Ask Paul: December 6 (Premium)

After a long week, I’m looking forward to doing some coding this weekend. But first, here’s another great set of reader questions.

Coincidence

Eric_Rasmussen asks:

I just finished the Thanksgiving episode of Windows Weekly. 🙂 I was particularly intrigued by the Mary Jo story, as that same sort of scenario has happened to me before.

If you’re not familiar with this story, please check out Windows Weekly #625, at about 1:20. The follow-up came this past week in Windows Weekly #650 (at about 1:38), since I somehow managed to run into the exact same woman again, this time near my home in Pennsylvania. I posted a picture of us on Instagram; to be clear, she looks exactly like Mary Jo from the back.

These are the kinds of events that make me wonder if we really are living in a simulation. 🙂

Yep. 🙂

I think what this really is, is just that thing I had read about so many years ago where we, as humans, have been naturally selected to see coincidence as a conspiracy. (Ancient man would see something moving in the grass, and those who ran away lived; those who didn’t sometimes died because it was a tiger or whatever. Flash forward a few hundred generations and we see a purpose in every coincidence, from the JFK assassination all the way down to smaller things like this.

Anyway, it’s still crazy and fun when it happens for sure.

Be sure to check out Eric’s similar story in the original post.

Home improvement projects for the tech enthusiast

spacecamel asks:

I have been enjoying the home improvement parts of your podcast and was wondering if you had any good home improvement ideas for the tech enthusiast?

This is more for Brad than me, as I’m not particularly skilled in this area. That said, one home improvement project I’ll be undertaking soon is adding Ethernet to at least a small area of the house. And we’ll see how it goes from there.

I did ask Brad about this and he suggested replacing wall timers for lights with smart bulbs. That’s something I’ve also done, and since it doesn’t require any actual construction or skill, it’s certainly doable even by someone as useful as I am. 🙂

Maybe this is a good area of exploration for some 2020 articles. I do intend to at least write up my Ethernet wiring experiences.

Apple’s future

helix2301 asks:

I know in the past you have talked about Apples customers and there willingness to give money to Apple. Apple is now getting into the services business the Apple Card, Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+. I guess my question is what other services do you think Apple could get into to become profitable. I know they still sell software like finalcut I can’t picture them getting into console gaming or selling iwork as cloud platform like office 365 I guess my question is where can their service business go from here moving forward. Health service maybe? More wearables (not really a services business)? Just wondering your thoughts.

The Apple thing is interesting because the company is in the same spot now with iPhone where Microsoft was previously with Windows (and where Google was/is with Search/advertising): They have this one enormously successful product that is driving the vast majority of its profits and revenues. And they need to diversify to protect themselves from a sudden change in the market. Microsoft failed with this, originally, as the computing world went mobile, but it seems to be recovering with productivity cloud services.

What Apple is doing is smart because its fanbase is large and loyal, and as you note, quite willing to throw money at it in ways that customers of other companies are not. It’s also sort of unique, since consumer services are a tough business and can be very volatile compared to, say, Microsoft’s enterprise services business. But I think they will be quite successful overall, even if individual services are soft (News+) or slow-growing.

But as you point out, health services are perhaps the most lucrative and obvious way forward. This, too, has been a tough sell elsewhere, and I suspect that the new paid services from Fitbit, which basically only makes health wearables, will not do very well. But here, again, Apple has advantages thanks to its loyal userbase. They can make a good case for buying a device once every four to five years and then taking full advantage of it with services.

This is unrelated to services, but I saw something today (maybe on Medium) suggesting that Apple should make a Watch for children. I think that’s an incredibly smart idea, even though the company currently has, if anything, far too many products and models. Apple could expand its customer loyalty to families very easily (and probably already has with iPhones and iPads).

Google’s future

ggolcher asks:

I expected and looked forward to an analysis from you about Brin and Page stepping down at Google, and Pichai taking over. Instead of being disappointed, I’ll ask: what implications do you think this has for Google and for the entire tech world as a whole?

Fair enough. But I don’t think them stepping down really means all that much. Brin and Page are more research scientists than businessmen or entrepreneurs, and they rarely had any major hand in the day-to-day business at Google. So they are absolutely nothing like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, two people I know a lot more about.

That said, while they clearly had a cultural impact on Google, that impact has outlived its usefulness. We often use the term “Googly” to describe weird, unique aspects of its business. But I always found this stuff to be immature and unprofessional, and with the company now one of the biggest tech giants in the world, it has long since moved past all that. Brin and Page officially leaving signals, to me, that Google is growing up and this is how they can communicate that. I bet the Alphabet organization is disbanded, and that the company becomes Google again and that some side-bets are spun off or wound down.

