Ask Paul: March 16 (Premium)

Here’s the latest edition of Ask Paul, which has some tough and often unanswerable questions this week.

Problems with Microsoft Edge

Simard57 asks:

I have often encountered Edge “sticking” to the top of the desktop. If I click another app, Edge remains at the top. I have to minimize (or close) Edge to see what is under that window. Is there some way to reverse this so Edge is not so stubborn?

Sorry, there’s no real way to troubleshoot this from afar. I’ve certainly experienced this issue with various apps, usually poorly-made desktop applications. But I don’t recall it happening with Edge. Sorry.

I assume my advice to just use Chrome is not of interest. 🙂

Patching for Spectre/Meltdown

rvanallen asks:

Have used Gibson’s excellent “InSpectre” tool … but still showing Meltdown (protected), Spectre (at risk). I suspect my Dell Inspiron 620 tower to be too old and the reason it’s not on the radar or Dell’s updates page. Granted, the PC is “long in the tooth” but believe there are many users in the field with older type hardware facing similar. So how bad is this situation in real life? Will Microsoft be using Win Update for these type older machines at some point? Intel certainly seems to be taking a low profile. We should probably be thankful for Microsoft’s efforts to help.

As another reader pointed out in response to this question, the patch(es) are specific to each processor family and generation, and if there isn’t a patch available for your particular CPU, trying to install a patch for a different CPU will not help/work.

The best course of action here is to check-in via Windows Update and your PC maker’s (Dell’s in your case) software update mechanism from time-to-time. I tend to do this about once a week, I bet, and I’ve noticed an acceleration in firmware-related updates across multiple PC makers in recent weeks. I suspect this is tied to these security vulnerabilities, but regardless, we’ll be installing patches, and new versions of the patches, all year.

As to the risk, there are vague reports of exploits, but I’m not aware of any real-world examples of this harming anyone.

Android quality

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

You have noted that Android is a dumpster fire, but your use of any technology does not necessarily reflect that of what others have called “normals”. Do you think that the problems with Android effect normal users as well, and they just put up with it? Or is it that your use case just throws gasoline on the smoldering issues, igniting the conflagration? Or both?

This is a weird example of me using a personal technology product “less” than is normal, I bet. I don’t commute to work, and I don’t keep my phone by me at all times typically. So I probably use my smartphone much less than most “normals.”

As a decades-long Windows user and a life-long technology fan, I’ve often pondered why it is that we, collectively as a user base, put up with quality problems. Years ago—probably decades ago now—I pointed out that we often confuse our relationship with companies (like Microsoft) and the products they make (like Windows). We’re the customers. We paid for this. And these things are there to serve us. Not the other way around.

But here we are. We shrug our shoulders when something goes wrong. “Eh, that’s what computers are like.” Or, “that’s Windows for you.” Or whatever.

Android is the modern version of that. And while iPhones and iOS have some issues, maybe more so in recent versions, they are on a different plane of existence when it comes to reliability and performance, especially over time. When I say that Android is the next Windows, I mean that very broadly. It is the next Windows in every way that I can imagine.

I don’t know why we put up with things that don’t work properly. I do know that my life as a technology fan has been a double-edged sword. I’m absolutely delighted and fascinated by all the advancements. But it’s been decades of endless frustration too. This stuff is supposed to get better, right?

Microsoft hardware event

will asks:

(Daishi asked a similar question too.)

Any word on a spring hardware event for Microsoft? Just waiting to see when they will make the switch to Thunderbolt 3 😉

No, and no rumors either. Microsoft just provided the press with a first-ever press event roadmap that stretches through the end of July, and there is nothing there about hardware, Surface or otherwise.

That said, they could be trying to keep such a thing secret. And they could likewise be trying to stretch out the lifecycle of their current devices, much like Apple does. This actually makes more sense for Microsoft than Apple, really, since Microsoft is a boutique PC maker and making a major architecture change is very expensive. I worry about this.

Anyway, nothing on that front, sorry.

Amiga vs. Atari ST

StevenLayton asks:

The Atari ST was a better computer than the Commodore Amiga. Discuss 😉

(Seriously, I have great memories of my first computer, an Atari XE, then moving to an Atari ST)

It’s funny you bring this up now, I’ve been watching the handful of good Atari ST history videos there are on YouTube recently.

