Ask Paul: November 13 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and happy Friday the 13th. Here’s a mammoth edition of Ask Paul to kick off the weekend a bit early.

The perfect smartphone?

Nic asks:

This is related to your premium post on Inconsistency. I’ve been a contented user of OnePlus phones for several years now, but I’ve reached a point where the photo quality is just not good enough (regardless of what specs and scores are touted by whatever organizations). It’s time for me to move on. I don’t want to get locked in to the Apple ecosystem which makes the iPhone a non-starter for me. On the Android side there does not appear to be much to choose from – there’s the underpowered small battery of the Pixel and the bloat infested Samsung Galaxy/Note. Huawei isn’t really an option given the worries around support. What’s going to work out best camera wise and for a daily driver? Any opinions?

So, I’ve literally started an article on this topic, and there’s no good answer. A week or so ago, I discussed with Brad the notion of a game of sorts called “this smartphone would be perfect if…” where you name a phone and then the thing(s) you’d change about it to make it perfect. For example, the Pixel 5 would be perfect if it cost $100 less, came in an XL variant, and also had a telephoto lens. It’s not hard to construct such a sentence for any phone, and of course everyone’s fixes would be different because we all care about different things.

At a high level, I wouldn’t avoid the iPhone just because it’s an Apple product. I also wouldn’t ignore the Samsung phones because of Samsung’s software bloat. These are both surmountable problems. I do agree that Huawei is a non-starter, which is unfortunate: It literally makes the best smartphone cameras, but it doesn’t make sense to go that route unless the U.S. sanctions lift and the company can do business with Google and other U.S.-based firms.

Looking ahead—it won’t arrive until the end of the month—I purchased a Google Pixel 4a 5G because it’s reasonably-priced (especially with my Pixel 4 XL trade-in) and is as close as I can get to an XL-sized Pixel this year. Will that work out for me? I’m hopeful but realistic. If it doesn’t, I’ll almost certainly keep using the Huawei P30 Pro, which isn’t an option I can recommend to others. But I could see going with an iPhone or trying the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE as well.

I’m basically as mystified as you are. I really don’t know which way to turn.

Speaking of which, when it comes to OnePlus, the OnePlus 8T would be perfect if it just had a better camera system. It’s that close. (Others may add wireless charging and an IP rating, but neither is a deal-breaker to me.) That’s why I wrote that article: It’s so frustrating that OnePlus gets so much so right and then keeping blowing it with the camera.

Misinformation

jwpear asks:

Do you think society and tech media companies can find the right balance between free speech and spreading misinformation that drives mass chaos and delusional perceptions? Are we too far down the path of them being viewed as modern day Enquirers, or worse, the formation of left and right social media platforms like we have with news media outlets? One thought I’ve had is that perhaps we need a means of slowing the spread of misinformation rather than blocking things entirely … I’m bothered by the role of technology in our current political atmosphere here in the US. I honestly never thought I’d see our democracy undermined in the way that it has been recently. Things I once thought could never happen have happened.

Obviously, this is a big topic. I feel like professional news outlets should be unbiased and fact-based, but I also realize that’s never going to happen, and if you’re familiar with the history of news reporting, you know that the situation has gotten worse and worse and will almost certainly continue doing so.

I’m not sure how to address this. In my own small world, I try to battle ignorance with facts, but people believe what they want to believe, and we’ve (de)volved to the point where faith trumps truth. The reader above referenced an article I wrote about inconsistency, and I specifically targeted OnePlus because of the bad experiences I’d had with the OnePlus 8T camera system. If you look through the comments, you won’t find anything exceptional from a personal attack or negativity perspective. I think most people understand where I’m coming from.

But if you look through the comments for my Lies of Omission post, which is about Apple and its M1-based Mac introduction, you will find personal attacks and lots of negativity on both sides. For some reason, my criticisms of Apple, which mirror my criticisms of Microsoft literally every single time it announces its quarterly earnings (for the same vagueness), brings out the nuts. But the complainers don’t even know about that: I’m “attacking” Apple and I’m a jerk for doing so. Worse, I am somehow attacking its fans. They take it personally. And then take that out on me.

So why the different reactions? I feel that both articles are reasonable. Of course I do, I wrote them. But I also feel that both articles were warranted, and on a different level would be interesting to readers. Not as “attacks” on companies or their products, but as rational discussions about things that I wish were better. They’re not rants. They’re observations.

The problem here, and much more broadly on local or national levels, is that we’re all so stuck in our own bubbles that we’ve stopped seeing the points of view of others. We don’t allow for different opinions, which is bad enough, but we don’t even allow for facts that contradict our beliefs. This is dangerous.

