There’s one gaping hole in the Windows Arm app ecosystem
Adobe has launched Illustrator for Windows on Arm in beta, but one important app has been left behind.
The transition to supporting Windows on Arm has been a huge success this year. Despite previous failed attempts, Microsoft really put its muscle behind getting developers on board this year in support of Copilot+ PCs — and the result has felt like nothing short of a miracle.
Today, you can pick up one of these new Qualcomm-powered Arm devices and not experience the slightest hiccup when loading up nearly all of the apps the average person uses.
There is, however, one significant hole in the ecosystem. And no, I’m not talking about gaming — that remains an issue, but these devices just plainly weren’t designed for games. I’m talking about the Adobe suite — in particular, Premiere Pro.
Adobe has already recompiled many of its popular apps to support Arm, such as Photoshop and Lightroom, though reports indicate that the Photoshop app remains buggy. Other popular apps like Acrobat run in emulation — and do so just fine.
But then there’s the video editing side of the suite. Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Media Encoder are all currently unsupported by Adobe on the Snapdragon X chips. We know this firsthand because we use the Pugetbench Premiere Pro to test PCs, and it wouldn’t even run on the Snapdragon X laptops.
The good news, however, is that Adobe says it’s working on it. The company originally said it would be coming in July, though, so unless the update drops tomorrow, it may be later than promised.
On the plus side, though, Adobe recently brought over the beta version of Illustrator and InDesign to try out. Adobe has been busy introducing new AI features to these applications, so it’s nice to see some love shown to porting them to Arm. The stated goal has always been to launch its entire lineup of apps to support Snapdragon X chips, and the momentum is certainly on its side.
For what it’s worth, many of the other significant holdouts, such as Slack, Google Chrome, and DaVinci Resolve, all run natively on Arm, and it’s likely only a matter of time before Premiere Pro does. How long exactly? Well, that’s the question.
Luke Larsen is the Senior editor of computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.
9 best 2-in-1 laptops in 2024: tested and reviewed
The 2-in-1 form factor has certainly come into its own over the last several years. There's really no reason to limit yourself to a clamshell, as there's a 2-in-1 that will meet the needs of all but the most demanding users in terms of sheer performance.
We've reviewed every great 2-in-1 you can buy, including Chromebooks, convertibles, and powerful 16-inch versions. The overall best 2-in-1 at the moment is the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 (although that might change very soon), with its fantastic keyboard that's as easy to remove as it is to type on, a 120Hz display, and a haptic-enabled pen. It's almost as good a laptop as it is a tablet, which is what makes it the best overall 2-in-1.
The storm clouds for another GPU shortage are brewing
It's not a bad time to buy a GPU, but regardless of timing, you might need to act fast. A new rumor implies that a small GPU shortage might be on the way, with some of Nvidia's best graphics cards being affected, all due to issues with GDDR6X memory supplies. Fortunately, this shortage should hopefully be brief, and GDDR7 memory is entering production sooner than expected. That's good news for the RTX 50-series.
Let's start with the bad news. According to a report from ChannelGate (first shared by IT Home), GDDR6X memory will be in short supply in August, hindering the production of Nvidia graphics cards. This type of memory is found in Nvidia's latest GPUs, starting from the RTX 4070 and all the way to the RTX 4090. Some of the RTX 40-series cards are spared from this, as the RTX 4060 and the RTX 4060 Ti use GDDR6 VRAM.