Ask Paul: July 26 (Premium)

We’re in the third and final day of our annual European Heat Wave experience. So here’s a new edition of Ask Paul to kick off a cooler weekend.

Cortana questions

will asks:

With the news this week that Xbox was removing Cortana from the Xbox, but news from a couple weeks ago that Microsoft was going to be creating a standalone app for Cortana on Windows, I am not sure I understand what Microsoft’s long terms plans are for Cortana.

You are not alone.

Personally over the past couple of months I have been seeing more and more emails from Cortana in my Office 365 account about things I should follow up on. If Cortana is going away why does it seem to be showing up in other areas? I guess my question is, and since you are better at reading the tea leaves of Microsoft than I am, what is going on with Cortana?

I’m not sure my opinion is any more valid than your yours, but my take on this is that Cortana has suffered from a brutal combination of external factors (Microsoft losing mobile) and internal ambivalence, leading to its current situation. The course correction on Cortana in Windows and Xbox makes sense: This is a technology that few people will use in those environments and, conversely, it’s hamstrung by being integrated into a platform that is updated infrequently. As a standalone app, Cortana can be updated more frequently.

But your question hints at two things about Cortana, and about voice control in Microsoft’s platforms, that I think are very important.

First, Cortana can succeed where it makes sense, and your mention of Office 365 is a great example of how Cortana, as a back-end service, does make sense today. (Google has a similar AI-like feature in Gmail that asks you whether you want to follow-up on email from the past that seem to warrant that kind of attention.) And second, Microsoft opening up its platforms to different assistants is in keeping with how the company operates these days, and it is very customer-friendly. Since most Microsoft customers are using other assistants, why not open up Windows and Xbox to support them?

Microsoft clearly understands that Cortana as a front-facing competitor to Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Siri is a non-starter. But it’s a good brand and I think it will continue as a back-end service for Microsoft and third-party products and services. As for the standalone apps on Windows and mobile, we’ll see. But I don’t think those will succeed because Cortana is an ingredient in other things one does, and is not a destination. For most people, anyway.

Animals and home swaps

T182 asks:

What did you do with your cat and dog while on your home swap?

We’ve had cats every year that we’ve done a home swap, and with only one exception—last year, because one of the other family’s kids was allergic—the people who stay in our house have taken care of them. This makes sense: It’s usually a family with kids and the pets are part of the experience and part of what makes our house seem like a real home to them.

The reverse is also true: We’ve always elected to take care of other people’s cats, and a few other pets—-a rabbit, at least once—because the kids love it. This year, the other family has a little cat we’re taking care of, and that’s been one of the fun parts of the swap.

One thing we have to do on both ends is arrange for other people to feed the cats if we (or the other family) is gone for more than a day or two. I have two sisters who live nearby who handle that for us. And here in The Netherlands, the husband’s brother will feed the cat when we go on our side trip next week.

Dogs are more complicated, of course, and I would never even give the other family the option to take care of our dog. So she goes to a kennel, which is actually a really good experience for her. (And expensive, unfortunately.) We only found out after we arrived here that this family also has a dog in addition to the cat, and that it, too, is in a kennel for the duration of the trip.

One billion

longhorn asks:

With more than 1 billion PCs shipped since the launch of Windows 10 (more than 250 million per year for 4 years), when will Windows 10 hit 1 billion users?

We should start a Windows 10 data bingo for this. My guess is that the one billion milestone will coincide with the end of support for Windows 7, so sometime in 2020.

I guess the upgrade program wasn’t successful. For a monopoly (lock-in) product I would argue that less success in the market results in a better product. We see it with iPhones and Pixel phones too (more affordable versions).

I think most people feel that upgrading a PC is too complicated to even bother with. And unlike with smartphones, that most people likewise associate whatever version of Windows that came with that computer as being part of that computer. (“This is a Windows 7 PC. And my next one will be a Windows 10 PC,” or whatever.) Making it free didn’t really solve the problem for many. An now that four more years have elapsed, there are far, far fewer compatible PCs out in the wild that could successfully be upgraded to Windows 10 anyway. The route forward is a new PC for most. (Or a Chromebook or Mac, I guess.)

The Windows brand

christian.hvid asks:

It’s fairly obvious that Microsoft is slowly retiring its Windows brand: Windows Store renamed to Microsoft Store, Windows Defender renamed to Microsoft Defender, Windows Enterprise being subsumed into Microsoft 365 etc.

