Windows on Arm puts Intel on notice

Windows on Arm puts Intel on notice

Microsoft’s first round of Copilot Plus PCs launched last week with the promise of better battery life, performance that matches a MacBook Air, and chips ready for AI. I’ve spent the past week testing both of Microsoft’s new Surface devices, and I think they largely live up to Microsoft’s promises.

There are some expected app emulation drawbacks here and there. But for the most part, if you don’t have complex app needs, these new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips deliver the Windows on Arm experience that Microsoft has been promising for more than a decade. They also put a lot of pressure on Intel to respond.

I’ve been most impressed with the battery life on the $999.99 base model of the Surface Laptop during my testing. There have been times I’ve used it for the entire workday and never worried about having to charge. I’ve closed the lid and, days later, woken the Surface Laptop to find it hadn’t drained the battery life down to zero. I’ve never been confident enough to do that with an Intel-powered laptop.

Intel still has the upper hand when it comes to app compatibility after decades of developers optimizing their apps for Intel’s hardware. But now its competition has caught up on performance and managed to achieve the type of battery life that Intel has promised and failed to deliver for years.

That alone has to make Intel nervous, but there has also been a growing frustration inside Microsoft about Intel’s lack of progress over the past decade. I think most of it started with the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book in 2015. Microsoft was trying something new with the detachable display on the Surface Book, and it relied on Intel’s Skylake chips to deliver its new hardware.

I heard from sources at the time that Intel’s Skylake firmware and drivers caused plenty of issues for the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book, leaving Microsoft’s customers frustrated by devices they’d spent thousands of dollars on. It took months for Microsoft and Intel to deliver fixes to prevent those Surface devices from draining battery during standby. Microsoft wasn’t alone in struggling with the power management of Intel’s Skylake chips, with Dell suffering similar problems. Those headaches helped further conversations inside Microsoft to diversify the silicon inside Surface. The result was evident a few years later, in 2019, when Microsoft launched the 15-inch Surface Laptop 3 and the Surface Pro X, and neither came with an Intel processor. It was the first time Microsoft had picked AMD or Qualcomm for its Surface devices. “We literally spent tens of thousands of hours of co-development and co-engineering hand-in-hand with Microsoft,” said AMD’s Jack Huynh in an interview with me in 2019.

Microsoft was keen to make AMD and Qualcomm the stars of its Surface show that year, so only the smaller 13-inch Surface Laptop 3 shipped with Intel options. Qualcomm also helped co-engineer the SQ1 chip for Microsoft’s Surface Pro X, which led to a pivotal decision to fully exclude Intel from this new device and push Windows on Arm instead.

While the Surface Pro X didn’t deliver a great Windows on Arm experience, it showed a future that was possible for Microsoft’s Surface devices if developers got on board. Qualcomm and Microsoft continued to work on iterations of the SQ line for years, but it wasn’t until Qualcomm’s acquisition of Nuvia in 2021 that things really started to change for Windows on Arm.

Nuvia was originally founded in 2019 by three former Apple engineers and chip specialists who worked on the A-series chips that powered the iPhone and iPad. Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X Elite chips are based directly on the Oryon CPU tech from its acquisition of Nuvia.

Microsoft and Qualcomm, confident they could kick-start a true Windows on Arm effort eventually, then spent the past two years working toward Copilot Plus PCs. That involved a lot of work convincing software developers to port their apps to ARM64 and getting Microsoft’s PC partners on board to offer a selection of laptops that weren’t just an afterthought or to satisfy a contract.

The results of this multiyear effort are clear to see, with Windows on Arm finally feeling like it’s moving in the right direction and getting the support from developers it so badly needed when Microsoft first launched the Surface Pro X nearly five years ago. I was surprised to see Slack and Google release ARM64 apps just weeks before Microsoft’s launch, and even Adobe has committed to bringing apps like Premiere Pro to Windows on Arm.

Now, we have to see how AMD and Intel respond. Copilot Plus PCs are limited to Qualcomm chips right now, but both AMD and Intel are planning to launch their own versions soon. AMD’s Strix Point chips are coming in July, just a month after Qualcomm’s, but Intel’s Lunar Lake chips won’t arrive until “later this year.” Both AMD and Intel are promising better performance and battery life, but they’re no longer competing against each other here since Qualcomm is now a serious contender on both metrics.

Microsoft also appears to be giving Qualcomm a helping hand. For reasons that Microsoft, AMD, and Intel won’t explain, only Qualcomm will have the AI-powered Copilot Plus features until a mystery update appears at some point in the future.

How Intel responds with its new laptop chips will be particularly important. It feels like we’re now in a transition to Windows on Arm, but it’s not like the transition Apple pulled off with its own silicon. Microsoft has decades of legacy and compatibility it can’t just drop, as it’s a big part of the reason many businesses still rely on Windows every day. Apple was able to drop 32-bit apps and force its developer community to transition to Arm by ditching Intel chips. Even with some of Microsoft’s frustrations over Intel’s progress, I can’t see the same thing happening for Windows.

