Arm CEO: Apple 'woke up the industry on the art of the possible'

As Qualcomm-powered Windows on Arm PCs begin appearing here at Computex, ushering in a generation of AI-infused Copilot laptops, it seemed appropriate to interview a major player in the push. Instead, I mean Arm, the semiconductor design company that licenses CPUs to companies like Qualcomm, Apple, and Samsung. Arm dominates in smartphones and tablets, and now, true PC contention finally seems possible. I sat down with chief executive Rene Haas in Taipei, touching upon everything from NPUs, to how Arm solved its Windows app gap, to why Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm don't matter to the success of Windows on Arm PCs. And he has nothing but praise for Apple's M-series Macs, which he says "woke up the industry on the art of the possible" with Arm laptops. "I think Apple silicon has really proven that you could build a first-class laptop and have no compromises," Haas said. This interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.