Ask Paul: February 4 (Premium)

Happy Friday, such as it is, from the frozen northeastern United States. Here’s another great round of reader questions to kick off the weekend.

Surface Duo 3?

crunchyfrog asks:

I read an article stating that Microsoft may either skip a third generation of the Surface Duo or may be just waiting beyond the typical upgrade cycle to have more time designing a third generation.

Either way, I think the Surface Duo is a poorly conceived device having used one and fully expect the hatchet to come down on this product if it does not generate a higher sales volume for the third revision of the device if indeed it ever arrives.

Are you aware of anything from Microsoft on the status of Surface Duo gen 3?

No, I saw the same report, from Zac Bowden, and he’s been a reliable source of information about Surface Duo, so I’m inclined to believe it. Helping matters, Surface Duo has clearly not done well, and though Microsoft made some much-needed improvements with Duo 2, especially around the cameras, it didn’t address the primary problem, because it can’t: there just isn’t a viable, mainstream use case for dual screens. Since this is one of the rare examples of me being right about something immediately, I won’t pile it on. But this product makes zero sense.

But it may not be all bad news.

I’m currently working on the Tablet PC article for my Programming Windows series, and one of the things that is most striking about that product may be applicable to Surface Duo as well. And that is that Tablet PC required an incredible range of hardware innovations before it became viable as a product. Bill Gates was so excited about taking notes in meetings on a slate tablet that he began talking about the Tablet PC several years before Microsoft was ready to ship it. And it wasn’t until hardware makers got involved that we got the convertible form factors that still make more sense, in general, than the pure tablet design Microsoft came up with (and still uses, go figure). And then it took another few years, and a second major software release, before the software became elegant enough for general use.

Surface Duo may be following a similar trajectory, with the exception that Microsoft maybe released it too soon. My guess is that Microsoft agrees internally that folding displays are the future for this kind of hybrid device, but that they didn’t have, or have access to, viable folding displays. But what they did have, thanks to the Surface team, is a rich history in creating (and marketing) unique hinge designs. And so they went to market with what they had. We can debate all kinds of things with regards to this product and the strategy, but the central point remains: Surface Duo just doesn’t make sense as a product.

Maybe it will in a few years. Maybe there’s an interim step where a dual-screen design with very thin bezels sort of makes sense. I suspect a folding display is the only thing that makes any sense. But we’ll see.

Web browser du jour

drewtx asks:

Sorry, a loaded question: Which browser do you use as you ‘daily driver’ ? I know y’all often talk about browsers on Windows Weekly, but I’ve lost track of which one you use, or which one you’d recommend. I’ve been using Edge since it was first available in Beta but I’m losing faith in it. Do the privacy issues with Chrome rule it out for you? Is Firefox the ‘best of the rest’ ?

I don’t have a single web browser that I use everywhere, and I’ve been going back and forth between various browsers for the past several months.

On the PC, I’ve been mostly using Chrome and Brave, in part because there are some Firefox things I’m not happy with, and because Opera and Vivaldi feel a bit off to me.

On my phones, it varies: Chrome on Android, usually, and Chrome or Safari on the iPhone. (Safari has its address bar on the bottom, which I love, and you can swipe on it to switch between tabs, which is also excellent.)

On my iPad, I mostly use Firefox, go figure, but I’ve been using Safari lately.

There are issues around password sync, of course, but the reality is that I don’t create many new online accounts these days, so most of them are available everywhere. But that’s why I’ve been working towards using a password manager (probably 1Password), though I find them unreliable on mobile.

There’s no “strategy” to any of this. I’ve just been experimenting, and some browsers just seem to work and/or perform better on certain platforms. I’m not sure I’ll ever just adopt one everywhere.

Memory vs. reality

jimchamplin asks:

I’m enjoying reliving history with your Programming Windows series! I was in my 20s during the first decade of the 21st Century and have a lot of great memories of this era.

Thanks. I’ve enjoyed it as well.

I also have rose colored glasses and know I’m blocking out a whole ton of anger and frustration at things that didn’t “just work” back then. On the whole I remember Windows XP being pretty smooth going, but it was mainly hardware that I had issues with. There were so many poorly-done things. From winmodems to leaving AGP sockets off of mainboards that had AGP support just to save the $.45 that the edge connector cost. All of it leading up to netbooks, what’s your take on the dark side of this really exciting era of computing? Our software was improving by leaps and bounds, but it feels like the hardware was getting squeezed to be cheaper and cheaper.

One of the things I’ve (re)uncovered in my research, which involves my own archives, which are quite extensive, archived Microsoft press releases, speech transcripts, videos, and other sources, is that my general memory is vast by my memory of specifics is limited. What I mean by this is that I often read things I wrote, be they raw notes or actual articles, from ~20 years ago and find that I’d forgotten a lot. Windows XP is a great example. When I connected to the Wi-Fi networks at the launch event, they were all open and unprotected, and Wi-Fi security standards arrived and then improved very quickly soon after. Windows XP, for all its plug-n-play wonders, was hugely unreliable on certain PC configurations, and when I got to Media Center Edition, I was reminded of all the windowed crash dialogs and other issues that would pop-up repeatedly. And yet XP in general, and Media Center specifically, are now beloved memories, for me and for many others. They weren’t perfect.

