They Did It (Premium)

Two weeks ago today, Microsoft and its PC maker partners launched the first Snapdragon X-based PCs, kicking off a new era for Windows and the PC with the unfortunately named Copilot+ PCs. Opinions are like, well, you know: Everyone has one. But what the conspiracy theorists seem to miss or at least ignore is that something wonderful just happened.

They did it.

They f#$%ing did it.

Yes, the jury is still out on some of the details. Reviewers have only had a limited subset of the available Copilot+ PCs—I really don't like that name—for a short period of time, me less so than some thanks to my ill-timed June travel. As I keep pointing out, as much for my own sake as yours, these things take time. But even the harshest critic can see what's happening. And that thing is overwhelmingly positive.

I came into 2024 determined to figure this out. So determined that I started spending my own money on expensive new computers. Knowing that Qualcomm had identified mid-year as the time for the first Snapdragon X-based PCs, I got a 15-inch MacBook Air M3 and used it so much I started to get nervous. Despite the dozens of Macs I've owned over the past 20+ years, despite it being the third M-series Mac to come into my home, something clicked this time. I got over my user experience issues with macOS and embraced its sometimes weird way of doing things. And I did that because the MacBook Air is special. And because this was clearly Microsoft's and Qualcomm's target.

Of course, the MacBook Air has an Achilles Heel: It's a Mac. As good as it is, as magical as it is, the MacBook Air is held back by some bizarre Apple design decisions, many of them related to multitasking. That this is the same basic issue with the iPad Pro is interesting on some level, but it doesn't really matter: Apple has incredibly powerful and efficient hardware, but it can't seem to get out of its own way and acknowledge that thinking different doesn't always have to mean being different. There are good ideas out there, maybe embrace a few of them.

After a few months of full MacBook Air immersion, I wanted only one thing: That computer, but running Windows 11. I wanted all the things that were good about the MacBook Air—the silent, effortless performance, the amazing battery life and efficiency, the impossibly consistent reliability—with none of the bad, meaning without macOS.

This experience colored my experiences with review PCs, all of which recently based on Intel's woeful "Meteor Lake" platform. Meteor Lake is a step towards the future that Intel has ignored for decades, but it's about to take a major leap forward with "Lunar Lake," and the current PCs will be remembered only for their jet-engine fan noise, their non-existent NPU capabilities, and their unbelievable reliability issues. Each time I fired up one of these machines, I stewed, and not always silently. It was like living in the past.

As the first several months of 2024 ticked by, I braced f...