Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC: Differentiators (Premium)

With three Snapdragon X-based Copilot+ PCs in-house, I have an interesting opportunity to compare and contrast. In some ways, each is quite similar, but in others, there are notable differences.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform is unique for so many reasons, but one of the less well-understood dynamics of the PC industry is that while Microsoft and its PC maker partners are beholden to each other, there is also a natural friction caused by the relative lack of control each has over the other. This relationship has frayed most obviously when Microsoft tried to impose specific limitations on PC makers, as it did with Tablet PCs and Media Center PCs, with PC makers overreacting with obstinate, child-like pushback. For example, instead of shipping Media Center PCs that looked and worked like stereo components and made sense in the living rooms the system was designed for, PC makers initially shipped traditional tower PCs that made absolutely no sense in a living room.

This dynamic reached its lowest point when Microsoft shipped its first Arm-based Windows version, Windows RT, in 2012: To achieve the reliability, consistency, and efficiency that consumers experienced with phones and tablets, Microsoft needed to not just port Windows to this architecture, but also convince PC makers to cede some control over component customization: In many ways, this key benefit of the PC ecosystem was a double-edged sword in which the wide range of choices, inherently a good thing, also led to unreliable, inconsistent, and inefficient PCs, inherently a bad thing. And so with Arm, Microsoft required PC makers to accept some limitations. And that did not go well.

There were other issues with Windows RT, of course—in addition to ignoring what customers expected of something named Windows, Microsoft had also made the controversial decision to compete with its PC maker partners by creating its own in-house family of PC products called Surface. This history, and the resentment Microsoft stoked with PC makers, played a role in the direction it took with future Windows versions for Arm, a product that wouldn't make any sense until its users could download, install, and run whatever Windows apps they wanted.

But one major thing hasn't changed since Windows RT. With Windows 11 on Arm running on Snapdragon X-based PCs—Copilot+ PCs, for now—Microsoft is again requiring PC makers to accept limitations tied to the component customizations they can make. It's doing so for the same reason as ever--reliability, consistency, and efficiency—and those reasons are, if anything, even more valid today than they were in 2012. But you will have noticed something interesting: Where support for Windows RT among PC makers was, to put it politely, on the light side, with just two devices (one Microsoft's) shipping at the October 2012 launch, and only two more shipping by the end of that year, PC makers are supporting Copilot+ PC far more broadly today: Microsoft and it...