As is the case with sports, where I grew up in a very partisan way (cheering for, say, the Boston Celtics in the 1980’s and hating the Lakers), I’ve got a much better perspective on this stuff now. There was no doubt in my mind in the 1980’s that the Amiga was superior to the Atari ST and that Commodore, generally, was “better” overall.

Today, however, I see that view as ludicrous. Both systems had their strengths. And I have a personal story about the ST that I’ll share someday; long story short, the ST was my first real experience with 16-bit computing and it filled me with a sense of new possibilities at the time.

I miss those days in a way that alarms me. I miss the Tramiels and what they did for personal computing, and the notion that an underdog could come in and change everything. But Atari and Commodore lost for a variety of reasons. In Commodore’s case, it was because Commodore was a terrible company run by a madman.

One fun historical note. The Atari 400/800 (later, 65XE/130XE) was architecturally superior to the Commodore 64, in large part because they had custom chipsets designed by Jay Miner. But the Commodore Amiga was architecturally superior, overall, to the Atari ST … for the same reason: It had custom chipsets designed by Jay Miner. An alternate past in which Jay Miner/Amiga went with Atari, and in which the Commodore employees who fled that company to join Jack Tramiel and make a 16-bit PC there stayed with Commodore, isn’t just possible, it should have happened. That history occurred otherwise is bizarre.

But in a very general way, the Atari ST was really a Commodore product. And the Amiga should have an Atari product. This kind of thing fascinates me.

PWAs on Windows 10

adamcorbally asks:

It’s getting late in the development cycle and still no PWA’s in the store, do you think they have been pushed back?

No, that work is complete, and PWA support is there now in Redstone 4. The first PWAs will be public in the Microsoft Store or before the general release of this Windows 10 version.

Postmodernism

alirobe asks:

Is Agile degrading software?

I feel like it results in such a level of accelerated feature creep that it’s now entropy creep. Unnecessary rebuilding of stuff, breaking my muscle memory, losing features, slowing things down, and losing the core abstractions that made the original software useful. There haven’t really been strategy, or user testing, or feedback cycles – since 2012. This applies to iOS, Windows, and Office 365… but not Amazon or Google software. It just feels like Apple & Microsoft have shifted from modernism to post-modernism as an organizing principle, and I don’t like post-modernism (yes that link is correct, skip to 9:00). The ribbon was the last gasp for genuine modern software development – using scientific approaches to strive for something that’s better, not just something that’s cool or different or fashionable…

Do you agree? What are your thoughts? Am I just getting old & jaded?

You’re onto something here. There are two parts to this, I think. The notion that we’re just doing the same thing over and over again. And that quality, concurrently, has gone down.

Regarding post-modernism, consider Windows 10. In updating my Windows 10 Field Guide recently, I was struck, not for the first time, but how little Windows has changed since Windows XP. Heck, since Windows 95. There’s a Start button and menu, a desktop, a taskbar with a system tray, floating windows, and a Recycle Bin. Everything else is just lipstick on that pig.

And then there’s quality. I raised this very issue with Mary Jo Foley last week privately, an interesting coincidence. That said, I think I re-told the story publicly (Windows Weekly, probably) recently, too, about how one of the big innovations in the Xbox 360 in 2005 was that game developers could update their games for the first time post-ship. That was, I noted at the time, a slippery-slope. Wouldn’t it lead to lower quality?

As an industry, we’ve moved to what I think of as the “Google model,” where products and services are provided publicly perhaps too quickly and then fixed over time. The problem is so bad at Apple that they are literally slowing down iOS development to shore up quality. Microsoft and Google should do the same.

When you put these two things together—technology regurgitation and quality control problems—you pretty much arrive at where we are today. Earlier in this post, I reiterated my belief that Android is essentially the new Windows. On and on it goes.

The issues are many. But with regards to, say, Windows, which I happen to care about a lot, there’s no good answer. Microsoft’s attempts to go beyond the traditional feature set have all been disasters. And it has to please a broad base of users with different needs while keeping the few remaining enthusiasts engaged with the Ninja Cat and #savetheworld (or whatever) silliness in the Insider Program. The whole thing is a mess.

I do sort of feel that we’re heading for a crash of sorts. And while Microsoft will point to its telemetry and other internal data as rationale/excuses for what it does, it is increasingly clear to me that this company—not uniquely, but I focus on Microsoft—is at odds with what its customers really want and need. It’s troubling.

