Ask Paul: April 3 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and Happy April, too. Here’s a lengthy and diverse set of questions to kick off the weekend.

… And a passerby left this note on our mailbox.

Civility

Rather than address specific questions about this issue, I’d like to remind everyone that I aggressively police our site’s comments for personal attacks and delete them accordingly. Some seem to believe that I delete comments that disagree with me or my opinions. That’s not the case at all, and a cursory examination of the comments on the site proves that nicely. What I will not tolerate is a personal attack against me, other site authors, or readers, and I’m especially disheartened to learn that people have repeatedly set up accounts specifically to bully me and others here.

Please, feel free to disagree on whatever topic. But do so without insulting others, impugning their intelligence or sanity, or anything else that, frankly, should be obvious. The inanity of what people quibble over and the mean and personal ways in which they do so is unacceptable, always. But in these days especially, it’s inexcusable.

Thanks for understanding. –Paul

Edge notifications

SherlockHolmes asks:

it looks like I have some problems with the new Edge. As I understand it, Edge should be able to send toast notifications when its closed. I allowed outlook.com to do desktop notifications and also allowed Edge to keep running in the background. But I dont get E-Mail notifications when I get new Mails in my Inbox. Any ideas whats wrong? Thanks.

Based on a months-old Microsoft Tech Community forum post, this has been an issue with the new Edge, but I’m not sure if it is now. And neither of Microsoft’s roadmap updates for the new Edge (here and here) mention notifications. Obviously, this can and should work—both Chrome and legacy Edge support this—but I’m not sure if this is an ongoing issue. I haven’t configured any sites to provide system notifications (though some, like Google Calendar, will issue their own in the browser frame).

Does anyone see notification toasts and Action Center integration with the new Edge? I can ask Microsoft about this if not.

Teams for video conferencing

will asks:

With everyone working from home we have seen a surge in the usage of Teams, and while it is good here has been some vocal people on just how “easy” it is use and its features. Due to the currently limit of only having 4 people on the screen at one time in a video call we have also now purchased many Zoom licenses. People are now preferring to use Zoom over Teams due to ease of use and video based meetings. I know that Microsoft announced in 2019 they would be increasing the number of people on screen up to 9, but Zoom allows for a lot more than that. Even the status update for increase the video calls on screen was last updated in January with “we are still working on it”.

Teams is a business tool, so I’m not sure a lot of people are comparing it with Zoom. Regardless, Skype supports up to 50 users on video, so I’d imagine that’s the better choice today for people stuck at home who wish to connect with many others at once.

Basically my question is since now millions of people are using Teams more than ever, do. you think Microsoft is learning that they need to improve and update their products quicker and provide features people want vs how Microsoft thinks people should work? Is Microsoft too big to deliver the updates and changes people want to use in the world we now live in?

Teams is managed by the one part of Microsoft is that is iterating quickly and has been for years. And Teams, specifically, has evolved very rapidly in three years, too. So I’m not sure I see this as an issue, generally speaking. The COVID-9 thing has obviously caught the world by surprise, but I don’t View Microsoft’s response time negatively, and I feel like it will simply continue to evolve Teams until it can replace Skype across the board.

Social media in the apocalypse

eeisner asks:

In the past I think we’ve all been negative on social media, particularly for the overflow of politics/fake news and the negative impacts on mental health, something I personally deal with. In the world of COVID-19 and social distancing, has your opinion on and usage of social media changed?

There’s some good and some continued bad.

As noted above, it boggles the mind that people would continue their terrible online behavior given what’s going on in the world. But, of course, some people are just like that. Others are being kind, and I have seen some neat things, even on Twitter, where people are being overtly positive in a way that I do appreciate.

But this doesn’t change the general dynamic. Most of the false information about this pandemic starts on Facebook and Twitter and then makes its way to news organizations that serve the less well-educated and the whole cycle just keeps repeating. When times are scary and anxious, this kind of thing is even more prevalent and even more dangerous.

