IT Blog

Of all the ambitious feats a maker of computing devices can undertake, few are as tricky as switching processor architectures. It really is brain surgery, or at least its equivalent in digital form.

And even if moving to a new architecture offers clear advantages, much can go awry along the way. Consider Microsoft’s Surface Pro X laptop/tablet hybrid, which ditches the Intel processor in other Surface tablets—and most Windows computers, period—for a chip codesigned by Microsoft and Qualcomm. The Pro X is the sexiest, thinnest, and lightest Surface Pro to date, with the best battery life. Yet it can’t do something you might assume any Windows computer could do: run all Windows software. Among the high-profile products currently incompatible are Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps and the full version of Dropbox.

But this isn’t a review of the Surface Pro X. For the past few days, I’ve been using Apple’s new MacBook Air. Along with a new 13-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, this…