Maybe it’s just a basic lack of direction. I have less insight for companies like Apple and Google that are in fact leading the charge in end-user products. But it’s clear from the quality problems and me-too designs in both Android and iOS that they are adrift as well.

With regards to your comments about the ribbon, I’d point to one more recent example of that: The vision for Windows phone, which wasn’t to copy iOS outright (as Android did) but rather to examine how people were using mobile devices and invent a better approach. Their strategy, ultimately, was flawed. But it was the right idea, the right approach. Since then, not so much.

This whole thing is very unsettling.

And it’s possible that I in no way answered your question, sorry.

If a Microsoft Store falls in the forest and no one sees it …

hrlngrv asks:

If Microsoft believes so much in its Store, why isn’t every bit of its own desktop software packaged and in the Store? For example, everything linked from here?

Perhaps a simpler way to ask this: how can Microsoft expect any ISV to take the Microsoft Store seriously if Microsoft itself won’t?

How long does Microsoft get to dither before it reaches a put up or shut up moment?

So I agree with most of this. And I feel that we’re past the time where Microsoft could/should have shown up and led the way. The in-box apps in Windows 10 are mostly an embarrassment, and I have never seen a single example of a professional looking UWP app that meets the look, feel, or command density of desktop applications like those in Microsoft Office. This is a huge failure on Microsoft’s part.

To defend Microsoft slightly, however, I’ll just point out that getting a desktop application into the Store isn’t as simple as pressing a Compile button in Visual Studio. And that many of the applications linked above would probably be difficult/impossible/pointless to bring to the Store. That Desktop Bridge exists is great, and I agree that Microsoft should offer as many of its own apps this way as is possible. But it’s notable, I think, that there are still only a handful of notable desktop applications in the Store. Microsoft or otherwise.

Anyway. I agree. This is a huge failure and embarrassment for Microsoft for sure.

Outlook Premium renewals, again

Simard57 asks:

I received notice below and when I went to check the renewal on the accounts.microsoft.com site, there is no evident way way to renew so I sent [email protected] a message, it returned:

Thank you for emailing [email protected]. This email address is no longer monitored. If you have questions about renewing or cancelling your Outlook.com Premium personalized email domain, please see the below FAQ.

Seems getting clear direction from Microsoft is hopeless. I am unsure what I need to do by when to preserve my custom domain. has Microsoft provided you with any direction that makes it clearer?

I feel like this has come up a few times recently, but I’m not sure there’s any new news.

New custom domain support is closed, but my understanding is that those already using Outlook.com Premium with a custom domain can renew the service for at least the short term.

Over time, Microsoft will move custom domain registrations (and annual renewals) to a third party. And, I suspect, it will eventually kill custom domain support on Outlook.com for those who are currently grandfathered in. But that’s just a guess, and it could be a few years.

I don’t think you’ll “lose” the custom domain. You will probably lose the ability to use it with Outlook.com at some point.

Unfortunately, all you can do now is deal with Microsoft Support.

Microsoft To-do

StudBen asks:

So is Microsoft To-Do, which is suppose to be Wunderlist’s replacement, ever going to get any meaningful updates? It just seems to be sitting stagnant … I guess I may have to check out todoist.

In mid-December, I was told the following:

“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.”

To my knowledge, nothing has changed, sorry. But, for sure, Microsoft seems to be the place where many mobile apps/services go to die.

I will ask them about this again.

Fluent Design System

johnlavey asks:

Is there any news on the use of Acrylic and the Fluent Design System (formerly Project NEON) in future versions of Windows 10?

Yeah, Microsoft’s slow addition of Acrylic and other Fluent Design System user experiences is getting a nice bump in the Spring Creators Update (1803). I’ve got a post coming about this, actually, as part of my S mode series. But I wish this was more uniform: Many UI bits have been update, but many have not.

Microsoft cloud-based gaming service

ChristopherCollins asks:

Do you think Microsoft’s talk of the best E3 ever could be about a next level, advanced game streaming service or just hype because they are moving it’s presentations and presence to The Microsoft Theatre? I know you’ve anticipated that as a future and I believe in it too. It’s the only thing I can really think of to top XB1-X. What do you think?

Yeah, that’s my guess as well, and the fact that the company recently revealed (irritatingly, to the Verge, given that I’ve been talking this up for months) that they have a cloud gaming business unit now only fuels that thought. Certainly, an announcement like “we’re adding Mixed Reality support to Xbox One” wouldn’t have a huge impact.