Ask Paul: June 25 (Premium)

With Microsoft announcing a major new version of Windows for the first time in several years, it’s not surprising where this week’s questions lean.

In-person conferences

will asks:

Curious if you have heard anything about how and when Microsoft conferences will happen going forward? While online is nice, I can say that nothing beats getting together with peers and I have missed it. I was not sure if Microsoft was looking to make changes to its conference structure for things like Ignite and Build?

Microsoft hasn’t said, and they’re wise to move slowly on this based on the legal exposure, etc. So I don’t expect to see a live (or hybrid) Ignite this fall, and I think that places the next major Microsoft in-person event in 2022. But maybe we’ll at least see a live Surface event this year? That’s possible.

There are also third-party conferences happening. I was surprised to see Richard Campbell hosting a new Dev Intersections conference in Florida recently, for example, and that organization is promising a bigger show in November (I think in Las Vegas.)

Uno Platform

jt5 asks:

I know you have mentioned doing another programming series, have you taken a look at the Uno Platform for cross platform app development?

Yeah, but not seriously. Uno contacts me fairly regularly, and I’m interested, but I want to focus on the Microsoft in-house stuff at least for now. My understanding is that Uno is quite impressive.

McAfee

drjohnnyray asks:

Curious about your thoughts on John McAfee.

He was nuts. Everyone knows his name because of the pervasive McAfee anti-virus/anti-malware software that still comes on many PCs, but he sold the company in 1994 after founding it in 1987 and walked away with what today would be considered a very small amount of money ($100 million). He lost almost all of that in the 2008 financial crisis and was forced to sell off all his properties in the U.S. and live like a vagabond (and potential neighbor murderer, which I can somewhat relate to), running into legal issues everywhere. What a mess.

If you’re interested in John McAfee, there are all kinds of retrospectives available now because of his surprising end—this one from the New York Times is particularly good and it links to some prior articles that are also worth reading—and a documentary called Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, which I believe I saw on Netflix or similar (it’s not there anymore).

Honestly, this guy is only notable because the software he played absolutely no role in popularizing in recent years.

Commenting

hrlngrv asks:

I realize you don’t develop or maintain the commenting system on this site, but are the ANY plans to allow editing comments ever again? Possibly the greatest downside to current commenting compared to what used to be possible.

Yes, I assume so. I have collected a list of problems that were created when we switched over the commenting system and am as frustrated as anyone that we’ve not fixed this yet. All I can do is complain internally and hope for the best. We literally are a small team with limited resources, etc. you know that drill, but it’s true.

By the way, the comment-related problems I’ve collected include:

• Blank comments
• Can’t edit comments
• When you enter a comment, the page resets to the top of the article
• When you enter comments from the home page, it navigates below the comments and not to the top of comments for some reason

I’m on your side here.

Windows 11 app development for beginners

Daishi asks:

For the past few versions of Windows Microsoft has created ‘development for beginners’ videos series and as a self taught baby developer I’ve found them really useful.

Agreed. The individual who created most of those, Bob Tabor, is a fantastic teacher and subject expert, and a great guy, and the last I heard—we finally met a few years ago—he was working at Microsoft, after creating those videos independently for years.

Do you think they are likely to do something similar for Windows 11 and, if they do, do you think it’s more likely to be focused on the Windows App SDK or MAUI?

I hope so. But the problem with Windows app development today is that there’s no single path to follow. With Windows 8 and Windows 10, the Metro/UWP mobile platform was the hot new thing (they hoped), but that crashed and now Microsoft acknowledges that different developers will use different tools, languages, and frameworks and that there are so many different approaches.

All that said, when I think of a Bob Tabor-style intro to Windows app development, the Windows App SDK (formerly “Project Reunion”) is the most obvious choice since it targets such a wide swath of developers who target Windows explicitly. And then I could see an intro to cross-platform development with MAUI as well. I hope both happen.

Where’s DirectX 13?

crunchyfrog asks:

The Windows 11 showcase went over gaming and the awesome benefits of DirectX 12. DirectX 12 was announced in 2014. Has this technology hit a wall? Why are we still on version 12 after seven years?

I was curious about that as well, but it’s pretty clear that DirectX 12 has legs and can scale to whatever resolutions/framerates/graphical effects that are possible on the most impressive graphics hardware today. And there are new features, like Auto HDR, that build on top of that. I guess DirectX is a little like the file system in that new features can be added without requiring a whole new engine.