The Internet and other technologies are two-edged swords. It is our responsibility as people, as citizens, and as voters, to be educated on the topics and to behave not just in our own self-interest but for the good of others as well. And the Internet and other technologies enable that education. But they also enable a darker form of education that excludes contradictory and contrary ideas. How you get the former without the latter is unclear.

I don’t have any answers here, sorry. I see the problem. It frustrates me. But I don’t know how we can fix it.

M1-based Macs

crunchyfrog asks:

Will you be having in depth reviews on any of the new Mac laptops and Mac Mini with ‘Apple Silicon’?

Almost certainly. I’ve not ordered one yet because Apple didn’t address what I feel were obvious questions about the real-world compatibility and performance of these systems at its announcement event last week. But once we see where that all falls, based on reviews and first impressions from reviewers and actual users, I’ll decide which way to go. What I’d like to is trade-in my MacBook Air for one of the new M1-based Macs, but it’s not clear if Apple will let me do that because it’s so new. I’ll look into this.

The problem with the Xbox Series X…

madthinus asks:

A couple of days in, my thoughts on Xbox Series X is this: Meh, same as before. This a problem?

Yeah, it is a problem. This isn’t Microsoft’s fault, nor should it be an excuse, but it’s pretty clear that the pandemic screwed things up in two ways. First, by contributing to the delay of Halo Infinite, which Microsoft originally intended as a launch title. And second, by making video games so important to so many people in the six to eight months leading up to the new consoles launch.

I mean, think about it. If there was no pandemic, Xbox would have had a terrible first 10 months of 2020, which would have made sense for a console launch year, and then a big explosion of new when the Xbox Series X|S and Halo all launched together.

What we got instead was faster consoles with the same user experience as the Xbox One, but no Halo or any other new games of note. I understand why Microsoft did what it did, and even agree with most of it. But it just feels like these consoles are more of the same without any truly new or exclusive games.

Speed vs. space

JustMe asks:

Is the “instant on” (or “instant recall”) feature of the new XBox lineup really that big a deal and why? If it is, surely Microsoft would have invested in slightly more disk space than it apparently has? If the disk space requirements for games are any indication, when/if this feature comes to apps, do you expect Microsoft to update the consoles with more disk space, or will this be done in the cloud? Will this mean that you can only have two or three games installed if you intend to make frequent use of the feature?

The problem here isn’t so much that Microsoft is reserving disk space for Quick Resume (which is what I assume you mean) but that it doesn’t provide any way to manage that. For example, I might want to disable Quick Resume for all titles except for Call of Duty (or whatever) and save some disk space. Or I may want to configure it to enable Quick Resume on only the 1, 2, 3, 5, or whatever most recent titles that I launched. Or disable it entirely to get all the space back. There’s no way to do any of that.

I bet that changes in the coming months. I’m not the only one who will point out the storage issues, and Microsoft seems to really respond to feedback on Xbox.

Next-generation console expectations

jwpear asks:

Microsoft and Sony are quite far into their console journey–they’re seasoned at building them. Why are they both having trouble meeting initial demand on launch day? Has COVID slowed the process down? Has COVID created higher demand than usual?

According to a Bloomberg interview, Microsoft originally expected COVID to dramatically impact the supply/manufacturing chain, but that didn’t happen because China recovered so quickly. So my guess is that both Sony and Microsoft are facing the same issue: They’re selling consoles at a loss for now because their component prices are so high, and they’re threading a needle between adequate and over-supply. They don’t want to disappoint customers, of course, but they also don’t want to get stuck with millions of overpriced components that will ensure they’ll continue losing money on each console. So I’m sure they’re managing this as best they can. But it’s not a great situation for those that just want to buy a console.

Why can’t I go to Microsoft’s site and place an order, regardless of the time to ship? Is this due to some ridiculous retail partner agreement? I’d like to be able to get in line so to speak.

I will never understand this. Anyone should be able to put in an order and get in the queue. If you order a hard-to-get Apple product right now, Apple can tell you exactly when it will arrive, and they will always exactly meet that date, no matter how far out it is, or ship it early. Microsoft just doesn’t seem to have this ability.

I read the Shack News interview you posted. Phil said the addressable market was about 200M. That was a surprisingly low number.

That’s an interesting number.

Microsoft and Sony both sold 85-90 million Xbox 360s and PS3s respectively, so if you lump in whatever Nintendo consoles were around at the time, the figure is probably pretty close to 200 million. For the previous generation, Sony has sold about 114 million PS4s so far, Xbox One allegedly sold less than half that (so let’s just assume about 50 million). And we know that Nintendo has sold about 70 million Switch consoles so far, for a total of over 230 million units.