So in that way, at least, Brin and Page do have one big similarity with people like Steve Wozniak (Apple) and Bill Gates, where they were geniuses at certain things in the early days but then their companies grew into new areas in which they were no longer needed or had any particular expertise. Those guys built algorithms. Today, Google is in consumer and enterprise services of all kinds. I can’t imagine it was particularly interesting to them.

Why?

will asks:

Maybe this is beating a dead horse…but I wanted to get your thoughts on why Microsoft does not providing a feature update roadmap for Windows 10 updates like they do with the Office 365 roadmap?

But I can only speculate. But I have a few ideas.

First, Windows is pretty mature. And the only exciting stuff coming down the pike is related to Windows 10X, which it really doesn’t want to discuss yet.

But with the understanding that Microsoft never provided a roadmap even when there was a real Windows team, I think the lack of any centralized leadership now only exacerbates the problem. There’s no real central vision anymore, instead, we just have one team working on the kernel/core bits and another working on user experiences for end-users. Most of the real work that’s happening today in Windows is really about making Microsoft 365 more attractive. It’s kind of committee-based and the committee serves a bigger thing than just Windows.

Looking back on Terry Myerson and the conversations we had, I will just say that he did improve communication and transparency dramatically compared to his predecessor. But he and his team also got into trouble repeatedly for promising features that were never delivered; that’s the trouble with transparency, and it got Jim Allchin into trouble back in the day as well. If the Windows “team” provided a roadmap and then didn’t deliver, it would just result in more negativity. I’m sure they feel that.

Windows 7 EOL

hrlngrv asks:

Somewhat tangential, but how big a noise do you believe will arise when Windows 7 reaches EOS in about a month?

Maybe this is irrational, but I don’t think this will be as dire as when Windows XP finally sailed off into the sunset. Part of the reason is that there is more certainty around this event. Instead of extending support multiple times, Microsoft is instead providing support beyond January for businesses that want/need it, and that’s gotta account for about two-thirds of the Windows 7 installs out there today. Consumers will be trickier, and the question I have around that is where they go after their PCs finally stop working well. I bet some never buy another PC again, and that some small percentage goes iPad, Chromebook, or Mac. But most (half?) will likely get at least a low-end Windows 10 PC at some point.

He says, with a false sense of confidence. We’ll see. 🙂

Stadia success?

sabertooth920 asks:

Without a must-have blockbuster exclusive game, can Stadia realistically survive?

I feel like what Stadia is lacking is an identity that matches up with some audience. Apple Arcade doesn’t exactly have any killer AAA titles either, but Apple at least designed the service with an understanding of the potential audience (which is what I’ll call casual+ gamers). But what the heck is Stadia? Who is it for? The whole thing seems nebulous to me right now.

Does its earlier launch give it any advantages over its cloud gaming competitors?

I don’t believe so. All they’ve done is played their hand early and demonstrated to the Microsofts and Sonys of the world what they need to beat, technically and content-wise. And I bet those two companies feel pretty good right now.

Is Google willing to absorb the type of losses Microsoft does with Xbox?

That’s what we’re going to find out. When I heard that Google was getting into game streaming, I thought it made sense because I assumed they were participating in the back-end, similar to what Amazon and Microsoft are also doing. And I feel like they could play a role there. But as a consumer-facing service provider? I don’t think they have any successful paid entries in that space at all.

Maybe this is related to the earlier question about the Google founders leaving, and what Google now needs to do is take a hard look at all its many products and services, similar to what Satya Nadella did, and make those teams justify their existences.

Outlook.com issues with the new Edge

SherlockHolmes asks:

I have a weird outlook.com problem, Paul. After I read a message in my inbox, the message is still marked as unread. Do you know anything about that error? Also, on the new Edge, every time I close the browser, outlook.com locks me out and I need to sign in every time I go to outlook.com again.

I don’t, sorry. I do check Outlook.com every day using the new Edge as well, partially because I get mail at what is now a secondary account (at least from an email perspective) and in part because I’m hoping I’ll get that option to add a Gmail account. If that happens, I will switch to Outlook.com and maybe at that point, I’ll see some errors.

Anyone else?

Excel pen support

jt5 Alpha Member #626 – 2 hours ago

When Microsoft had the launch event for the Surface Pro 7, they demonstrated in Excel the ability to write with a pen and have it turn into text. I have Office 365 and made sure it is updated, but I do not see this feature. Any word on if this is out already and I am just missing how to do it, or if it has not been released – the tentative date when it is to be released?

This feature is coming in spring 2020 for Office 365 customers, Microsoft says. Sorry I don’t have anything more specific.