Ask Paul: May 27 (Premium)

After a bleary and extended stay in Mexico City, I’m back in time for Memorial Day. So let’s the long weekend started a bit early. I need to sleep. 🙂

Twitter feed on Thurrott.com?

Pakeha asks:

I see your posts on Twitter and wonder if these could also appear on your Premium Site for those who seldom access twitter?

That’s a good idea, and I feel like we did this at one point? (Maybe that was on the SuperSite, I can’t recall.) As you may know, we’ve just started a massive site refresh, and that’s an interesting idea for that, and I feel like we’ll need something else for the right rail (column). That’s definitely a possibility. I will throw it by the team, thanks.

Update: this is already getting some good traction. I think we’ll figure out something for this.

Build 2022

ggolcher asks:

Any impressions about Build? I personally find myself disappointed at the lack of substantial announcements. ‘Very little about Windows or Office, no mention of Loop, or even confirmation of Microsoft Designer. The only product that got a bunch of announcements seems to me to be Teams. Anything I’m missing?

That’s interesting. I was actually pretty excited about Build 2022, but I think the difference is a matter of perspective. Google’s and Apple’s developer shows are big on end user/consumer news, and Build hasn’t been like that for years. And you really had to parse the news for anything interesting for end users.

Of course, Build started off with Windows 8 when Microsoft was still promoting Windows as its central platform, but it’s switched to Azure more recently, of course. And that’s been my issue of late: I don’t care at all about Azure per se, and with many Builds being Azure-heavy, they’ve made my favorite Microsoft conference less enjoyable (to me).

But the thing with Build is, it is a developer show. And I think from the perspective of Microsoft-focused developers, whether it’s on the client or the cloud, there was a lot going on. There was a reasonable amount of Windows news, and while there was no real “new” news for Edge, there were some interesting things there as well. From a client perspective, I’d point at .NET MAUI GA, Windows App SDK 1.1, the Microsoft Store (and less excitingly, Amazon Appstore for Android) improvements, Microsoft Dev Box, all the Power Platform advances, Microsoft Teams Live Share with extensibility, native Arm support for Visual Studio, .NET, .NET Framework, and Visual C++, and Adaptive Cards across both Microsoft Loop and Windows 11 Widgets.

For Windows specifically, I recommend that anyone interested in the platform, especially with a software development bent, watch the session Create next-gen experiences at scale with Windows. There is some real insight in there about the future of Windows, generally. I’ll be writing more about that soon.

I was surprised that we didn’t get more Loop news. I was really expecting a beta or whatever, but it’s possible that it just wasn’t ready in time. (Like the new Outlook, this thing seems to be perpetually delayed.)

Panos Panay

SherlockHolmes asks:

After installing Windows 11 22H2 im actually happy that that wasnt a big Update. Normally im endling up disabling new things in group policies. But since this is a small Update I wanted to ask you, how safe is Panos as Windows Chief? After I watched the video I thought maybe he talks so weird because his job is on the line because the Upgrade of Windows 11 is going so badly?

His style hasn’t changed: he’s been an odd one since the first time we saw him in 2012. This is one of those divisive things, where some people love his style, and some can’t stand it. I find him to be publicly awkward. But my issues with him are two-fold: I think he comes off as fake, not genuine, and his need to be surrounded by people cheering him on as he speaks says a lot.

More to the point, I don’t see how he is at all qualified to run Windows, given his previous experience, which was several years of designing keyboards and mice before leading Surface. Of all the people who have run Windows, he is the only one—the only one—who came out of left field. It’s very strange. Maybe no one else wanted this burden. I don’t know.

And while this didn’t start with Panay, the Windows org is a great example of lying with data. You can simply present the numbers that make you look good, with zero context or proof, and that’s what they’ve done for years and what they’re doing right now. Generally speaking, a good leader would identify the problems and solve them. But we don’t know the pressures he’s under. If they’re like those that Terry Myerson faced, I could almost forgive him for presenting a happy face when things aren’t going as well as he claims. I’m sure he has metrics of his own to hit.

With regards to Windows 11 and the quality/scope of the 22H2 upgrade, I’ll be writing about that soon, but I am of two minds there. It is nice that this upgrade isn’t all that big, in some ways, yes. But I think a lot of people, myself included, feel that there was so much that needed to be fixed, and it is incredible that almost none of that work appears in 22H2. This Windows team seems uniquely concerned with small new ideas and has no time or energy for fixing problems based on feedback. That’s not unique in the history of Windows, I know. But those periods when that happened resulted in the worst versions of Windows of all time, like Windows 8.

