Windows on Arm gets x64 emulation support in latest beta

[kompukare]

Hahahaha yes but in this case, they have removed a lot of things as well. Mac Mini and M1 laptops have limited IO, no ram interface and limited pci-e lanes. They've removed the dram interface and integrated the dram on the chip. They have thunderbolt lanes but because of what's been chopped not full thunderbolt connectivity. Removed a lot of ways to communicate with the outside wolrd and the usb implementation is slow. Now if someone else tried that in say the pc arm space, they'd be derided. But as it's Apple nobody looks at that. So the M1 is useless out of the niche market that Apple have over the last couple of years created for themselves. Heck even the Pi has loads more io available - and yes I know that's because it has 40 pins available...
I like the M1 - but it's only useful to Apple and what they are trying to do. For me, not enough usb lanes for starters for anything I'd probably want to do (Macbook Pro has 2 x usb-c ports... and 1 is for charging)

But aren't you mainly criticizing the SOC (Unicore, what used to be the traditional northbridges/southbridges)?
What's impressive about Apple's ARM designs is the CPU performance (and in the case of the M1 the GPU too) with them being way faster than Qualcomm or ARM. Although since Qualcomm and Samsung gave up making their own, everybody except Apple is basically using ARM's design.

What I see in a lot of tech forums is a major (IMO justified) fear of Apple's success leading others to copy them and therefore massively decreasing choice for enthusiasts.

And yes, there is a reason almost every company wants to copy Apple's business model rather than the free-for-all commodity PC market which allow enthusiasts to do what they want.

However, acknowledging that Apple's SOC design group is very talented does not meant that I want to confined into an Apple-like walled garden were everything is disposable.

[DanceswithUnix]

Hahahaha yes but in this case, they have removed a lot of things as well. Mac Mini and M1 laptops have limited IO, no ram interface and limited pci-e lanes. They've removed the dram interface and integrated the dram on the chip. They have thunderbolt lanes but because of what's been chopped not full thunderbolt connectivity. Removed a lot of ways to communicate with the outside wolrd and the usb implementation is slow. Now if someone else tried that in say the pc arm space, they'd be derided. But as it's Apple nobody looks at that. So the M1 is useless out of the niche market that Apple have over the last couple of years created for themselves. Heck even the Pi has loads more io available - and yes I know that's because it has 40 pins available...
I like the M1 - but it's only useful to Apple and what they are trying to do. For me, not enough usb lanes for starters for anything I'd probably want to do (Macbook Pro has 2 x usb-c ports... and 1 is for charging)

Oh there are a ton of reasons why I won't be spending money on one of these things.

The lack of connectivity is quite odd though. Many machines in computing history could have a large part of their success down to their ability to take plug in cards, including the Apple II. The original PC was a dog of a product, but oh the ISA bus was so useful. Even the Pi I doubt would have taken off without that header.

I'm still convinced that Nvidia will want to aim for the high end with ARM, and the latest ARM cores look pretty quick. Denver was one of the few interesting recent CPU designs. Should be interesting times ahead.

[kompukare]

Oh there are a ton of reasons why I won't be spending money on one of these things.

The lack of connectivity is quite odd though. Many machines in computing history could have a large part of their success down to their ability to take plug in cards, including the Apple II. The original PC was a dog of a product, but oh the ISA bus was so useful. Even the Pi I doubt would have taken off without that header.

I'm still convinced that Nvidia will want to aim for the high end with ARM, and the latest ARM cores look pretty quick. Denver was one of the few interesting recent CPU designs. Should be interesting times ahead.

Aside from the Apple II and some NuBus and PowerPC Macs, Apple has philosophically been against expansion for decades.
Possibly a bit simplistic, but I think Jobs just hated the idea of anyone other than Apple making money of their machines (and probably told Wozniak never to include an expansion card again)