Gaming PC builders vs. Windows 11

christophercollins asks:

I heard you talking about TPM2.0 regarding Windows 11 on Windows Weekly. It’s an issue for me, as I built a gaming rig about 18 months ago, very nice… 32 Gig of RAM, m.2 SSD, i9. It’s extremely capable and will be for years. It (like many boards) have TPM 2.0 headers, but the chips are very hard to get to populate them. Do you expect them to bend on this for enthusiasts that don’t want to go to all the trouble of replacing mainboard in a complex build (water cooled, etc…)?

Given that gaming is one of the key pillars of the Windows 11 advantage, it’s weird to me that Microsoft would alienate such a key part of the community with something this trivial. And I don’t see why Microsoft can’t just promote this “chip to cloud” security nonsense for those PCs that do have TPM 2.0 functionality, while simply letting those that don’t move forward without that one bit. On that note, yes, I do see Microsoft caving to the community on this.

That is where I think you are seeing a mild outcry. Laptops typically won’t have this issue, but many, many mainboards don’t include the chip. It’s an add on buy that you probably didn’t think to get at the time, unless you are a bitlocker user.

I agree.

Windows 11 questions, concerns

justme asks:

Given Microsoft’s requirement for an MSA with Windows 11, have you heard whether or not Surface devices will be offered with Windows 11 Pro (which would alleviate the requirement)?

Microsoft never mentioned Surface PCs, or new Surface PCs, or whatever during yesterday’s event, and I guess I see both sides that; I guess they decided to focus only on Windows. I think the MSA/Internet requirement is as silly, controversial, and damaging as the TPM requirement mentioned above, and that Microsoft is going to run into a lot of complaints if they go through with it.

I’m not sure what to say about Windows 10 Pro being offered as a buy-time upgrade other than the fact that every other PC maker does it and that should always be an option.

Do you forsee an advertising push WITHIN Windows 11? When you look at the Start Menu, the bottom portion says “Recommended”, not “Recent Documents and Apps”.

Yep, I do. I mentioned this yesterday on Windows Weekly, that this thing should say “Recent,” not “Recommended,” and that I’ve seen apps recommended in there, so advertising is the next logical step. I bet we see ads in that widgets pane as well.

That to me speaks advertising space (as a Start Menu user, changes like this grate on me). Could the new requirement for Windows 11 Home users to log in with an MSA be tied to this advertising push and thus an attempt by Microsoft to monetize the OS? By way of example, lets say during your OOBE, you tick ‘gaming” as the primary use of your machine. Will you then see advertisements for the XBox Gaming app/XCloud/whateveritsortheyarecalled? Or perhaps as Microsoft wants, you are storing everything on OneDrive by default and your storage space is low – Microsoft ‘recommends’you purchase another 1TB of space for xxx$ a month?

Exactly. Not good.

The TPM 2.0 requirement rubs gamers the wrong way because many PC gamers build their own rigs, and many motherboards have the header but not the chip. As far as I am aware, the TPM chips are specific to board manufacturers (meaning if you have an Asus motherboard, you’ll need an Asus-compatible chip). They arent particularly cheap or easy to get – especially if you have to do it after the fact as opposed to point of purchase. So Microsoft is essentially telling people who have spent a good sum of money on a very capable machine that it isnt good enough.

This is covered above, but yes, I agree. This alienates some of Microsoft’s most lucrative consumer customers. And that is just dumb.

Quality of the Windows event

lewk asks:

Do you think Microsoft could have done better with the What’s next with Windows event?

The biggest issue to me was just the connectivity problems, with the live feed disappearing over and over again for viewers. My God, Microsoft, it’s 2021, and you’re a world leader in cloud computing. How on earth did that happen?

Microsoft had a fantastic opportunity to control the messaging for Windows going into the future by announcing Windows 11 with this event. But right from the start with the stream going down for everyone, I feel like they messed it up badly. To me they missed an opportunity to talk on the level with their fans. Those of us that have stuck with them for decades. Instead, we got a super high-level, marketing driven overview event devoid of specifics. Like the lack of information about the new in-box application updates, the new file explorer, the new settings app, the new control panel flyout, the new action centre, the updated legacy components, all of which are coming but were either absent or fleeted across the screen in a blurry second. To a messy, avoidable confusion about Minimum Hardware Requirements, and the upgrade path for current Windows hardware. Not to mention “TPM Gate”. Then we got a Windows 11 compatibility tool (oddly packaged in a PC health Tool) that erroneously states to about 99% of current Windows Fans/Enthusiasts that their multi-thousand-dollar machines aren’t compatible (when they actually are). And finally, a lack of an Insider build, which is relegated to the week after? Seriously?