I know. Windows 11 isn’t that bad. But that’s almost a criticism too: at least the Windows 8 team had imagination and really went for it. Windows 11 feels risk averse aside from the whole pissing off your enthusiast user base thing. It’s like it’s designed to be mediocre, a pretty shell that’s empty inside.

Thin and light

anoldamigauser asks:

With the Windows 11 UI coming from Windows 10X, which in turn was heavily influenced by ChromeOS because it was supposed to be light and simple (until it had to be able to run Win32 apps is a sandbox, so it would have to bring all that cruft along making it no longer light and simple), we now have a complex OS with an interface meant for simple tasks run mostly from a browser.

This is mostly accurate. I guess Microsoft views the Windows shell mostly as a mobile platform-style app launcher, for the most part, these days.

So my question is, is Microsoft capable of creating a light and simple OS, a Chredgebook for example, that would suffice for 95% of the people who get by with phones, Chromebooks, and/or tablets? They have failed numerous times, but it seems that it is always because they can’t get over making it look like Windows and then gold plating the specs. It just seems they are missing a market that would go nicely with their desire to sell subscription software. They could bundle it with Microsoft 365 Business Basic or a consumer equivalent, and it would probably sell nicely.

They are definitely capable. If you forget about the whole legacy desktop apps thing, Windows RT and then Windows 10X were both stabs at this premise: a lightweight mobile platform that would be familiar to Windows users. But Microsoft’s inability to succeed here is tied to two inconvenient truths: despite all of the new app platform attempts of the past decade, Windows users expect to run desktop apps without compromises and in the ways with which they are familiar, and Microsoft’s mobile platforms, especially Windows Phone, cratered. And that puts Microsoft, and Windows, in an awkward position.

Here’s one example (which I’m only thinking about since I just wrote about this): at Build 2014, Microsoft demonstrated the then-new universal Office apps, which were designed to work across Windows Phone, Windows tablets, and Windows PCs. These apps only made sense in a world in which Windows Phone existed, because the apps were literally the same codebase on all of those platforms. (And one could imagine a world in which those apps would then run across HoloLens, Xbox, and whatever “One Windows” platforms might arise in the next few years.)

But when Windows Phone failed, the argument for supporting the universal Office apps disappeared. These apps were by definition compromised, and were less capable than their desktop counterparts. And while some might have enjoyed their simpler UIs and look and feel (I did), Windows users are, by and large, what I said earlier. They expect the full power. And so what happened in the intervening years is what we saw with Windows 11 too: Office got simpler looking, but the underlying apps are the same. Microsoft just showed off a “new” version of OneNote at Build 2022, but it’s just the same tired and bloated desktop application with a prettier new WinUI 3 front-end that makes it look more natural on Windows 11. Blech.

Back to that capable comment. Yes, Microsoft is capable of making that platform. The issue is that no one will follow them there. They didn’t do it with Windows Phone. Or with Windows RT. Or Windows 10 S. Or Windows on ARM (yet, maybe). And they would not have done it with Windows 10X unless that platform could have miraculously run Win32 apps at full speed and with 100 percent compatibility. Those things that look like Windows but are not 100 percent Windows have always failed. And Microsoft understands that. This is why we now have the 10X UI on top of real Windows. And Edgebook? It’s interesting. Would anyone buy one? Is the Chromebook market big enough to justify this? I doubt it.

It’s a tough position to be in. The smartphone world is much bigger than that of PCs, but Microsoft has no major role in that market. Windows can be made to be a great platform for web apps, for sure, but web apps run everywhere, so that’s no differentiator. They can partner with Amazon on Android apps, but Amazon’s store in the backwater of that world, and what we all really want is Google Play, and that is not happening. So again, what’s the point?

I think what we’re seeing with Windows 11 is what Microsoft can do. And that, in the end, it does not matter to Microsoft how or where you run Windows apps—locally, from the cloud, virtualized on a Mac, whatever—but that you subscribe to Microsoft 365 and use the platform you prefer. Windows is still a big business, so it needs to be updated and maintained. But I think we’re at the end of any major platform pushes there. We’re just sort of riding it out in a way.

The web is the future

SherlockHolmes asks:

I know you are a big fan of PWAs. But honestly after a few years in the wild nothing really happed. Do you really think PWAs are the future? Looks like there are no new major PWAs surfacing.

Yeah, I do think that web apps are the future, on both large screen (PC, tablet) and small screen (smartphone) devices. This has been on a slow boil because of opposing forces that include the owners of lucrative mobile app stores and basic inertia (the expectations of Windows users with regards to legacy desktop applications, noted above). But it’s inevitable. The world will move to open, cross-platform app platforms, and there is nothing more open or cross-platform than the web.