But perhaps he means just PlayStation and Xbox? (Nintendo is kind of its own thing.) If so, I think it’s reasonable that Xbox Series X|S will do better than Xbox One, but will not outsell the PS5. So maybe Microsoft sells 75 to 100 million units to that addressable market of 200 million? If so, it would be back on track with how well the Xbox 360 performed. It seems reasonable.

Microsoft as your iOS password manager

Christom asks:

I noticed that MS Authenticator can now be set as your password manager in iOS 14. If you do, it says this feature is coming soon. do you know anything about MS plans for this?

No, but I coincidentally saw an article about this topic earlier and set out to see if I could figure it out. I’m not seeing this capability on my iPhone either, and Microsoft hasn’t (to my knowledge) discussed it yet. I’ll keep my eye on this.

Surface Pro 8

harmjr asks:

Saw those leaked photos of the Surface Pro 8 some one was selling on ebay. My biggest hope is that they will bring the removable Hard Drive to the next version of SP. Do you think they will?

I hope that’s just a prototype that uses the old form factor and not what the Surface Pro 8 will really look like. My assumption has always been that the Surface Pro 8 would look like Surface Pro X. And assuming that happens, or that the form factor changes at all, yes, I would think replaceable storage would be part of that revision too.

Demographics

jwpear asks:

Do you know the demographics of your readers? Just curious who reads Thurrott.com, where they’re from, their age, profession, etc.

We do separate reader surveys for Thurrott.com and Petri.com every year, and I believe there is some demographic information in there. I don’t mean to say I don’t pay too much attention to that, but I literally have no idea where the most recent surveys are.

Looking at the BWW Media Groups site, I see that we have the Petri reader survey posted, but not the one for Thurrott for some reason. And yes, there is demographic info. I’ll ask about the one for Thurrott.com.

(The site does point out that “62% of the Thurrott audience are part of the IT buying decision process in their organizations and that 89% of the Thurrott audience are the primary decision-maker of technology purchases in their families.”)

Keeping kids safe online

erich82 asks:

If you had young children today, what would you do to ensure their safety and well-being online? What are some things you wish you would have done better, or differently, on this matter?

I almost can’t answer this since the technology has changed so much and my kids aren’t even kids anymore. I feel like we mostly did what we could do given the times and what was available when they were young.

But it’s funny you mention this now, as I was literally just thinking about reposting an editorial I wrote about my kids and mobile in-app purchases 10 years ago called So Easy Even a Child Can Do It. So I’ve done so.

Windows 95 vs. Windows 10

ErichK asks:

Hi Paul. Here’s a curveball for you. Let’s say someone came out of a coma, and the last version of Windows they ever worked with was Windows 95. What would be the top three things about Windows 10 that have changed that you would describe to this person?

I suspect it would be mostly familiar: There’s a desktop, taskbar, and Start button, and a Start menu. File Explorer replaced My Computer and Edge replaced Internet Explorer, but the basics are all the same. Most computers would likewise be immediately recognizable when you think about it. The screens are thinner on desktop PCs and portable PCs are too. But they basically work the same way, aside from multitouch and smartpen support on select models.

What would blow their mind, of course, would be smartphones.

M1-based Mac vs. Intel-based Mac

jt5 asks:

Hi Paul, I hate to ask an Apple question as this is mainly a windows site- but I cant find the answer anywhere and was hoping you might have some insight. I develop an app using the Uno Platform and since it runs on IOS I need a Mac to build it for IOS. I have one currently but need to replace it. I dont use the Mac for anything else. I have been using a Macbook Air with XCode and it has worked fine- so probably going to go with an Air again. I am trying to decide if I go with an Intel based Mac or an Arm based Mac. What are your thoughts about which way I should go? Also- do you know if XCode works on the ARM based Macs?

The now previous-generation Intel-based MacBook Air (which I own) is hampered by its Y-series processor, and I suspect that even if the M1-based Macs come in on the low-end side, this is one case where they will still outperform an Intel Y-series. So if you are going the MacBook Air route, I would choose the M1 version. Otherwise, I’d just wait a week to see what the real-world performance looks like. I suspect it will be fine.

With regards to Xcode, yes, it runs natively on the new M1-based Macs. Apple’s announcement about the new Macs mentions XCode a few times: Apparently, you can “build code in Xcode up to 2.8x faster” on the new MacBook Pro 13-inch and can “compile code in Xcode up to 3x faster” on the new Mac Mini.

