Ask Paul: August 13 (Premium)

Greetings from Mexico City. Let’s kick off the weekend—and Mexico’s quincentennial—with some great reader questions.

Windows 365, phones, and the future

Brothernod asks:

Any chance that Windows 365 would work on a docked Windows Phone?

I suppose it’s technically possible since there is/was a Microsoft Remote Desktop app for the platform. And if that’s still installed … maybe. I don’t have any way to test that out. Would it work with Continuum, etc.? Again, I don’t know. But we’ve seen some interesting “mods” (for lack of a better term) on Windows phones in recent years. Obviously, you’re better off going a support route on mobile in 2021, and Windows 365 does work on iPhone and Android.

If this were available 5 years ago might it have saved Windows Phone in the corporate space?

A few readers chimed in on this one, for understandable reasons. And while there’s no need to beat this one to death—we get it, Windows phone is dead—there is an alternate history in which Microsoft continued forward with that platform, accepted some minimal level of success, and made it the preferred/best/whatever mobile platform for Microsoft 365. Obviously, that never happened, but it is interesting to wonder how some of the innovations (again, for lack of a better word) that Microsoft has come out with in the intervening years might have impacted Windows phone had it still been around.

As someone who worked part time in the office and part time at home, the idea of having my cell phone be my laptop was always very appealing.

I’ve always been fascinated by this as well, and always imagined some world in which you’d bring some smartphone with you out in the world and dock it in various places—a work docking station, the back of an airline seat, etc.—to access your work and personal information and content. But the reality of this configuration, be it Windows phone and Continuum, Samsung, DeX, or whatever, has never lived up to the promise, at least so far.

What has been successful, I think, is storing your data in cloud services like OneDrive and then accessing it from multiple devices. I often start working on an article on my desktop PC and then go upstairs, lie down on the bed, and finish it on a laptop. Or, on this trip, I started an article on a laptop on a plane and finished it from an Airbnb, on a different laptop, in a different place. This kind of thing relies on relatively cheap and pervasive access to both hardware and an Internet connection, but for much of the world, that’s where we are.

If you can get over whatever platform preferences you have—I happen to prefer Windows for PCs, Android for phones, and iPads for tablets—that data is available anywhere. And in many ways, that’s more important than a particular hardware platform being successful. For example, if Android somehow drops off the face of the earth, or if I just decide I prefer iPhones better for some reason, all my data will go with me. And I think that freedom is important.

Accessing reviews content

crunchyfrog asks:

I always appreciate your hardware reviews although finding something specific or just browsing them is a bit difficult to do on your site because of how things are laid out. This may be beyond the scope of how your site is designed to present certain content, however it would be very nice to be able to browse all of your review content by being able to sort them by date, manufacturer, model, etc.

That’s a great idea, and thanks. I will ask what we can do about that. A lot of my responses to questions or requests for the site always boil down to a stock but true “we’re a small team, etc.”-type response by necessity, but I also feel like we as a company/team need to prioritize to focus on the things that are most important. Our site search is terrible, etc. And it would be nice to have a way to present reviews, or other content, in different and better ways. I’ll see what I can do.

Mexico and safety

bschnatt asks:

While on your trip to “May-hee-co”, have you had any concerns for your safety? We’ve heard the horror stories about kidnappings (especially in Mexico city) and murders (in the resort areas). I’ve never been, but would consider it in the future.

Obviously, safety is a concern in any situation, whether I’m at home, in a big city like Philadelphia, or traveling internationally. And for Mexico, in particular, given its reputation, it makes sense to figure out what the situation really is and to respond and act accordingly. To me, there are various levels of concern that exhibit themselves in obvious ways. Do you move your wallet from your back pocket to your front pocket? Do you wear a money belt? Do you not even bring most of what’s in your wallet and just bring a bit of cash and maybe one credit card? Etc.

I could go on and on about safety and travel. And I have examples from the past where the more you learn about a place, or the more that things change, your impressions and fears can change as well. For example, having visited the UK and Ireland in the 1990s, my wife and I often said we’d never visit Northern Ireland because of the violence. But with changes over time, we didn’t just visit, we brought our children there. And it was wonderful.