As an enthusiast, it’s hard to argue with any of that. Taking a devil’s advocate position, I feel like Microsoft would argue that it needed this event to resonate most with normal people who are not enthusiasts and don’t care about computers per se but need to upgrade and may otherwise be considering a Mac or a Chromebook. And I have a recent personal example of how this kind of event might make these people feel better about a platform they don’t normally care or thinking about: When Google announced the new Android 12 UI, it neatly ended any thoughts I had about moving to an iPhone because it has the same elegant look and feel. I think that was the goal for this event.

From Microsoft’s perspective, it understands that enthusiasts, both at websites and blogs and out in the world, will dig through all the details, and dissect and debate them, and that it knows what all the red flags are ahead of time and won’t be surprised by the MSA and TPM controversies. It will argue that enthusiasts can simply use Windows 11 Pro.

I think Microsoft not only stumbled with this event, but completely face planted this great opportunity to have the fans truly excited about Windows again.

I don’t think it’s that bad. I feel like it could have done something explicitly for enthusiasts, but on the other hand, we’re all technical enough to work around this stuff too.

PC makers vs. hardware makers

peterc asks:

Now Win 11 has been launched and we see its features and new store policies, its clear to me that PC hardware vendors who are also mobile handset manufacturers will be able to create some compelling USP for their combined product offerings, emulating single eco-system offerings of Windows and android. Samsungs Galaxy handsets, app stores and Win 11 laptops will likely see some exceedingly tight integration along with Exynos custom chipset developments too. Lenovo and Huauwei will also be able to implement tightly integrated app stores, laptops and handsets too. Where does this leave Dell and HP? It seems to me Samsung are about to become the best brand for windows users mobile/desktop integration, what do you think?

That’s an interesting point, and it’s weird that some bit players in the PC industry—like Samsung and Huawei—might benefit more from the changes in Windows 11 than some established players, like HP and Dell. Lenovo is unique in that it still has healthy PC and mobile businesses.

But PC makers are familiar with building on top of Windows already, and I’m sure even HP and Dell will offer store-within-a-store experiences where they can sell things like docks, printers, and other peripherals directly from within Windows. You don’t have to have a mobile business to integrate your other wares inside of Windows. And let’s face it, it’s not like the Microsoft Store is particularly successful despite the pro-Store comments in the presentation. Most users will simply continue to ignore it.

Oh, and about those hardware requirements…

madthinus

Yesterday I thought the TPM requirement is going to be an issue for blocking the update to Windows 11. This morning, the CPU requirements is now added and yikes. What a payday for OEM’s…. Thoughts

So, I received an email last night from someone who read somewhere that Windows 11 would actually require an 8th-generation or newer Intel Core processor. And that didn’t seem to right to me, so I checked out Microsoft’s client processor support page and found that Windows 11 supports various Atom and Celeron processors in addition to 5th-generation or newer Core processors on the Intel front. For Qualcomm, it’s literally every single Snapdragon processor ever made for Windows. And for AMDl, it’s a wide swath of choices that include Athlon Silver and Gold, EPYC, and Ryzen 3+ processors. I don’t see this being a huge problem beyond the build-your-own-PC gaming community, and then even many of those will be fine.

I get that this is the kind of thing that enthusiasts are going to freak out over. But my guess/bet is that the real-world impact will be minimal, it will drive some new PC sales, and that, again, Microsoft will make concessions for its best customers.

From leaked build to official build

jheredia asks:

Have you heard anything about being able to install insider builds if we’ve installed the leaked ISO? I really wanted to start testing Windows 11 on a fresh install but everyone’s saying no ISOs right away, so just wondering if I could install the leaked build and then be able to get on the insider dev branch

Yeah, this came up during a briefing with the Insider team. They were not willing to comment on this, and someone even joked that they had not heard about a leak, but it was pretty clear you’ll have no problem upgrading when the first official build appears. If you look in Settings > Update & Security > Windows Insider Program, you should see that your PC is enrolled in the Dev Channel already, and I suspect you can just check for updates when the new build appears and get it.

