Until last week, WOA devices have only been able to run apps coded natively for the Snapdragon Arm architecture, or run 32-bit apps coded for X86 processors natively. The latter two processors both appear in Microsoft’s Surface Pro X tablet. For one, there are only two chips currently powering Windows on Arm machines: Qualcomm’s own processors, such as the Snapdragon 8cx and Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2, as well as the derivative SQ1 and SQ2 processors Microsoft co-designed with Qualcomm. Running Windows apps on Arm processors has a few wrinkles. After Apple released its impressive M1 Arm chip on its new Macs, and Microsoft followed with its long-awaited 64-bit X86 emulator, we had just one question: How does Windows on Arm compare to MacOS on Arm? The answer: badly.