Sure. This makes sense on a number of levels. But the big one is that Windows is no longer at the heart of it all. Microsoft’s software and services run on many different platforms now. And the Microsoft brand is universal.

Do you believe Windows will eventually be rebranded as Microsoft OS or something similar. After all, the UI feature that Windows is named for isn’t exactly a novelty anymore (on the other hand, the Microsoft brand is getting a bit dated as well, given that nobody has used the term “microcomputer” for the last 30 years).

Not exactly.

I think the Windows brand persists for this thing we call Window today. But I think Microsoft will use a new brand for whatever LiteOS is called, even though it will share the same underpinnings with Windows proper. This isn’t unusual: Xbox One, Surface Hub, and other Microsoft platforms likewise share underpinnings with Windows but utilize unique brands.

If this LiteOS offering succeeds, it could over time become more popular than Windows and could thus “replace” Windows in the market for many. So there could be a day in the distant future where Microsoft finally moves past Windows, literally.

That will be the day I retire. 🙂

Start menu futures

madthinus asks:

Has the time come for the start menu to disappear? I have been looking at this accidental leak with the new start menu and I have been looking at my work computer and home computer and have come to the conclusion that the need for central launcher of apps have come to an end. The reality is the apps I used most is all launchers in their own right. Whether Steam, Firefox or the taskbar, I have access to all my apps without the start menu. So is it time we change the paradigm and launch a version of Windows 10, that can run all the applications of Windows 10 and legacy, without the UI bloat of Windows of old.

It will evolve, for sure. And to be fair, it has pretty much always evolved: The Windows Vista and 7 Start menus were very different from the version from XP, which was itself very different from the versions in Windows 95, 98, Me, NT 4.0, and 2000. Windows 8 added a full-screen version. And Windows 10 lets you choose between that and an evolved menu.

Regardless of what it looks like, there will always have to be some way to find and launch apps and system services. And what you see in that leaked build is, to me, very reminiscent of the similar UI in Chrome OS, which was itself based on Windows. Something like this will always be there. As will secondary experiences for those apps/services we don’t use that much, including search capabilities.

The Fall hardware season

spacecamel asks:

Since we are about to get into fall announcement season, what are you looking for to seeing announced? What are we expecting from Microsoft?

There are two big dates coming up that are of interesting: IFA in September, when most PC makers will announce new PCs for the holidays, and Microsoft’s October hardware event.

For IFA, I’m mostly curious about PCs based on the Snapdragon 8cx processor, which will allegedly offer Intel Core i5-level performance; we’ll see. But I expect to see some folding PC designs at least announced then as well.

As for Microsoft, it hasn’t updated some of its core products in years: Surface Pro and Surface Book are long overdue for upgrades, especially. I’m expecting to see that plus the first Snapdragon-based Surface PC, whatever that might be. (I could see Surface Go, Pro, and/or Laptop making the switch.) Brad believes that Microsoft might likewise use AMD in Surface Laptop 3, which would make some sense as well.

I was originally expecting new Xbox One and PlayStation consoles this year, but those plans were pushed back to 2020. Speaking of which…

Xbox and the future of gaming

yoshi asks:

What are you predictions for the next generation of gaming? Do you think Xbox will take the lead?

By next generation, I assume you mean cloud and not the next consoles. I think that market will be messy at first, with far too many platforms, and that it will eventually settle down to 2-4 major players. And that Microsoft will be one of the major players.

Will they lead in cloud gaming? I’ve made the argument that they could/should. But gaming is so lucrative that it is attracting some serious cloud muscle from both expected (Sony) and unexpected (Amazon, Apple, Google) competitors. And it’s just too early to say.

Apple will always be kind of a weird outlier like Nintendo in that few will abandon whatever platform they’re using to go in that direction, but they have a huge built-in base of loyal fans.

I had expected both Amazon and Google to offer infrastructure for other firms, but Google is instead going right after gamers. This is an expensive and time-consuming effort, and while I’m fascinated by what they’re doing, I could see Google failing hard.

Sony is … well, Sony. They will play a major role, maybe still be the dominant player. But hopefully that will benefit Microsoft, as Sony could very well be relying on Microsoft’s Azure for their services. That would make a second or third-place finish for Xbox a lot easier to swallow.

I will say this: I think cloud gaming is going to explode a lot more quickly than many believe. Of course, I said that about Progressive Web Apps, too. No one is perfect.