Seeing the Apple event makes me feel bitter-sweet.
It's like seeing everything Microsoft did first, failed to polish, and gave up on; picked up by Apple, re-done wayyyy better 5y later and marketted to the general populace

I wish msft stopped giving up within 2-3y of failing. The gap will just widen

That sounds exaggerated. It's not like Microsoft had a line of arm devices. Wait... Oh.

@electrineer Apple poured billions into making their ARM stuff while MS grabbed el-cheapo off-the-shelf crap from Qualcomm. Waiting longer would not make much of a difference.

Then again, Apple tightly controls their HW ecosystem while MS doesn't. Plus that Windows' main selling point is backwards compatibility while Apple has selected the customers who don't care much.

The consequence is that ARM Windows is doomed. Even more so after TSMC 5nm is also available to AMD now instead of being Apple exclusive, countering most of Apple's efficiency advantage.

Still, Apple's move was correct because Intel struggles with modernising their fabs, and AMD's supply situation is sketchy. Plus that Apple only targets the high price segment and therefore can afford new TSMC nodes years before AMD gets around to them.

@Fast-Nop it still fits in the narrative that Apple picks up Microsoft's failed turd and polishes it until it sells well.

@electrineer Only that it's not true. When Apple brought the iPhone, MS laughed it off. It was a success. Then Google discovered that you can be second in the market if you compete on price. Then MS found out that coming third to the market, having neither unique selling point and also failing to abuse the desktop monopoly, doesn't work.

But it's the iPhone CPUs that would lead to the M1 in a pretty direct line, that's where Apple had an evolution basis and MS didn't.

Also, ARM isn't that relevant to MS because MS is primarily a SW company, not a HW one. They only need ARM Windows as strategic asset on standby in case that ARM really should displace x86, in which case MS doesn't want to get caught pants down.

Just like MS doesn't develop the x86 CPUs, they expect other manufacturers to come out with powerful ARM stuff. The Surface is more of a demo product, hence the cheap Qualcomm garbage.