As for Mexico, virtually all of the violence is Narco-related and occurs in specific places. And as for Mexico City, I don’t feel that it’s any more violent or unsafe than any big city. In fact, despite its enormous size—it’s bigger than any city in the U.S.—it’s almost certainly safer than most big U.S. cities. There are parts of Baltimore, Detroit, wherever that I would never visit. That’s true here, too. But we’re not in those areas. The heart of Mexico City—the historic center—is incredibly safe, clean, and friendly.

To that point, I have never once felt unsafe here. We’re staying two blocks south of the Zocalo, the huge square that was featured in the beginning of the James Bond movie Spectre, and compared to the suburban life we had in Dedham or the suburban/rural life we have now in Lower Macungie, it’s obviously much louder, more chaotic, and teaming with people. But I feel safer here than I do in New York City, for sure. The people are much more friendly, and overtly try to help you at every turn.

Yesterday, my kids arrived, and we took them to the Airbnb we’re staying at, brought them around the neighborhood to get tacos from street stands and pastries from an incredible shop up the street. During that time, we had two impromptu conversations, started by locals, one in the pastry shop, in which a man made some great recommendations, and once in front of the Zocalo, when a woman discussed the history of a hotel we visited (also from Spectre, as it turns out). This is what happens here. The people are so friendly.

And then, after it was dark, we walked around the city in the rain in search of food for about 30 minutes. Never at any point did I feel unsafe or worried. This city—at least this part of this megapolis–is safe. That doesn’t mean something bad can’t happen. Something bad can happen anywhere. So you remain alert—this is my job as a husband and father anyway—and you adapt accordingly. This is a wallet in the front pocket city, for sure.

Overall, the US government-based violence concerns about Mexico are clearly overblown. Ironically, the US is much more dangerous, and it has much more violence, especially gun violence, than does Mexico. I’m more likely to be hurt or killed in Pennsylvania than I am here. And since I don’t ever really worry about that, unless I’m in a sketchy Philadelphia neighborhood, it’s weird that I do think about that here. But I have to. I just try to be realistic about it.

More simply, I wouldn’t visit here, and I certainly wouldn’t come here with my wife and kids, if I thought it was unsafe.

Learning Spanish

bschnatt asks:

How’s your Spanish coming? I know you were learning it at one point. I’m assuming it’s really come in handy there… 😉

We have a long history of learning what we call “menu Spanish” (and French) which serves us well on home swaps and on these recent trips. I completed the Spanish and French language courses in Duolingo, though they’ve since expanded beyond what I did, and more recently I’ve been using an app called Busuu instead. I am not conversational, but the way conversations usually go is that I will ask in the local language whether the person I’m speaking to speaks English, which is simple enough. Here, unless it’s a hotel or a very big restaurant, the answer usually amounts to no or not much. And then we muddle through it. Between my wife and I, we usually know enough to get there. And since most of these interactions are in restaurants, that’s easy enough.

Were I to spend more time here, I feel like I would pick up Spanish quickly through immersion. And we spend a lot of time, my wife and I, discussing language when we see signs or menus or whatever and don’t understand something and need to look it up. It’s been fine, but yes, learning some basic Spanish is smart for anyone coming to Mexico from the US.

The Rick Steves of Mexico

bschnatt asks:

Since you can work from just about anywhere, why don’t *you* become the Rick Steves of Mexico? Eat some of the best food on the planet, make extra money on the side, get better and better at Spanish, and learn more about the place. Have you looked into immigrating there? Thoughts? 😉

My wife and I have often discussed the need for “Rick Steves of Mexico” but we’re also clear that we won’t/can’t be that person. We like it here, and we would still like to explore different parts of the country. But I don’t see myself dedicating the rest of my life to figuring out exactly what the first-time visitor should do in key areas of even one place here, like Mexico City, let alone the entire country. That kind of thing requires years of experience and dedication, and we’re happy to simply be visitors, and not try to be the experts that others can rely on. I think you need to know your limitations.

We have discussed living here, of course, but I’ve not yet seen a place that makes sense for that. I’m not a fan of resort communities or beaches, and the cities here either require a level of localization we don’t possess or are expat communities (like San Miguel de Allende) that we’re not really interested in. There’s a big difference between visiting a place on a vacation and living there. And we do eye every place we visit for its potential as the latter. But I have trouble imagining the day-to-day here. I think our current stay, in an Airbnb, is the closest we’ve gotten to our home swap experiences in Europe. But we wouldn’t live here. So we’d need to do something like this in a quieter, more suburban place like the Condesa or Roma neighborhoods of Mexico City. Maybe we will someday.