I was leaving for a walk yesterday and a neighbor walked out to the end of his driveway and we ended up chatting—from a distance of over 6 feet—for over an hour. He apologized a few times for keeping me from my walk, but we both appreciated the human contact and both had things we needed to unload, so it was nice. Even in this age of social distancing, the social part of our interactions, virtual or in-person, is still so important. I think we need to value and celebrate those things. And try to ignore the noise and the fake news.

Microsoft vs. consumers

BigM72 asks:

What does Microsoft think about the consumer market (has it started to care again)? They seemed to have become almost totally enterprise focused under Nadella and also much more disciplined and selective under Amy Hood on new investments. The reason I ask is that whilst the shift to Microsoft 365 branding was expected, to align with the naming of the commercial products, the introduction of the array of very incremental consumer features was curious.

I wasn’t able to discuss this past week’s announcements privately with Microsoft beyond a few email exchanges on very specific topics. But this notion of Microsoft and the consumer market has come up repeatedly in public and private conversations I’ve had with Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela, who has always been transparent and honest about this interaction. In his view, the consumer and business markets will always be linked because most of the software and services that businesses use are used by individuals. And he and Microsoft feel that the company is uniquely positioned to improve productivity at every level.

I agree with that. And the thing that I think was most telling about this past week’s announcement was Microsoft’s messaging on the work/life balance stuff. How certain tools—Outlook, OneDrive, soon Teams—can be used for both personal and work productivity together. And how other tools, like Excel and PowerPoint, which are obviously business-focused, can be tailored to the needs of individuals in their personal lives.

When I write and speak about my own new focus, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Microsoft won’t make another music service, because that market is well served by consumer-focused companies. But it will still make software and services that will be used by consumers, mostly in the productivity space. (There are always exceptions, like Xbox, which is ultimately more about cloud services in the long run than about Microsoft literally making games.)

I ask the question as, these days, I’m only going to hesitantly adopt new MS consumer services given how much has been dropped over the years. Is Microsoft showing a renewed interest in consumer? (One reason could be just as BYOD destroyed the business phone market, Zoom’s penetration into enterprise seems based on consumer-level ease of use and friendliness). e.g. I’m interested in Teams for family and friends but wondering if it will be easy enough to use and useful enough for me to persuade family and friends to use it.

Teams is and will continue to be successful in businesses. I’m not sure whether they can take that success and bring it to consumers (sort of the opposite of how Zoom did things, or the iPhone, or whatever). We’ll see. But Teams is also a platform. So we’ll see integration bits where you as a Teams user will be able to communicate with others on other communications platforms, I bet.

Microsoft and monetization

BigM72 also asks:

I thought the introduction of features like driving history was also curious. I don’t think they will drive new M365 subscriptions for Microsoft or help retention. Cynically minded, I think it gives them air cover to capture this data from phones as endpoints and then sell ‘insights’ to the insurance industry (and others). Microsoft positioned themselves as privacy-forward by paying for their services but perhaps the allure of monetising all that data sitting in their cloud is too big to ignore?

I’m going to write about the specific new features that Microsoft announced very soon in a “we are family”-type post. But with regards to that specific feature, I like the intent, but I feel like that needs to come from the platform maker (Apple and/or Google). In general, however, I just see Microsoft as trying to drive value. I view Office 365 Home—now, Microsoft 365 Family—as an absolute no-brainer, but there are two caveats to that discussion. A lot of that is based on the 1 TB of OneDrive storage that you get, which I feel puts it over the top (and for up to 6 users). But there are also only 38 million people paying for the consumer versions of Office 365/Microsoft 365, and that’s about 1/10th the size of the Office 365 commercial user space. So my guess is that Microsoft has seen the limits of its current offering and is perhaps trying to figure out other ways to incentivize consumers to pay up. Maybe some sum of features will put it over the top for a bigger audience.

Surface Go v. iPad

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Do you think that cursor support for the iPad will drive a stake through the heart of Surface Go and the lower end Surface Pro? It does not support multiple accounts, but then again, most users of the Surface devices are using them as personal devices.

