Andrew Cunningham
Microsoft has been trying to make Windows-on-Arm processors a thing for so long that at some point I began to assume that it would never actually happen.
The first effort was Windows RT, which worked well enough on the crappy Arm hardware then available, but came with a confusing new interface and couldn’t run any apps designed for mainstream Intel and AMD-based Windows PCs. Windows RT failed, in part because a version of Windows that couldn’t run Windows apps and didn’t use the familiar Windows interface ignored the two main reasons people still use Windows.
Windows-on-Arm returned in late 2010 with better performance and a translation layer for 32-bit Intel applications. Limited mostly to the odd Surface hardware and a handful of barely announced models from major PC OEMs, this version of Windows has been quietly leaking out for years. It improved slowly and gradually, just like the Qualcomm processors that powered these devices.
That brings us to this year’s flagship Microsoft Surface hardware: the 7th edition Surface Laptop and the 11th edition Surface Pro.
These devices are Microsoft’s first mainstream, flagship Surface devices to use Arm chips, while previous efforts have been side projects or non-default variants. Both the hardware and the software have improved so much that I finally feel like I can recommend Windows-on-Arm to a lot of people without having to mention it with a lot of exceptions.
Unfortunately, Microsoft decided to release this impressive and capable Arm hardware and improved software along with a number of generative AI features, including the Recall screen recorder, a feature that became so radioactively unpopular so quickly that Microsoft was forced to shelve it to address the main security precautions. problems (and perception problems stemming from security issues).
The rest of the AI ​​features are so redundant that I’ll ignore them in this review and mention them later when we take a closer look at the 24H2 Windows 11 update. This is hardware that’s good enough not to be need buzzy AI features for sales. Windows on Arm continues to be a pain, but the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop — and many of the other Arm-based Copilot+ PCs that have been released in the past few weeks — are much better than Arm PCs were even a year or two ago.
Outwardly known
Andrew Cunningham
When Apple released the first few Apple Silicon Macs in late 2020, one thing the company did stand out No the change was the exterior design. Apple didn’t comment much at the time, but the subliminal message was that these were just Macs, they looked just like other Macs, and there was nothing to worry about.
Microsoft’s new Surface flagship, powered for the first time exclusively by Arm-based chips rather than a combination of Arm and Intel/AMD, takes a similar approach: redesigned on the inside, bland on the outside. These are very similar to the latest (and current) Intel-powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop designs, and in the case of the Surface Pro, they actually look identical.
Both computers still feature some of the defining design elements of Surface hardware. Both have 3:2 aspect ratio screens, making them taller than most typical laptop displays that still use 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratios. These screens also support touch input with your fingers or the Surface Pen, and still use gently rounded corners (which Windows doesn’t formally recognize in software, so the corners of your windows will be cropped, not that it’s ever been a problem for me).