Third-party shells

hrlngrv asks:

Maybe an odd tangent, but have you ever tried 3rd party alternative desktop shells for Windows? Not just Start menu replacements, but more comprehensive ones. There’s only one I’ve found which works with Windows 11, the Cairo Desktop Environment. Not for me, but if you like elementary OS’s Pantheon desktop, it’s very similar.

No, but I would be open to that. What I have done is tried utilities that change or replace the Start menu (Start10, Start11, etc.), the taskbar (TaskbarX), and File Manager. But because of what I do—not just write about Windows for the site but also write/maintain a book—I often find myself needing to keep things as they arrive by Microsoft. But it’s fair to say I don’t like a lot of their designs or decisions and would like some things to be different. Windows 11 may make that even worse.

Good Tequila

anoldamigauser asks:

Have you tried any good Tequilas while in Mexico?

I can finally answer yes to this question. I’m not a Tequila expert. But I feel like Tequila is like Scotch, Bourbon, or Rum in that much of it is terrible to OK but there are excellent choices as well. And we had one high-end meal here, at Pujol, during which I had a Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia Extra Anejo that can stand up to the best Scotches I’ve ever had. I’m not sure if it’s available in the US, but I took a picture of the bottle:

Duopoly

anoldamigauser asks:

Since, according to Microsoft, the Duo is not a phone, and it has certainly not sold well, what are the chances that they resurrect it as a Windows 11 on Arm device and sell it as tablet, or ultra-portable computer? The form just does not seem conducive to working as either a phone or a camera. It just seems a more natural fit to sell it as an always connected tablet than as a phone, no matter the OS it is running.

I think Android is the right choice for a phone, but I do expect to see Surface Neo arrive with Windows 11, and perhaps using ARM instead of x86. It’s enough on the device side of the device/PC  spectrum to take that chance. And of course, WOA is much improved in Windows 11 thanks to 64-bit x86 compatibility.

What’s odd to me is that the current Surface Duo 2 rumors point to a much-improved camera experience. My understanding is that Duo 1 camera is terrible, but I’m curious about this change given the difficulty of even using the camera and the fact that the device has so many other issues that seem more important to me.

Windows 11 versions

Madthinus asks:

I have a rather odd question this week and I guess the answer is we don’t know at this time: What makes a version of Windows 11? When you stop and think about it, it brings a challenge to you for the book as well. There is the base build 22000, the experience pack on-top and the apps. All of three these things is now untied, and as we have seen in the Dev channel, they all seem to roll out and update without much fan fare. Which brings me back to my question.

This is exactly the kind of thing I obsess over. The issue is multi-faceted and includes both semantics and technical concerns. And since this has been an ongoing issue with Windows 10 as well, I’m looking for some clarity.

Windows 11 is itself a “version” of Windows, as is Windows 10. But Windows 11, like Windows 10, will also be upgraded to new versions over time, now at a rate of once per year. So Windows 10 version 20H2 and 21H1 are “versions of Windows 10,” but they are also “versions of Windows.” I hate this, and I hate that Microsoft did this on purpose, to hide the fact that moving from, say,  to 20H2 to 21H1 is, in fact, (or can be) a major version upgrade. And not just a “feature update,” which sounds fun and inviting.

Anyway. Not to get too deep into my own psychosis, but I think the situation with Windows 11 will proceed similarly to the way it did with Windows 10, but there will be refinements based on the poor experiences we had with both feature updates (twice a year with Windows 10) and the myriad of other ways in which the system itself, built-in apps and services, and standalone Store apps are/were updated. And that it will still be somewhat messy but hopefully less painful in real-world experience because Microsoft has evolved its thinking and its implementation of updating.

In other words, yes, we will continue to have build numbers that map to some version of Windows 11, and it looks like “Windows 11 1.0” will be build 22000.xxx where “xxx” is some number. I expect that future cumulative updates will increment that “xxx” part of the build number and that future feature updates will increment the major part of the build number. And that Microsoft will continue to come up with corny names for those updates and will incorrectly describe Windows 11 versions by calling them by their update names. Because that’s what they do now.

There is good news, though. Microsoft will update core Windows components without requiring feature updates, and given our experience with this so far, those should prove to be far less problematic than the situation we had for at least five years with Windows 10, where these things require feature updates. So far, it looks like they have solved the problem that the created, at least to some acceptable degree. But the messaging will continue to be muddled. Again, because Microsoft.