Intel vs. ARM

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Can I assume, since both Microsoft and Apple are using emulation on their ARM platform for applications built on Intel architecture, that it is too hard a computer science problem to port the Win32 API or the Apple equivalent? I know I am oversimplifying, but it seems to me that if the calls existed it would be much easier for developers to port their applications; perhaps just a recompile. I know I am ignoring drivers, and low level stuff, and applications written in Assembler…but it seems to me that if they want the applications on the ARM architecture, they need to target the developer tools to make it simpler to compile the code for ARM.

So let’s see here. In both cases, Apple and Microsoft have made their native APIs available on both hardware platforms. The emulation capabilities in Windows 10 on ARM and the translation technology in macOS Big Sur are designed to let users run applications that were originally designed for Intel-based systems. This will never be as efficient as recompiling for native ARM, but compatibility is obviously important for moving the user base forward to the new platform. And to be fair, both Apple and Microsoft do provide what is basically a checkbox in their respective developer tools that let applications target both Intel and ARM/Apple Silicon. (I’m oversimplifying, of course.)

The problem is that most applications can’t simply be recompiled and then just work on ARM. The types of apps I’ve written over the past year, yes. But when you get to the Microsoft Office and Adobe CC suite level, it’s a more complex process. Even developers that want to bring their iPad apps to the Mac have experienced issues. These transitions require a bit of work, but developers make the effort when it’s worthwhile to do so.

With AMD as a viable option, does Microsoft even need an ARM based Windows? Battery life is really pretty good with new Intel/AMD chips. ARM chips are not cheap.

I’m of two minds here. Terry Myerson chose Qualcomm and ARM specifically because he wanted to spur Intel to create more mobile-oriented chips (more efficient, instant-on, always-on connectivity, and so on) and AMD was, at that time, “circling the drain” (as he put it). Since then, of course, AMD has had a nice revival, and its 4000- and 5000-series chipsets perform as well or better than competing Intel designs, are more energy-efficient, and are less expensive. So that does muddy the waters somewhat.

I think the reality that both Microsoft and Apple are dealing with is that they have these legacy platforms that were designed and optimized for legacy hardware platforms, but the personal computing world is moving on to more efficient ARM-based hardware. And that’s going to happen whether the PC and Mac come along for the ride or not. I just don’t see x86-type chipsets ever being as efficient as ARM chips, though there is certainly room for improvement. But now that ARM-based chipsets are much more powerful, emulating x86 software suddenly becomes possible, making the transition easier. It just feels inevitable.

I know Adobe and Microsoft have “committed” to porting their Mac applications for ARM, but what is in it for them? Is Apple helping or funding the effort?

I assume Apple is providing at least technical help, but the reason these companies are racing to make this change is that Apple is literally moving its entire user base to this new platform. On Windows, ARM remains a side-project with very few users and thus it is risky with little incentive to investing time, effort, and money. If Adobe or Microsoft ignored Apple Silicon, they in turn would be ignored by Apple’s users. I suspect many Mac users are more loyal to Apple than they are to Adobe or Microsoft. This is a theory that none of these companies would like to see tested, I bet.

Favorite/worst movies

bschnatt asks:

Nothing complex today: What is your all-time favorite movie, and the movie you would use to torment a terrorist in Gitmo 24 hours a day? 😉

Hm. I do have a handful of movies I can just watch repeatedly, and it’s kind of a weird mix. Amelie. Desperado (and its sequel, Once Upon a Time in Mexico). Christmas Vacation. The Exorcist (and Exorcist III, which is based on one of my favorite books). The original Halloween. Hannibal (the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs). Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. The Ninth Gate. Paris (2008). Ronin. The Russia House. The Thomas Crown Affair (1999). Hudson Hawk.

It’s hard picking just one. If pushed, I would choose Star Wars.

St. Elmo’s Fire is the worst movie ever made. Ever.

Surface Duo

crunchyfrog asks:

I’ve decided to send my Microsoft Duo back to Microsoft for a refund. I’m mainly doing this because the price dropped quite a bit but also the novelty has worn off fairly quickly. I am curious on your take and if you are still or plan to still use the Duo and any thoughts on it since the last update.

I didn’t actually review the Surface Duo, that was Brad. But I asked him about this and he wrote:

“The Duo is a good PDA and an OK phone. But anyone who buys the Duo to be a primary phone is likely to be disappointed as it’s a better PDA first, phone distant second.”

My take on it from afar is that the Duo is vastly overpriced, has a boring-looking interface, and lacks any clear use case for having two displays. Plus, thanks to Samsung, there is now a fabulous folding-display handset that makes the Duo look even more old-fashioned.