Before heading into the weekend Apple released the release candidate (of what will eventually be released to the public, assuming there are no show stopper bugs) of iOS 14.3 and macOS 11.1 (along with all the other Apple platforms). If they are going to release it next week then it’ll most likely be on Wednesday New Zealand time (Tuesday California time). So far things have been pretty stable apart from a really weird quirk on macOS 11 which will have playback hiccups when playing YouTube videos but it doesn’t occur on any other service. Oh, and another interesting thing is on tvOS with is that with vp9 for the video CODEC it uses the Opus CODEC for audio but on macOS 11 it uses vp9 for the video CODEC but AAC for the audio CODEC.

It is interesting to see how things are working out post M1 release with Qualcomm talking about the release of the M1 being the start of a transformation within the IT sector. Personally, I think that Qualcomm could develop something that gets close to what Apple offers in that it would beat Intel but will be behind Apple Silicon but the big problem is Microsoft. If Microsoft really want to make the ARM market mainstream then they need to get their software sorted out and they can do that by launching a legacy free version of Windows but don’t call it that.

What I mean by that is that Microsoft should take Windows 10 and strip out all the legacy – hardware accelerated scroll bars have no place being inside a kernel. So after stripping the kernel back to the essentials I would then replace the win32 user land with a BSD subsystem that is made fully UNIXv7 compliant – yes, with pthreads and all that wonderful goodness with the icing on the cake being that it embraces LLVM’s libc++ with a long term goal to replace the BSD libc with the llvm libc that is being developed along with using the LLVM tool chain and converting from PE (which is a derisive of COFF) to ELF. On top of that you gradually migrate technology over like DirectX, WinUI in much the same way that Apple sits its higher level layers on a BSD core then eventually get it to a point where it is a ChromeOS alternative but called EdgeOS. The difference in name to denote that it isn’t compatible with Windows as to avoid a repeat of Windows RT.

Then over time Microsoft can build on top of BSD/UNIXv7 a more sophisticated higher level set of frameworks that take parts from Windows 10 which make sense and being them over to EdgeOS with the benefit of fixing those frameworks of their limitations due to concerns in the past regarding backwards compatibility. During this time Microsoft should be bringing their software over so that it is native then get EdgeOS to the point where it is highly optimised for ARM without hauling around legacy and since most applications that businesses use to custom write as being pushed into the cloud the underling operating system within large organisations become less important.

The benefit of such a system, rather than starting to scratch, you’re using time tested code while also enabling the platform to move forward. Getting rid of win32 gets rid of irritating limitations like the MAX_PATH limitation, embracing an open standard like UNIXv7 would open up a huge array of open source software and the embracing of LLVM would open up a large ecosystem that Microsoft could tap into where Microsoft can focus on delivering a top notch IDE, contribute work around debugging to the LLVM and developers get a great experience which will give a clear path forward rather than the current situation of stagnation which is resulting in the rest of the industry suffering as a result.

Regarding what is happening in my life, this week coming up I’m going to pick up the last of the presents for the holidays and the following week I have the whole week off to relax at home, spend time with the family and maybe finally get around to giving the house a good top to bottom clean.