The Problem with Windows 10 on ARM (Premium)

While many will point to its performance and app compatibility issues, the biggest problem with Windows 10 on ARM is hubris. This platform exists for only one reason, which is to screw over Intel. And that is not an origin story to be proud of. Nor is it a solid strategy for success.

I’m reminded of Microsoft’s initial efforts around the Zune, it’s ill-conceived and ill-fated digital music player. At the time, the software giant was suffering from early-onset Apple envy and it still believed that the Microsoft brand meant a damn to consumers.

The result was Zune, a me-too product that was rushed to market in 2006 with no meaningful differentiators over the iPod it sought to supplant. Microsoft’s marketing highlighted its own cluelessness. “Hello from Seattle” replaced “Designed by Apple in California.” And “Welcome to the social” simply emphasized the fact that no one else was even using the thing; the “social” bit is exactly what was missing.

But the overwhelming issue with Zune wasn’t its terrible re-skinned Windows Media Player software, its incompatible, proprietary media formats, or the pointlessness of “squirting” songs to others. It was hubris: Microsoft still believed in 2006 that it could grab market share simply by showing up. It never even attempted to understand why Apple’s devices were so popular or what it would take—a miracle—to drive an exodus from a music platform that, frankly, its users really enjoyed.

What the iPod should have been is a wake-up call about Microsoft’s standing in the world: After all, most iPod users were Windows users, too. And instead of focusing on that inconvenient truth, some Xbox guys—who were much less insightful and successful than they thought they were—dumped Zune into the market. The rest, as they say, was history.

Flash forward to today and Microsoft is making the same kind of mistake with Windows 10 on ARM. This should worry anyone who cares about Windows or this company. This system literally only exists because Microsoft wants to shake up Intel’s market dominance. If all this platform achieves is to make Intel wake up and improve the mobile characteristics of its own processors, Microsoft will consider this a win.

But why would anyone normal care about this kind of thing? What we should be concerned about is how well Windows 10 on ARM works.

It’s not good news: Windows 10 on ARM makes absolutely no sense at all. Not today, on a traditional PC, which is what each of the first PCs based on this system is. A PC.

Consider the following observation that I made in Windows 10 Lean (Premium) earlier today, about Windows 10 S.

“Windows 10 S was always aiming at a future in which Microsoft could finally shed the Win32 legacy past of Windows and emerge with a more modern platform that would better fit within the functional and security needs of mobile devices and software delivered as a service,” I wrote. “We could logically view the initial release of this system—which, you’ll recall was first named Windows 10 Cloud—as an experiment. An experiment to see whether users would accept the restrictions of S mode on traditional PCs.”

Windows 10 on ARM is the same thing, really, an experiment. A platform that may or may not make sense for a future world of more mobile Windows 10 devices. But one that makes zero sense in today’s world of Windows 10 PCs.

Put another way, Windows 10 on ARM furthers Microsoft’s goals of modernizing the Windows 10 platform by extending it to a chipset that is more attuned to the modern world. But it gives its users nothing important in return. Today’s Windows 10—the desktop OS—simply doesn’t make sense on this performance- and compatibility-constrained platform.

Yes, the ARM platform provides great battery life, which is easily understood. And great standby time, which is much less easily understood. The designs are a bit thinner than comparable Intel PCs. And silent, though some Intel-based PCs are too.

But just as Windows 10 S’s supposed advantages—better security, reliability, and battery life—are presumed if not completely imagined, Windows 10 on ARM’s advantages are likewise fanciful.

So what do you trade for 20 hours of battery life? The things that make a PC a PC. You trade very real real-world performance. And you trade very real real-world compatibility.

Meanwhile, virtually any modern Intel-based portable PC will deliver all of the performance and compatibility that a Windows user rightfully expects. Many will deliver the same always-connected functionality that we see with Windows 10 on ARM; in fact, there are many more Intel-based Always Connected PCs than there are ARM versions, and there always will be. And many deliver killer battery life, too. No, not 20 hours. But 15 hours (Surface Book 2), 13 hours (Surface Laptop), and 10:30 hours (and ThinkPad X1 Carbon), to cite some recent examples.

And standby time? Yes, it’s weeks. But I have never found charging a laptop to be difficult, and my experience with the Envy x2 hasn’t changed that. Indeed, many Intel-based laptops, like Surface Laptop, spring to life just as quickly when I open them up as does the Envy x2. I just don’t see the advantage to ARM.

It is possible that some future version of Windows 10—perhaps Windows 10 Lean—that does not run desktop applications, running on a new kind of mobile device that may or may not be called Andromeda and is ARM-based, will make sense. That this mythical and imaginary device, despite a lack of quality apps, will somehow find a place in the market.

That’s fine. But that day is not today.

I’ll be reviewing the HP Envy x2 soon. I really like the device, a lot. It’s just too bad that it is hobbled by a platform that can’t get out of its own way.