This is When Windows 10 on ARM Will Finally Make Sense (Premium)

With Microsoft's new Surface Go a decided no-go on two key metrics, our attention turns once again to Qualcomm and its ARM-powered platform.

I want to root for Surface Go, I really do. I love that Microsoft wants to bring Surface quality to a broader audience. And I've never been a fan of the premium-only strategy, where only the most affluent can get the best technology.

But the reality of Surface Go is obvious and negative. The performance is terrible and, worse, the battery life is laughable. Also, its small size relegates Surface Go to children, virtually all of whom would be better off with less expensive and more powerful devices like the iPad.

My sources tell me that Microsoft wanted to use a Qualcomm Snapdragon platform and Windows 10 on ARM for Surface Go. My natural assumption was that the reality of the schedule and the performance and compatibility issues of that platform required Microsoft to look elsewhere. But a trusted source has told me a different story: Intel, it seems, petitioned Microsoft heavily to use its chipsets instead.

In addition to needing to meet a certain price point for Surface Go to make sense, only the Pentium Gold chipset matched Microsoft's thermal requirements given the form factor. For Surface Go to be this thin and light, and fanless and silent, Pentium Gold was literally its only viable option in the Intel stable.

Look, everything is a compromise. We make compromises every day, in every decision, big or small. But the folks who believe that Surface Go is somehow acceptable in any usage scenario---Brad has said, literally, that it can handle only a single app at a time---are deluding themselves. And I gotta tell you, I'm tired of watching Microsoft's biggest fans making bad decisions for themselves.

That is, we need to collectively stop pretending that Surface Go makes any sense at all. It does not.

Unfortunately, Windows 10 on ARM doesn't make any sense at all either, at least not right now. It, too, is a compromise. It's just the wrong compromise.

In the plus column, Windows 10 on ARM provides epic---literally 20+ hours---of real-world battery life, stunning, weeks-long standby performance, and seamless, game-changing connectivity thanks to its integrated LTE capabilities.

But Windows 10 on ARM suffers from two major minuses that doom the platform in its current state. The performance is abysmal. And compatibility is hugely problematic: It can only run 32-bit desktop applications, leaving major players like Photoshop (even the Elements version) unavailable. And it is incompatible with the millions of hardware device drivers and supporting utility applications that so many rely on.

Some of these issues can be fixed over time: Adobe can, for example, make its Microsoft Store-based version of Photoshop Elements compatible with ARM PCs. Peripheral makers can ship native ARM versions of their drivers and supporting utility applications. And the performance will improve. In p...

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