Popular creative apps, including Blender, Capture One, Reaper, and Cubase, now run natively on Snapdragon X PCs. This is a huge milestone for the budding Windows on ARM platform, which offers best-in-class battery life but is often criticized for poor app compatibility.

Creatives who own a Snapdragon-powered PC should download the new, ARM-based versions of Blender and Capture One for enhanced performance and power efficiency. These native apps also take advantage of the Snapdragon X NPU for AI processes like automatic color grading and text-to-image generation, though AI features in Blender require a free plug-in from Qualcomm.

Affinity Photo 2, which gained Windows on Snapdragon compatibility earlier this year, now provides AI-powered Object Selection and Subject Selection tools on Snapdragon X PCs. However, these features are currently in beta and won’t see a stable release until November.

Musicians also get some love. Qualcomm has introduced both a native ASIO driver and a new MIDI stack for the Windows on Snapdragon platform. Audio interface manufacturers like Focusrite and Steinberg are working on custom drivers for Snapdragon PCs, while DAWs like Reaper, Cubase, and Nuendo are now previewing native Windows on ARM apps (which you can download from the companies’ respective websites). Reason is also planning a Windows on ARM app for early next year, and Moises just rolled out an AI music processing tool that runs locally on Snapdragon PCs.

While ARM-powered Windows laptops are nothing new, app compatibility has always posed a problem for professionals, creatives, and gamers. These new Snapdragon X optimizations prove that Windows on ARM is finally reaching maturity. Now, more than ever before, professionals and creatives can enjoy the supreme battery life of an ARM PC without sacrificing the apps they use every day.

Do these optimizations solve Windows on ARM’s app compatibility problem? No, not completely. Professionals, creatives, and gamers should still research app compatibility before buying a Snapdragon X PC. Nonetheless, it’s exciting to see how quickly this problem is being addressed by Microsoft, Qualcomm, and app developers.

Source: Qualcomm