If not, we can always use the “Go back to the previous version of Windows” option in Settings > Update & Security > Recovery to go back to Windows 10 and then enroll in the Dev Channel. And if that doesn’t work, well. You might want to have Windows 10 install media ready to roll.

The new kid

jjdiebolt asks:

I think we need a headline to borrow from the old cliché, “Hurry up and wait” to the effect of “Hurry up and don’t panic”. Hello everyone, John here, JJ for short, brand new to premium as of a couple of days ago. Glad to be here. I am a meteorologist and a professional photographer. I include the above statement as that would also have included me last night. I was on the road yesterday for my first true vacation since 2019 when the event took place, so naturally it was late in the evening by the time I came here first as well as MS to see what was unveiled during my daylong drive. I had a TPM panic moment thinking my most recent (2019-2020) PC multi-thousand dollar purchases would not be able to upgrade (you’ll find comments to that effect then answers I found myself), which frankly wasn’t true, or that my DEV channel machine which I use for daily work would be stuck in some limbo land unable to get into get into true Windows 11 without imaging back to just before I sent it to the insider program then updating my way up. I found the answer to that in new language which describes the definition of the dev channel (after installing a dev build post reveal) as being a part of Windows 11 and leaving the insider program from the dev channel now stating an option to “wait for the next major release” rather than just the clean reinstall option. Now that might well have been present in pre-reveal “leave language” direct to supported OS to dev channel builds and I just did not notice it. I have always used one of my production machines in the fastest ring/channel since this all started in 2014. I feel that is the only real way to test the build. I have disk imaging software backing up regularly so ‘going back’ is an easy matter whether to the last supported build or one or several preview builds early. At worst, I might have to reinstall or update some 3rd party apps I use. I do have one questionable PC custom built December 2016 (high end) which may not make the cut and a dell XPS 8500 dating back to grabbing it off the shelf at Costco in 2012 which definitely won’t. That’ fine with me. I don’t expect a 2012 PC to measure up to a 2021 OS, and yes, it has also been an insider machine since 2014. I am excited MS is reinvesting in the OS and I for one can’t wait to start using it. It is about time. These Windows 10 ‘feature updates’ were getting less and less ‘features” of late, but the OS has been around half a decade now and it is time for a major revamp. I know there are a lot of things MS has bungled and gotten a lot of heat for and deservedly so. With this, I am one to hold up my hand and say “Wait. Stop for a second.” I do have my issues with some of Microsoft’s word salad posts and explanations, they infuriate me. I wish that they would have added a little more to the “Insider Blog” about the nuts and bolts of this thing, how it will work (dev channel going from a limbo-land branch to now a Windows 11 branch) among other things, after all, a lot of us here are highly technical. I don’t like a lot of the opaqueness an the aforementioned ‘explanations’ they give, but I will give them credit for finally, really updating Windows. MS will always make stupid moves, that is for certain, and will they ever truly master the art of clear, concise communications? Who knows? Any thoughts to a new member here on all of this? (I realize this is more of a narrative then a question) please forgive me this one time. Thanks, JJ.

First of all, welcome aboard, and thanks for joining Premium.

I’ve let that whole comment stand since it’s as good a roundup as anything I could write, and your experiences closely mirror my own. With regards to Microsoft, I’ve almost made a career out of complaining about Microsoft’s inability to communicate, and I viewed yesterday’s event with a weird mix of hope and despair. Panos Panay’s style is, frankly, controversial in that some love and some very much do not. I see both sides of it, but I find his faux excitement, length explanations of nothing, and weird familial insights to be tiring now. He’s not particularly dynamic.

But he does seem to be doing right by Windows, and that’s pretty much all I care about here. There are some other discussions above about the focus of the announcement and which audiences they were/were not speaking to, but I think it’s important to remember that while enthusiasts are important to Microsoft, the company also understands that they will cut to the heart of the technical stuff without any help. And that maybe what Windows needs, marketing-wise, is a more general approach that reaches a wider audience. People who don’t care at all about Windows and are on the fence regarding buying another PC in the future.

I mean, they had advertisements about the event in Action Center in Windows 10, for crying out loud. They must have figured some normal people would watch it.

Did this event rise to that level of discourse? I guess we can debate that. Sort of? I’m so numb to Microsoft not really focusing on what I care about anymore these days, so I’m still trying to sort it out. I’ll watch this thing again today or tomorrow and see if I can figure out whether they landed in the right place.

Thanks!