What makes the thesis credible rather than wishful is the groundwork laid in March, when Monday Note argued ARM had narrowed the performance gap with x86 enough that even workstation-class machines were feasible on custom cores. The later data backs the direction of travel: [[a:972906|Mercury Research put ARM at about 8% of PC chips by Q3 2021, up from 2% before the M1 Macs shipped]].
First-order effects
Microsoft faces direct pressure to make Windows on ARM first-class rather than a side project — without it, PC OEMs have no OS to migrate to, which is exactly the wedge Gassée describes.
Intel immediately loses its most visible premium laptop client as Apple completes the transition Bloomberg reported, and Pat Gelsinger's response — courting Apple through Intel Foundry Services despite TSMC being Apple's sole supplier — shows Intel willing to compete for the business outside its own x86 franchise.
Second-order effects
PC OEMs gain a live alternative to the Intel-Microsoft bundle for the first time in decades; if Apple demonstrates all-day battery and competitive performance on ARM, Dell, HP, and Lenovo face customer demand for equivalent Windows-on-ARM machines, forcing Microsoft's hand.
Chip suppliers reposition: startups like Ampere, already rivaling Xeon in servers per the March analysis, get a proof point that ARM can win in PCs too, expanding their addressable market beyond datacenter.
Third-order effects
If the migration pattern holds, the Wintel duopoly dissolves into a multi-vendor ARM PC market where Intel's fallback is manufacturing others' designs — the Foundry Services pitch to Apple is the template — rather than owning the instruction set.
Custom, workload-specific silicon becomes the default PC architecture, with each vendor designing cores around its own devices instead of buying commodity x86 parts, mirroring what Apple did with the M-series.
The trend: The PC industry is moving from a single x86-Wintel standard toward vendor-designed ARM-class silicon, with Apple's Mac transition as the forcing function.
@gassee 2/2 So while OEMs might want cheaper & better chips, given compatibility will be a slog AND literally take away benefits of ARM (because of the attributes of toaster-trucks as an OS), it is really messy transition to where? Android also shows the messy ARM OEM ecosystem.
“Apple Silicon: The Passing of Wintel” @gassee https://rsci.app.link/... // Apple can make ARM compatible with macOS APIs (for now) *because* it has safe, secure, efficient... ARM OS on phones/iPads. Microsoft would just have the messy silicon transition without the ARM upsides.…
Interesting viewpoint: If I understand correctly, expert @stevesi disagrees, seems to think there isn't enough upside for MSFT to fully commit to a WinARM PC alternative to today's Wintel one. https://twitter.com/...
“Not only will Apple Silicon make better Macs, it will force Microsoft to polish its Windows on ARM act, both hardware and software. In turn, this will cause PC OEMs to reconsider their allegiance to x86 silicon...” - @gassee https://mondaynote.com/...
@stevesi @gassee I am curious to see just how advantaged Macs are. PC OEMs have some OS lock-in on enterprise side, and many consumer segments are very price elastic. If Apple presents Macs at 50-100% better perf/battery life at the same price though...
Prediction by @gassee long ago comes true. Reminds me of when NT ran on RISC chips like PowerPC, Alpha, MIPS. Will be interesting to see if MS keeps pushing for Qualcomm ARM chips that do x86 emulation https://twitter.com/...
Honestly, the best part of this essay is the fact that @gassee - by all means a long time industry veteran - shows personal restraint in not commenting on the server market. Contrast that to the rest of social media.... Disclosure: I was a Be fan. Even have the tshirt. https://tw…
@afwaller @gassee In purpose & basic design these seem more like throwbacks to 40 years ago. The design, however, lets them be lightweight, compact & relatively inexpensive. The killer full-frame sensor and image stabilization should easily compensate for the “tiny” aperture
@gassee “If the switch to Apple Silicon were a mere CPU replacement, billions of dollars would burn in a bonfire of vanity.” Seems reasonable this is Apple's thinking, too but it looks like we'll need to wait some time to see what tricks it has up its sleeves for big iron & huge …