that they are near #10 spot, give or take 1 or 2 places.

Apple has switched CPUs on the Mac three times, from 68K to POWER to
x86 to ARM, quite successfully since they control both the hardware
and software. Each time they provided software emulation of the
previous CPU, and the new systems were enough faster that the
emulation speed was adequate. Since nobody writes anything in
assembler any more, these days building a version of software for the
new CPU needs little more than changing a few switches and
recompiling.

On my newish M2 Mac, the only thing that doesn't work is an add-in to
the calibre ebook package. Calibre is written in python, and includes
its own copy of python so you can install it as a single app. That
works fine, most add-ins work fine. The one add-in that doesn't calls
an external crypto library, but the copy of that library on my Mac is
ARM while calibre and the add-in are emulated x86. If I cared more
I could probably figure out where to get the x86 version of the
library.

Someone else pointed to a press release about ARM chips in Microsoft's
cloud. Keep reading and it becomes clear that they mostly expect
people to run linux on them.

That's what I expected without reading.
The only thing that I was not sure about is whether Windows is supported
at all.
May be, I should read it myself when I have no better things to read.

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On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 22:58:37 +0200, Michael S wrote:

Of course, Microsoft makes PCs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
I think, it is one of the reasons OEMs are not enthusiastic about
Windows on Arm. They don't want to compete with their OS supplier.

And the only reason Microsoft is offering any ARM-based machines at all is
to try to promote the platform.

I don’t think they’ve made money on any ARM machine they’ve ever sold.

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John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:

According to Anton Ertl <anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>:

Chicken-and-egg situation, and no way to break out of it.

A possible way would be to offer the ARM-based systems much cheaper,
making the hardware attractive to users who do not use >>architecture-specific ISV software. ...

Microsoft doesn't make PCs

They make the Surface laptops and also make Surface all-in-one PCs
(but the latter have not been updated for a while).

and it is not clear to me how they would
bribe OEMs to do that without running into competition issues.

Anti-trust action has been much weaker in recent decades compared to
the 1970s <https://doctorow.medium.com/an-antitrust-murder-whodunnit-49f3bd3cc69c>.

Since nobody writes anything in
assembler any more, these days building a version of software for the
new CPU needs little more than changing a few switches and
recompiling.

And yet, most ISVs generally don't provide ARM versions of their
Windows software.

- anton
--
'Anyone trying for "industrial quality" ISA should avoid undefined behavior.'
Mitch Alsup, <c17fcd89-f024-40e7-a594-88a85ac10d20o@googlegroups.com>

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On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 21:31:58 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 22:58:37 +0200, Michael S wrote:

Of course, Microsoft makes PCs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
I think, it is one of the reasons OEMs are not enthusiastic about
Windows on Arm. They don't want to compete with their OS supplier.

And the only reason Microsoft is offering any ARM-based machines at
all is to try to promote the platform.

My theory is that Microsoft started this route because they badly wants
to be in the business of "always connected" devices. Nowadays they hate
to sell software and very much prefer SaaS. "Always connected" helps
there or at least Satya Nadella believes that it helps.
They bought Nokia's smart phones division, but it didn't work.
So, they tried something else that went not great, but at least better.

I don’t think they’ve made money on any ARM machine they’ve ever sold.

For Surface as whole I heared, not very recently, that it was
profitable. For Arm-based Surface specifically, I'd think it is a
sectret even within Microsoft, same as for any other Surface model in isolation.
I happen to have a co-worker that was fired from MS Surface hardware development not long ago. He worked there many years and never ever was
told about profitability of individual models.

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On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 23:57:34 +0200, Michael S wrote:

They bought Nokia's smart phones division, but it didn't work.

They only did that as a last-ditch effort to save face, because the
company was on the verge of giving up on Windows Phone altogether and
switching to Android.

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On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:58:21 GMT, Anton Ertl wrote:

John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> writes:

Since nobody writes anything in assembler any more, these days building
a version of software for the new CPU needs little more than changing a
few switches and recompiling.

And yet, most ISVs generally don't provide ARM versions of their Windows software.

For some reason, it’s hard (i.e. expensive) for proprietary software to be cross-platform.

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Michael S wrote:

On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 21:31:58 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 22:58:37 +0200, Michael S wrote:

Of course, Microsoft makes PCs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Surface
I think, it is one of the reasons OEMs are not enthusiastic about
Windows on Arm. They don't want to compete with their OS supplier.

And the only reason Microsoft is offering any ARM-based machines at
all is to try to promote the platform.

My theory is that Microsoft started this route because they badly wants
to be in the business of "always connected" devices. Nowadays they hate
to sell software and very much prefer SaaS. "Always connected" helps
there or at least Satya Nadella believes that it helps.
They bought Nokia's smart phones division, but it didn't work.
So, they tried something else that went not great, but at least better.

I don’t think they’ve made money on any ARM machine they’ve ever sold.

For Surface as whole I heared, not very recently, that it was
profitable. For Arm-based Surface specifically, I'd think it is a
sectret even within Microsoft, same as for any other Surface model in isolation.
I happen to have a co-worker that was fired from MS Surface hardware development not long ago. He worked there many years and never ever was
told about profitability of individual models.

I have found the Surface machines to be very dependable, I have bought 3
of them over the years, starting with the original (?) Surface Pro which
was the first real PC model. I have since given the first two to my
kids, both are still working along with my newish (3-5 years?) night table/travel machine.

Terje


--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

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In article <uqm6gb$3h32u$1@dont-email.me>, ldo@nz.invalid (Lawrence
D'Oliveiro) wrote:

On Thu, 15 Feb 2024 23:57:34 +0200, Michael S wrote:

They bought Nokia's smart phones division, but it didn't work.

They only did that as a last-ditch effort to save face, because the
company was on the verge of giving up on Windows Phone altogether
and switching to Android.

Yup. The Nokia decision to switch to Windows Phone looked unwise when it
was made, and that was amply proven in practice.

Microsoft made various attempts to persuade my employers to support
Windows Phone, WinRT, and Windows Store Apps. They never seemed to
understand that we were in the technical computing business, not the
personal app business. They could not, or would not, grasp that this was
a different sector, and we were confident that we'd do very badly if we
tried to switch.

John

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On Sat, 17 Feb 2024 00:10 +0000 (GMT Standard Time), John Dallman wrote:

The Nokia decision to switch to Windows Phone looked unwise when it
was made, and that was amply proven in practice.

All the blame could very much be laid at the door of then-CEO and ex- Microsoftie Stephen Elop.

The irony is that Nokia were already working on a decent Debian-based
phone by the time he was appointed, called the N9. He was too late to kill
it off completely, but he did see to it that it only underwent limited
release and that there were no followup models.

As I recall, it received rave reviews in the markets where it was
released. Then once stocks ran out, that was the end of it. And Nokia went
back to losing money.

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