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Thew
@Thew

it's part of a weird cross-branding thing with qualcomm where they're including "ai accelerator" chips in new snapdragon socs, and microsoft is inventing a "Copilot+" brand to slap on new hardware that uses these socs in order to pretend they have some sort of real-world use

Windows on ARM is fully in the "cruel joke" software category; it's basically a scam where they disguise chromebooks as real laptops and sell them for 2x the price of a chromebook, but slightly cheaper than a computer. No one has ever intentionally bought a windows ARM machine; they are only purchased by accident. Adding an AI keylogger to the new models will not help

I'm not saying any of this is Good but I AM saying probably don't panic. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and find this shit patched onto your previously-working PC

Obviously it's still possible they'll try to inflict this on real computers SOME day, but that's not the product they're currently attempting to sell


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in reply to @Thew's post:

The problem is the Overton window. Once Microsoft has done this in a shipping product once it will be less shocking for another OS to do it, or a stalkerware product for that matter. This feature makes the world worse by merely existing, even if it never appears on your computer.

And "Recall" seems broadly of a piece with the other "AI" features that have been reported as coming to Regular Windows (although it's hard to say which news reports can accurately predict an unfinished product, especially when Microsoft's own marketing statements are probably not actually reliable).

Windows on ARM has historically been a disaster, but my understanding is that the writing is on the wall, and in order to keep up with Apple's performance and efficiency/battery life, they are making it a priority to switch architecture. So yeah, your current PC is fine, but your choices on the next one might get weird.

Gotta disagree with a main point here: x86 processors supporting the specs are coming, likely within the next half a year or so. https://www.engadget.com/intel-powered-copilot-pcs-will-be-available-this-fall-204049150.html
Intel and others are in fact making a big deal publicly of "AI PC" (the current buzzword for these things). It's primarily a hardware limitation blocking it, so existing systems are fine, but it's a limitation every hardware company has made no secret of working hard to overcome with their future models, as they all see it as The Next Big Thing to get market share in.

For context/reference, MNT research is a small company making very open-source laptop that run on ARM. They recently offered an upgrade to a rockchip rk3588 which they say is fast enough to comfortably run CAD software.

I wouldn't be surprised if low range laptop all started to run on ARM

I'm getting tired of having to point this out every time I see someone catastrophizing about it, and then being asked for a source, because I am apparently the only person who read beyond the headline of the very article they linked and are panicking about.

Will they eventually bring it to all of Windows 11? Probably in some form, unless this bombs as hard as it's nearly guaranteed to do. I'll worry about it when/if it stops needing specific hardware to run, since Win11 is already particular about that. (I'm on the verge of just giving up and learning Linux as it is but their bullshit hasn't quite overcome inertia yet.)