From a hardware perspective, there was a similar evolution across the board from fixed add-in cards that required the PC to be powered off to be removed to USB and other PnP technologies like PC cards (PCMCIA) and the like. And we eventually got to the point where it was possible for IT technicians to remove cards from running servers (hot carding, I think we called it), an act people like me would never trust, even though it was probably fine. Problems with Windows triggered improvements to hardware and vice-versa.

I have a very distinct memory of trying to add a CD-ROM drive to a PC in the early/mid 1990s specifically so I could install a Windows 95 beta that way. It required an ISA card or whatever, and it had like 28 DIP switches to screw with, and I spent so much time cutting my fingers and trying to get it to work that I literally started crying. A friend came over, and he got it working rather quickly, which was further infuriating. That’s pretty much the PC experience of that era in a nutshell. Desire meets harsh reality.

I don’t know. I did an interview with a teenager from Kentucky a few months back for a school project, and one of the questions he asked me was when, if ever, the power of the PC hardware we used caught up with Windows. And that required some thought. I eventually settled on Windows Vista. When it first arrived, Vista required hardware-accelerated graphics to display its Aero glass effects and most PCs couldn’t handle it, since most came with Intel integrated graphics. But Intel soon shipped a new generation of integrated graphics that could handle glass, and that was that. From then on, pretty much, the hardware improvements in PCs mattered less and less, and hardware requirements for Windows actually went down as we moved from Windows Vista to 7 to 8.x to 10. Most modern PCs just work well now.

Anyway, I think the past is always viewed through rose-colored glasses. The good old days are good because they’re over.

Changes to the Insider Program?

will asks:

I was reading the latest Windows Insider post that talks about the various channels and I got the impression that the beta channel is about to pretty active. From the post it sounded that if you want to test what is coming to the next version of Windows coming later this year you should use the beta channel. However, if you want to test features that might or might not show up in Windows, then use the Dev channel. The timing of this post, the mention that some new stuff may show up in the beta channel that is not in dev, and that soon you can switch from dev to beta, all seems to point that beta is about to get more active and where they (Microsoft) would like the most feedback.

Fundamentally, not much has changed. The Dev and Beta channels still don’t target a specific Windows version, which I still find odd. And the division between the two doesn’t seem to have changed, from what I can tell: some features in Dev may/may not ever make it into Windows 11, features that are in Beta are more likely to make it, and so on. That bit about Beta maybe getting some features first isn’t new, either. They’ve done that before.

Microsoft has not really had any announcements or big reveal on what is coming to the next major update to Windows that I have seen. So maybe there is still a lot to see that has not shown up just yet and the beta channel will be the way to deliver and test. I wanted to get your take and thoughts?

Picking a particular channel would be a lot easier if Microsoft just let testers move back and forth. They did, briefly, last summer. And Amanda said that Microsoft would “soon be giving Insiders a window in which they will be able to switch from the Dev Channel to the Beta Channel.” But that’s just a temporary thing, a one-way, one-time move.

I do think the Beta channel makes the most sense for most, and for a number of reasons. In my case, I’m looking at what will be in Windows 11, for the site and for the book, and so that is what makes the most sense for me. But I think that’s true for most.

New phones, new to you phones

wright_is asks:

We read all the time about new flagship phones and the mega-bucks that the likes of Apple and Samsung are earning, selling their smartphones. What is not often covered is that the new-phone market peaked in 2016 and has been declining ever since then. 2020 was the biggest drop, with sales of new ‘phones dropping by over 6% (IDC figures).

That may have finally just changed. I’m waiting for Gartner to chime in, but IDC says that smartphone sales increased 5.7 percent in full-year 2021. Granted, sales declined in Q3 and Q4. But at least some of that is likely supply chain related. Anyway…

On the other hand, the 2nd hand market for smartphones has exploded, especially since 2020, with something like 26% growth just last year. Companies like Swappie, Backmarket. Refurbed or Rebuy. Rebuy refurbished and sold over 180,000 2nd hand phones from all manufacturers last year. Swappie deals exclusively with refurbished Apple iPhones and Backmarket and Refurbed deal in most consumer electronics. Is the US market for refurbished devices also growing at a similar rate? Have you ever looked at the refurbished market? (I know you have to buy a lot of stuff new, for review purposes, but have you looked at the 2nd hand market in general or have you used it at all?)

I’m not aware of any good data on that. I do look at services like Gazelle, Amazon Trade, and the like, and my wife has used a variety of services to sell my old handsets recently. But the only refurbished phones (and other products) I’ve ever purchased were from Apple, which has a great system for that.