Even Microsoft is moving in this direction. Just in the past week, we learned about the new Outlook client, which is web-based, and that follows Teams, its biggest new app in a decade, which is also web-based. Microsoft is basing Loop (and Windows 11 Widgets) on Adaptive Cards, which is web/web services-based. Microsoft is improving PWAs in Edge to make them even more native, including having app-based native Windows 11 notification toasts as opposed to all the notifications coming from the browser, as they do today. It’s happening.

There will be interim steps. Frameworks like Flutter and MAUI are interesting because they promise native code experiences and more advanced capabilities. But these are the first steps toward true cross-platform web experiences. The web will keep advancing and we will run out of excuses.

With regards to being a fan of PWA, I guess I see myself more of a pragmatist. I just see this as inevitable.

HP + Linux

justme asks:

A Linux related question for you this week – What do you make of HP partnering with System76 to release a premium build laptop (called Dev One) running Pop_OS! Given System76 is a harware maker (and, at least in theory, a competitor to HP), would this signal that perhaps System76 – or maybe parts of it – are targeted for purchase by HP? To my knowledge, this is the first time HP would be releaseing a Linux PC that wasnt running vanilla Ubuntu. I am also unaware of any similar partnering arrangements System76 may have.

On the one hand, this is HP finally waking up a bit to a part of the market where maybe Dell and Lenovo have done a better job to date. But I don’t mean to undercut what’s happening here. In some ways, this is huge: that PC is clearly an AMD-based Firefly portable (low-end, Ultrabook-style) workstation, which is one of my favorite Windows laptops. And I think that’s what Linux needs to be successful: mainstream PC makers using proven hardware designs. We’ll see where this goes, but I will ask HP about possibly reviewing this. Very interesting.

Where to publish

helix2301 asks:

Paul I know a lot of bloggers since covid have gone on their own from bigger blogging to freelancers using stuff like substack and median. I know people like you and Stacy on IOT have your own sites and kind of your own brands do you think things like substack and Mediam take away from sites like yours or verge? Do you think there space for everyone?

I do think there’s a place for everyone. And that writing and publishing are like anything else, that there will be those few who can make it on whatever platform—WordPress, Medium, Substack, whatever—and a great many more who will simply eke out a living or fail. My wife wrote on Medium for a long time and has kind of drifted off because it didn’t pay off very well and her normal paid contracts have. I considered Medium and Substack, but I don’t like spreading myself too thin and having too many publishing points. Everyone is different, and everyone has different skills. Some are good at business, for example, or self-promotion. Some are just writers. I’m just a writer.

On a related side note, when I started researching Mexico about 18 months ago, and then got my wife involved, we were discussing how there were no real experts to follow on blogs, YouTube, or even via books. Instead, there was this small group of people on each platform that I’d call enthusiasts, some of whom were sometimes useful or interesting. But they seem to fall into two groups: young people with zero responsibilities who aren’t taking much of a chance by creating content about them waltzing around Mexico and retired people who likewise have zero day-to-day responsibilities and found the cost of living and lifestyle in Mexico attractive.

My wife and I are neither. We have two kids in college (well, technically one now) and have no plans to retire. We have jobs and work all day every day. We are open to splitting our time between two or more places each year—we were sort of the original hybrid workers—but we’re not moving to Mexico full-time. There really isn’t anyone speaking to our demographic, and we have been forced to kind of deal with content creators who are only sometimes useful or interesting to us.

My wife suggested that we could write and/or make videos about what we’re doing since there is nothing like that out there. I have no time or energy for that, but I do see the need, and I could imagine creating a Windows 11 Field Guide-type thing out of it, something that might span blog posts and short videos. And so we’re sort of muddling our way through that, with the understanding that we have real jobs that take precedence. And we’ll see how that goes.

The reason I mention that here is that positioning is important. Is this a Medium channel? A blog? A YouTube channel (which we have started)? An Instagram account? Some combination? I don’t know. But since this is not what I normally write about, I’ve been sort of forced to think about how one might approach something new here in 2022. And when it comes to writing and/or publishing, there are all kinds of choices. We’ll probably fail at all of them. And I’m not completely on board with any of it. But it is interesting to think about this stuff and which platforms to choose.

Short-term, we’ll make a few videos where we kind of talk through where we’re at, what we’ve done, and why. And we’ll take it from there. But we’re writers, not YouTubers. I just don’t know if this is what I want.

As for the day-to-day stuff, I don’t see a huge need to change anything. I was thinking at some point last year, for example, that maybe the Premium newsletter stuff could end up on Medium since so much of it isn’t strictly tech-related. But I never had that conversation with anyone at work because, again, I like just having one thing. I don’t think spreading out all over the place is a great idea. Other people might do this differently.