Yep, I do. Surface Go never made any sense in isolation, thanks to its terrible performance, terrible battery life, and too-small keyboard and display. But it fell apart completely when you compared the relative app stores and ecosystems with iPad. Today, it’s even worse, since you can get full trackpad/mouse support on virtually any iPad, and you know that a legion of third-party keyboard/trackpad covers is coming for each iPad model (in addition to Apple’s).

But the new iPad, for lack of a better term, is a bigger problem for Microsoft than just Surface Go, which already showed the limits of what Microsoft could do with its premium PC brand in the mid-market: It’s arguably an existential threat to Surface and to Windows in general, that asteroid I wondered about when Apple first announced the original iPad Pro. In one software release, Apple has erased the only major complaint that any mainstream user could possibly have about the iPad. All that we have left on the PC side are people like you and me: Technical people and power users with very specific needs that are either only met by a real PC. (Or are perceived as such, some just prefer the PC.)

There are all kinds of ways to have this discussion. I’ve often framed it as whether it makes sense to take a mobile platform and mature it or whether it’s possible to take a mature legacy platform and simplify it. But the bigger issue is really just about how people do things and how our expectations have changed. In a world in which most people use and want a phone most of the time, this secondary device only has to provide some basics—bigger screen, real keyboard, and a real pointing device—because it’s only used some of the time. The iPad now accomplishes this, and it’s the better device in general because of all the apps and the ecosystem. For iPhone users—50 percent of the market in the U.S. and much of Western Europe—it’s a no-brainer. It’s a better device than a Mac, too.

So yeah, as a PC fan, I’m worried about this. It works too well for me not to be.

Phone upgrade

Shane asks:

Phone upgrade. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I did order and receive the Galaxy S20 plus. Didn’t like it. I prefer my Oneplus . So sent it back. With the new Huawei P40. What are your thoughts on side loading the play store. I will probably still go for the new Oneplus. But the Huawei is a consideration. Thanks Paul and keep safe.

I cannot recommend any Huawei handset right now, regardless of how good they are. It’s just too dicey. It kills me because I love their phones.

But my thoughts these days are in that sweet spot below the flagships: OnePlus 8, of course. The Pixel 4a (in my case, assuming they have an XL model, which apparently they will not). The iPhone SE (2020).

I’ve reevaluating the iPhone 11 Pro Max right now and am somewhat surprised by OK I am with it. The camera is not quite where I want it. And there are iOS weirdisms. But it’s working well and the battery life is killer.

If I can get it done before the OnePlus 8 launches, I’d like to revisit the OnePlus 7T too. I just powered it up again and updated it, and am once again blown away by its thin and light form factor. It’s a featherweight compared to the two phones I’ve used most recently, the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G and iPhone 11 Pro Max. I could absolutely see going OnePlus.

Travel

JustMe asks:

At a time when none of us are supposed to travel unless we have to and airlines worldwide are virtually grounded, a decidedly random travel question for no particular reason whatsoever:

Not too long ago, you posted a picture of Penn Station which I asked you about. I meant to ask at the time – how did you find driving to the train station at Newark/Liberty and taking the train to JFK (I think) apart, of course, from a wrong train/missing your stop on the way home? When things return to some semblance of normality (or whatever normal becomes) and we are all traveling again, would you do it again? I have a vague recollection of you talking about a little of this in one podcast or another, but dont remember exactly where and when.

This is how I will always travel to NYC going forward. I guess I could see driving to a different location, perhaps a train station or whatever. But I went with Newark Liberty because it was a known quantity, and despite the issues we had (one, a weird one-time issue and the other a mistake my wife and I made), this was clearly the right choice.

It’s weird. On paper, our current home is in a semi-ideal place for travel, with two airports (Philadelphia and Newark) about 1:15 to 1:20 away, and a third, JFK, about two and a half hours away. But in Boston, I was five minutes from the Amtrak station (1:20 here) and 30 minutes from the airport, or 40-45 with heavy traffic. So we have more choices. But they all stink.

If there was a bus that worked and had a good schedule, I’d just do that. But the Bieber bus company, which was wonderful, went out of business, and the alternatives are terrible. Which is what led to me to driving to Newark and then training in from there. There can always be issues (accidents, traffic). But I can’t wait to have the opportunity to do it again.