Until now, I have always handed down my old phones within the family, my daughter received my Galaxy S20+, when I bought a new iPhone last year, or we have thrown them out, because they were too old and slow, but I sold my wife’s S10 onto a dealer, who cleaned it up, put a new protective screen on it and sold it on. What do you do with your old devices?

It depends.

Oftentimes, I’ll use an older device for trade-in when I buy a new one. I did that for years with various iPhones, for example, and I’ve done it with most Pixels.

Sometimes, I’ll hand one down to my wife. That happened most recently with the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra I purchased in early 2020. She’s still using that now, and I suspect she’ll get at least another year out of it.

This past year, as part of a broader decluttering wave, my wife has been selling some of my older phones that didn’t make it as a trade-in, perhaps because there were multiple models I bought in one year (like the Pixel), or because the trade-in wasn’t good enough. I just asked her about this, and she likes Swappa the best.

Right now, I still have a few stragglers, but I’d like to keep it to the latest iPhone and the latest Pixel and be done with it. But I could imagine reviewing the new OnePlus when that ships in the U.S. The Pixel 6a perhaps. Samsung is always a contender, etc. It never ends.

Developing Windows apps

AliMaggs asks:

I’ve really enjoyed reading your recent Programming Windows articles, from the developer story angle and looking back at the products themselves. I’d completely forgotten about the Portable Media Center devices, and I owned two!

Yeah, me too. I had one until fairly recently, actually, it came to Pennsylvania when we moved. The sheer amount of old hardware I’ve owned is astonishing.

The articles got me thinking, though, about the current state of developing apps for Windows. I get the excitement around Project Reunion/Windows App SDK for existing developers (use the tools/languages/frameworks you love), but it doesn’t feel like there’s an obvious way in for new developers, and I’m thinking particularly about students, and those learning/teaching themselves programming.

Yep, I agree. And Windows App SDK, for all the promises, is not really a be-all/end-all environment for new Windows apps. It’s actually pretty limited.

It seems to me that if you want to make your first Android app, or an iOS app, there’s a much simpler (or, at least obvious) entry point, and clear choices you’d make. Microsoft had this with Windows Phone 7 (Visual Studio and Silverlight, with Blend for the UI), and with UWP to a point.

Yep. They also used to have a nice set of “starter” Visual Studio editions for C#, Visual Basic, the web, and so on, and I think those were more accessible than even Community edition is now. It’s just a lot of stuff for a newcomer to deal with.

Back in the Windows Phone 7/8 and Windows 8 days, we had regular developer days here in the UK where Microsoft would run workshops on the frameworks and the tools and we could have conversations with the (then) Windows Store team, etc. who would help you bring your app to market. Obviously, we know how that story ended (and I’m looking forward to you covering this in your series), but there was a clear developer story, and those events were full of new developers, excited about the projects they’d brought along to work on and share.

Yes, we did here as well. Microsoft also routinely put out nice introductory video series around topics like C#, the .NET Framework, Windows Phone app development, etc. Those seem less common these days.

I wondered if you had any thoughts on this. Do you think Microsoft is still focused on attracting new developers, or is it about getting current developers to modernise their apps? Where would you begin today with developing apps for Windows if you were starting out? Would it be with Microsoft’s tools, or would you look at Flutter or another solution?

I’m not sure if the Programming Windows series will run all the way up to today per se, I may end at Windows 10/2015 since that’s a clean 15 years. But I do feel like I’m working towards some sort of end game with regards to where Windows app development went and why. And the thing I see when I look at the situation today is a range of choices that is so vast, it’s too much. Not helping matters, the world has moved on: beginner developers would be better off looking at web or mobile development if they have to choose a single focus. (I preemptively wrote what could be considered a logical conclusion for that series in Programming Windows: We Fought the Web and the Web Won.)

I think the future of (new) Windows app development is about not creating a Windows-only app. Meaning, that it should be cross-platform. This could be a modern web app/PWA. Or it could be using a cross-platform framework like Flutter or perhaps .NET MAUI (though that won’t support web apps, you’ll need some form of Blazor for that). Flutter is undoubtedly the more sophisticated of those latter choices.

What’s sad is that the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is almost 20 years old, is still perfectly viable as a desktop development tool. You can use C# or Visual Basic, it’s a well-made, OOP framework. And it should be updated vigorously to support new Windows 10/11 features, but isn’t. Not helping matters, when Microsoft moved to XAML for the presentation layer with WPF—and continuing with UWP, Windows App SDK, and MAUI—Microsoft lost one of its previous advantages with visual designers. I’m not sure what happened, but there’s no great XAML visual designer, all these years later. And that makes WPF and everything else a bit harder for newcomers.

I wish I had a better answer to this. But Microsoft doesn’t have one, either, and that’s the problem.