The more I read about the enhancements that have come as part of ARMv9 the more my choice has been validated to hold off until ARMv9 based Apple Silicon is released. That being said, I always like to keep my feet in both camps which is why I’m keeping an eye on Windows 10X and Windows 10 with the GUI overhaul that has been reported online as a project codenamed Sun Valley.. Although I’ve been with Apple since back in 2002/2003 when I bought my first Mac, an eMac 1Ghz, I always like to keep my options open particularly with the superb work that AMD is doing not only when it comes to the RDNA2 GPU architecture but also their Zen 3 CPU architecture. I think the interesting part is whether Microsoft pushes to start using AMD CPUs/GPUs in more products – future Surface Studio update? It’ll be interesting to see what happens.

In the next month or so there are three conferences that are occurring online, Google’s I/O 21, Microsoft’s Build and then at the beginning of June there is the WWDC 21. Android 12 appears to be addressing concerns from users and privacy advocates regarding the ability to have fine grain control over what applications have access to – for me I’m looking forward to Samsung releasing their Galaxy refresh next year that’ll be using an AMD GPU rather than the Mali GPU that one typically finds in a ARM based SoC. I’d love to see how Android 12 will perform When it comes to Microsoft, it’ll be interesting to see whether they announce futher investments into ARM based Windows particularly about bringing their range of applications natively to Windows for ARM – Office 365 being the most high profile example of a flag ship product from Microsoft not running natively on ARM. When it comes to WWDC – my focus will be around Webkit and whether they’re going to complete Webextensions API rather than living it in the half completed state it was launched in back in 2020.