Ask Paul: December 22 (Premium)

Happy holidays and thank you, as always, to those who wrote in with questions. A bit shorter than usual this week, but that makes sense. It feels like short holiday week even though it sort of wasn’t.

Microsoft ToDo

will asks:

What is going on with Microsoft Todo? Since its launch earlier this year there have been no major updates outside of some tweaks and yet they still continue to update Wunderlist, and I thought this was supposed to be dead!

Good question. I don’t have any unique insight into what Microsoft is doing with this particular app. So I asked. This is what I was told:

“As you’re already aware, To-Do is still in preview—the team is continuing to collect customer feedback. Nothing more to share at this time, but stay tuned for updates.”

So nothing specific, but it does appear that you have something to look forward to.

It might be just me but this seems to be a trend with Microsoft and their applications over the past couple of years. Release a product that is no where 100% feature complete, promise more is coming but never say when/or what these will happen. It feels sort of like a mirage on the road.

I don’t rely on any of these apps, so I guess I don’t feel impacted by this. But I agree that the lack of predictability is an issue. Mobile apps can be updated at any time and are often updated frequently. But it’s tough when you use an app regularly and it needs updates but doesn’t get them. And, yeah, you should be concerned about the long-term viability of any of these apps. They do often feel like experiments.

wolters adds:

I know some people use Google Keep for their To-Do list but it just doesn’t work well for me. I’d rather use To-Do.

For whatever it’s worth, I don’t use a to-do app of any kind. But that may be tied to what I do for a living: I do have a “To-do” folder full of articles I intend to write. In fact, there are over 100 articles (mostly article ideas) in there now. But I add some to-do-type items to my calendar, too. For example, a reminder to write the “Games with Gold” post on the first of the month.

Google ecosystem: Hot or not?

wolters asks:

Paul, what are your thoughts on the Google “Ecosystem” as a whole? Is it maturing? Is it an attractive alternative to Microsoft? With my Pixel XL 2, Google Home set up (two mini’s, one Home, one Max), Daydream View, YouTube TV, YouTube Red…I seem to be embracing and yes, enjoying it.

This is a big topic.

I wrote a bit about Google’s troubling issues with hardware earlier this month, but the ecosystem is much bigger than that. Like Microsoft, Google relies on third party hardware makers to complete the picture, and much of that hardware is pretty great. So, too, are most Google services.

So on that note, I feel like Google has swooped in and usurped Microsoft’s position in the consumer market away. And that its ecosystem, overall, is quite healthy.

The consumer market, of course, is pretty diverse. Google, Apple, and Amazon are the big platform ecosystem players. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft are the big video game ecosystem players. Roku, Apple, Amazon, and services like Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu are at the center of entertainment. Spotify and Apple for music. And so on.

Google’s role, overall, is parallel to Microsoft’s. But where Microsoft skews to the commercial space (larger businesses), Google skews to consumers and very small businesses. There is overlap in both directions, of course. But the sobering thing here for the Microsoft fan is that the future is in the Google end of the market. That is, kids growing up on Google will expect that later on in life. But adults using Microsoft at work offer little inspiration to others.

Microsoft will be fine, of course. But from the perspective of any individual—enthusiast or otherwise—Google will play a bigger overall role going forward. Not to the total exclusion of Microsoft. But bigger.

You can see this in the coverage here on the site, of course. And that will continue. I’m not a big fan of articles like “I switched to [whatever] for a week and here’s what I think about it”, but then I routinely use competing products too. And I don’t want to promise a series of posts on Google something something either. But I will be writing much more about this stuff in 2018 for sure.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

MattHewitt asks the most important question of the year:

What did you think of The Last Jedi? Masterpiece? Trainwreck? Somewhere in between?

I haven’t seen the movie yet. For the modern Star Wars movies, I’ve been waiting a few weeks so the nerd fandom thing can die down a bit and I can enjoy them in peace. But I’ve read up on all the spoilers. And I would have read the novelization already, too, except that, for the first time ever, it’s not out day-and-date withe movie release. (It’s not coming out until March, which is terrible.) Star Wars is something I watch—and read—over and over again.

So I do have many, many thoughts about Star Wars in general and this movie in particular. I will not spoil it for others. But I need to wait until I know the full story and digested it. I’ll check back on this one once I have.

OK, a quick teaser that is spoiler-light. I can’t help myself.

Some people are burned that Rian Johnson, the director of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has “ruined” the character of Luke Skywalker and, to a lesser degree, even Leia Organa. But it’s fairer to complain that J.J. Abrams did that, and to Han Solo as well. Everyone seems to celebrate The Force Awakens as this bright, wonderful homage to the original film, but I see it as a too-direct copy.

Worse, he destroyed the legacy of the three central characters from the original trilogy.

Since Jedi, Luke Skywalker, the greatest hero in the galaxy, suffered a single defeat and … abandoned his work, his family, and his friends and he went into hiding? Really?

Han Solo, who was redeemed in the original films, left his wife and became a lowly smuggler again? Seriously?

And Leia, who should have led a new Republic to a happy future, was instantly defeated by some remnants of the Empire (the New Order) and has been on the run since Jedi?

Bullshit. Those are betrayals to the original films on every level and they are far worse for the legacy of Star Wars than anything that happened in the prequel trilogy. Whatever direction Johnson took in the new film had to build on all that terribleness. Yes, I’m sure he made his own mistakes. But this new trilogy was always a shaky foundation on which to build anyway.

The good news is that all the new actors, from Force Awakens especially—again, I’ve not yet seenLast Jedi—are fantastic. And they could have supported the weight of a new Star Wars trilogy all on their own. That’s what Disney/Lucasfilm should have done. Instead, we’re having this conversation about what a total F up this.

I care about this too much. 🙂

TiVO DVR

Simard57 asks:

How is that TiVo DVR working for you? Does it offer the same experience as one direct from TiVo?

So if it weren’t for the past 24 hours, I would have answered this like so:

It’s OK. We don’t really use it that much. A handful of recorded shows and some live sports. The video quality ranges from good at best to piss-poor (too often). It’s … cable TV. The performance is frustrating. And it’s surprisingly loud, thanks to fan noise, even when it’s sleeping.

But the past 24 hours did happen. During lunch on Thursday, the picture was all glitchy on both live and recorded TV. So we suffered through another House Hunters episode, on multiple levels this time.

When we were done, then I pulled the plug. And I literally said to my wife, “when this thing comes up and it’s still messed up, I’m canceling this service. I hate it.” And she said fine, she could live without it.

Well, it didn’t come up all messed up. It didn’t come up at all. It’s dead.

There is a very bitter part of me that wants to say I’m just going to get rid of it. And I may. I will engage RCN support after Christmas and think it over. I’ll get YouTube TV again for the month so we can watch football and so on over the holiday.

But as I said to Andrew on this week’s What the Tech, and as I probably wrote in my “Paul’s Tech Makeover” series earlier, I feel like the cord-cutting thing is inevitable. It didn’t quite work out for us in 2017. But it will. And maybe it’s going to happen more quickly than I thought.