By the way, does anyone else think that the impossibly precise build 22000 is a reference to the year 2022? And that “Windows 11 2.0,” expected in October 2022, will be build 23000.xxx for 2023? That’s my guess. And then those xxx minor build number bits will just be sequential each year to indicate forward progress.

Microsoft Autofill for Firefox?

kdjones74 asks:

I’ve gone back to using Firefox more (ChrEdge is my default) and I’m wondering if there’s a Microsoft Autofill extension for it. I’ve used Lastpass for several years, but started using Autofill on Edge (and on my Android phone). What are you using for password management on Firefox?

Microsoft Autofill is only available on Edge and, because it uses the same extensions, Chrome, and presumably any other Chromium-based browsers. (It’s amusing to me to read Microsoft claiming that it brought Autofill to Chrome because it “heard from customers who use multiple browsers that they need a secure way to access their Microsoft Edge passwords even when they’re browsing on Google Chrome.” It brought Autofill to Chrome because it required no real work at all.)

As for me and passwords/etc., I wasn’t intended to switch to Firefox, if anything, I was surprised how well it worked. I was just evaluating various browsers, and if pressed, I would admit to expecting to stick with Edge or maybe another Chromium-based browser like Brave, Opera, or Vivaldi. So, I didn’t really prepare for the move. I just imported my data from Edge, including the passwords. So I’m just using Firefox for password management, at least for now.

Long term, this may not be ideal for a variety of reasons. But I’m not really creating a lot of new online accounts, so it’s likely that any switch back to Edge and Microsoft Autofill—I’m still using the latter for app passwords on Android and my iPad, for example—won’t be too painful. If I do decide to stick with Firefox full-time—I am still using it everywhere, on PCs and mobile—I may need to choose a third-party password manager. But I’m not there yet.

Apple, child pornography, privacy, and … good God

jwpear asks:

This isn’t Windows or Microsoft related, but I’m curious about your thoughts on Apple’s approach to scanning photos to protect children from exploitation. Has Apple introduced a back door? I’m on the fence.

First of all, apologies for not writing about this topic. It’s one of those things I set aside in a browser tab while moving around Mexico this past week, and it’s one of those things that was ultimately tossed aside for time considerations. It’s an important topic and I didn’t/don’t want to treat it unfairly.

But you asked, and my off-the-cuff and probably uneducated response is that Apple’s decision to begin scanning photos on users’ devices, matching them to known illegal images in some databases, and then … doing something—what? Deleting them? Reporting the user to law enforcement?—is so Apple. And I mean that in ways both good and bad.

Obviously, the intent is positive and in line with Apple’s stance on privacy and security. But just as obviously, this is in keeping with Apple’s nanny-state approach to virtually everything and, I think, a scary reminder that we think is ours—the personal data on our devices—is not ours. And that when mistakes happen, and they will, innocent people will be outed as pedophiles or whatever. Fappening 2.0, we could call it.

Worse, this is a company that has refused law enforcement warrants and other requests to break into iPhones owned by suspected terrorists and criminals, and it has cited privacy as the reason. And yet, it will scan those same phones for illegal content. So Apple not only knows better than the individuals that use its devices, it knows better than governments and law enforcement now too. This is a problem.

As a father, I applaud them for trying to protect children. I’ve carefully monitored my kids activity and have seen attempts to coerce them. This monitoring is hard to do. I can only imagine how difficult it is for less technical parents.

I agree.

On the other hand, given our current political climate, I’m also worried about how this can be abused when we’ve seen attempts by (unnamed) members of our government to coerce officials to support an illegal agenda. Apple claims it would never bend to demands to use this for anything other than the intended purpose, but we know corrupt officials and bad actors find creative ways to use tools, or force companies to repurpose them, in ways they were never intended. Until this past year, I would have said this wouldn’t happen with the safeguards we have in place in our democracy. I’m no longer so sure of this.

This is absolutely a can of worms. And it’s hard for me to write intelligently about this because they make me crazy. I guess I would sort of trust Apple with this sort of thing more than, say, Facebook. But this company needs to be reined in. And I suspect that, given the outrage, both inside and outside of Apple, that this particular stance will change dramatically. So we’ll see what happens.