Instead, Intel will now have to compete knowing Windows OEMs are willing to put Qualcomm chips inside some of their best laptops. AMD is also rumored to be launching its own Arm-based CPUs for Windows laptops as soon as 2025, so that could shake things up further. There’s a lot going on, and we’re only just at the beginning of a Windows AI era that Microsoft is promising could revolutionize how we use PCs.

How Microsoft handles balancing its transition to Windows on Arm and keeping all of its chip partners and OEMs happy will be interesting to witness. I know that the lead-up to this Copilot Plus PC launch hasn’t been easy, particularly with Microsoft attempting to control how OEMs launch their hardware. The Recall mess provided some added tension here, too.

A diversification of silicon is only a good thing for competition and the Windows laptop market. While Windows on Arm laptops are still limited to the premium part of the laptop market, if they’re successful, it won’t be long before they start taking on the budget-focused territory. That’s when Intel’s response will be truly tested. 

The pad

• Microsoft has been charged with antitrust violations in the EU. Microsoft has escaped antitrust violations in the EU for 15 years, but that changed this week thanks to its Microsoft Teams bundling. EU regulators have now charged Microsoft with illegally bundling its Teams chat app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Slack filed a complaint with the EU against Microsoft in 2020, just as Teams was skyrocketing in usage during the covid-19 pandemic. If Microsoft is found guilty of the charges, it could face a fine of up to 10 percent of the company’s annual worldwide turnover.
• Xbox cloud console appears in a patent listing. Remember the small little Xbox streaming device that appeared on Phil Spencer’s shelf? Well, Keystone surfaced in a new patent this week. The canceled Xbox streaming console would have shipped with an HDMI port, ethernet, and a power connector. It was designed to access Xbox Cloud Gaming, but Microsoft put it on hold because it couldn’t get to the right price point.
• AI work assistants need a lot of hand-holding. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on how AI work assistants like Copilot require a heavy lift to get the full value out of them. While Microsoft sells a vision of a helpful AI assistant, one CIO says businesses need to clean up and manage their data to really make the most of Copilot.
• Xbox founding member Marc Whitten is now Cruise CEO. Marc Whitten left Microsoft for Sonos after the disastrous Xbox One launch and more recently served as president at Unity. He also ran Amazon’s Fire TV and Kindle divisions for a few years, and now he’s taking charge of Cruise, the GM-backed robotaxi company. He certainly has his work cut out for him after a disastrous response to a driverless car crash incident.
• Xbox TV app is coming to Amazon’s Fire TV Sticks. You won’t need a Samsung TV to get access to the Xbox TV app soon. Microsoft is bringing its Xbox TV app to some Fire TV Stick devices, opening up any TV to get access to Xbox Cloud Gaming to play Xbox games without a console.
• Microsoft makes Copilot less useful on Copilot Plus PCs. The new dedicated Copilot key that’s appearing on new Copilot Plus PCs just launches a Progressive Web App (PWA) version of Copilot. The web app doesn’t even integrate into Windows anymore like the previous Copilot experience did since last year, so you can’t use Copilot to control Windows 11 settings or have it docked as a sidebar. It’s a strange decision for devices that are supposed to be so AI-focused.
• The new Surface Pro Flex Keyboard works on a Surface Pro X from five years ago. Microsoft’s commitment to compatibility is unwavering when it comes to the Surface Pro. I managed to get the new Surface Pro Flex Keyboard working on a Surface Pro X (2019) just by plugging it in. It even automatically pairs by Bluetooth so you can use it wirelessly. Microsoft has also issued driver updates and firmware updates to make this new keyboard compatible with other Surface Pro devices.
• A Microsoft engineer accidentally leaked 4GB of internal code. Microsoft’s big security effort hit a brick wall earlier this month after it was discovered that an engineer accidentally posted internal code for Microsoft’s PlayReady media file copy prevention technology to a Microsoft developer community. Researchers from AG Security Research were able to successfully build the Windows PlayReady library thanks to the leaked code and instructions on the build process. Oops.
• Forza Horizon 4 will be delisted from Microsoft stores and Steam in December. Playground Games is ending sales of Forza Horizon 4 due to licensing and partner agreements. The game will also be removed from Microsoft stores and Steam on December 15th, 2024. This is a good example of why game preservationists aren’t keen on a digital-only future where games can just disappear from stores.
• What’s gaming like on Windows on Arm? I need to do more testing, but my first impressions in the Surface Laptop review weren’t great. Others, like Retro Tech Dad, had some luck with a bunch of older games but also found issues with titles like Doom Eternal. Gaming feels like a mixed bag on Windows on Arm right now, despite Microsoft’s promises of a “step forward for gaming on Arm devices.” I’ll dig into this further in a future Notepad issue.

I’m taking a break next week during the July 4th holiday week, so Notepad will return on July 11th. In the meantime, if you picked up one of the new Copilot Plus PCs, please let me know what you think about it. You can reach me via email at [email protected].

If you’ve heard about any secret project Microsoft is working on, you can also reach me confidentially on the Signal messaging app where I’m tomwarren.01. I’m also tomwarren on Telegram if you’d prefer to chat there.