Ask Paul: August 12 (Premium)

Happy Friday from Roma Norte in Mexico City! Here’s a bonanza installment of Ask Paul to kick off the weekend a bit early.

Also, I couldn’t decide which photo to use, so I added a few extra from this trip below. Except for the last one of the super moon, which was taken with my wife’s Samsung Galaxy Note 22 Ultra, all were taken with the Pixel 6a.

iPhone vs. Pixel

yoshi asks:

Has being back on a Pixel reminded you of why you switched to iPhone? Or has being back on a Pixel made you realize how much you like it compared to iPhone?

It’s fascinating how often someone will ask me a question that makes me think they’re reading my mind. I’ve not just been thinking about this whole “iPhone vs. Pixel” thing constantly since I switched to the Pixel 6a, but I’ve been thinking about writing it up. The trouble is that it’s kind of complicated and not as simple as one thing just being better than the other.

I may still explore this in more detail, but for now, I’ll just say that using the Pixel 6a has been a healthy reminder of what Google gets right (and, I guess, what Apple gets wrong) … and vice versa. There are things about the Pixel I love, and I wish worked that way on the iPhone. And there are, of course, some things I miss from the iPhone.

I’ll probably publish my Pixel 6a review Sunday or Monday, but one of the most striking things about this handset is how familiar it is, thanks to my previous experience with the Pixel 6 Pro. The biggest differences, of course, are its size and the camera system, though the latter isn’t as dramatic as many might think, the key day-to-day differentiator being the lack of a telephoto lens in the Pixel 6a.

Regarding the size, the Pixel 6a is about the same size as the iPhone 13 Pro I’ve been using, and while my eyes might appreciate a bigger display, this size seems near ideal for carrying it around and so forth. We’re in Mexico City this week, so walking around, taking photos, checking email and social media, and reading feeds, and so on is roughly the same experience I guess.

The Pixel (and, really, Android) handle notifications much better than does the iPhone. In fact, it’s embarrassing. You can swipe away email and other notifications on the iPhone, but they don’t impact the underlying notification. On the Pixel, I can archive emails right from the notification, and I can even do so by long-pressing on the app icon and then accessing its pop-up. This system is dramatically better than what Apple does.

The Pixel also handles spam calls and texts in ways that are so elegant they deserve an article of their own. Where the iPhone is laughably bad, the Pixel offers the type of hand-holding and curated experience for which Apple is famous. And when a call does get through, the Pixel can actually screen the call, which prevents it from clogging up voice mail (usually with a 3 second silent message) and messages (because Google Fi voice mails are transcribed). It’s night and day.

Indeed, the Pixel’s improved integration with Google Fi—not Apple’s fault, for sure—offers a number of advantages, only some of which are related to calls and texts. But the short version is that you get the full meal deal on Pixel, and you don’t on iPhone. (One example: Pixel supports network provider roaming in real-time and can use 5G networks where the iPhone cannot.)

We were out in the world the other day taking pictures of whatever, and I was reminded of an issue I’ve had with the iPhone where so many photos I take—so many—would save rotated 90 degrees for some reason. So I would go to post to Instagram or whatever and one or two of the photos in a set would need to be fixed. Rather than doing that from Instagram, I would back out, open the Camera app, and fix them there because I want the originals to be right. And then go back into Instagram and start over. Annoying. And it happened/s regularly. And it never happens on the Pixel, ever.

Anyway, my son has an iPhone 12 Pro, and so I commented that this might happen to him all the time too. He said it did not. And then he offered up an interesting possibility for the reason, asking me whether I had the iPhone’s rotation lock set to on. I … huh. I don’t think I’d have ever thought of that, but maybe more to the point, I can’t see how that would have impacted using the camera. But … maybe. Anyway, I checked the setting on my iPhone just now and the rotation lock is off. So I have no idea.

Speaking of the camera, the Pixel 6a has, for the most part, a superior camera experience, despite its lack of optical zoom. (The iPhone 13 Pro has a middling 3x optical zoom, but that’s better than 0x/digital zoom on the Pixel.) It does a much better job at the one point-and-click feature I love the most, which is the ability to change the exposure, basically, by tapping on a particular area in the viewfinder.

The best example is when you have a bit of sky in a shot. When you tap the sky in the iPhone’s viewfinder, you will almost see no change at all or a very subtle change, and the sky usually remains grayed out in the shot. But when you do this on the Pixel, the grayed-out area visually changes to show the blue and white of the sky in the viewfinder, and the rest of the image gains in contrast. The result, almost universally, is superior.

(In the iPhone’s defense, I will point out that sometimes, but not always, focusing on the sky in that scenario will result in a photo in which the sky is blue and white as in real life. That is, it changes in the resulting shot, but not in real-time while you’re taking the picture.)

From a performance perspective, the Pixel 6a is mostly fine. But whether it’s the Tensor chipset, which is still sort of an unknown in the sense that developers may not be optimizing for it because of the small user base, or something else, I do see weirdnesses. (That probably aren’t just on the Pixel 6a.) One example: when I go to tag my wife and son in photos on Instagram, the iPhone version of the app will remember I’ve tagged them before and make them available in a list so they’re easier to tag later. On the Pixel, there’s no list, and when I type “st” manually, my wife (Steph) comes right up. But when I type “mt” for “mthurrott,” my son’s Instagram ID, it literally tells me there are no users by that name … before eventually offering up a list of names with him at the top. It’s time-consuming and a bit aggravating.

Yes, I know this is probably Instagram’s fault. But these differences exist all over between the platforms and will impact how a user feels about the phone. (This is similar to how any number of factors could contribute to issues on a PC, from crapware to poorly-written drivers, but Microsoft and Windows are always blamed.) And it doesn’t matter whose fault it is. If the experience is worse on one phone, that’s the reality.

But I do, of course, miss the iPhone in some ways too. The Pixel can last for a day—my earlier concerns have evened out with usage, thankfully—but the iPhone’s battery life is dramatically better. Face ID is amazing, especially now that masks are no longer required everywhere. Not having AirPlay on music night is killing me as I’ve had to go back to the Sonos app for multi-room audio via YouTube Music, which is horrible. And this is kind of a weird one, but I’ve come to really like the App Library feature in iOS for finding secondary apps (i.e. apps that are not on my home screen). Google uses a more standard All Apps grid of icons, and you’d think that just having those apps all there alphabetically would make more sense, but it doesn’t. With App Library, I can use muscle memory to go right to apps I only use sometimes, like Hue. But in the Pixel, the position of that icon has moved as I’ve added apps. I know. Weird.

Here’s another little one that impacts me a lot: you can create folders of app icons on the iPhone and Pixel home screen. But they work a bit differently: when you open a folder and then an app on Pixel, and go back to the home screen, the folder is closed. But when you do that on iPhone, the folder is still open. Big deal, right?

Actually, it is a big deal. My folders are themed (reading apps, for example, or audio apps), and so when I go into one of those folders I don’t really mean to run one app per se, but often want to cycle through a few. For example, I may check to see if there’s a new podcast episode I want to listen to at the gym and, if there isn’t, will then play an audiobook. Or I want to read and all the reading apps are in the same folder. It’s easier to move between them if that folder stays open.

There is probably a lot more. But maybe I’ll write more on this after I review the Pixel 6a. The important thing, I guess, is that there’s no clear winner per se. But each does some things better than the other. I wish it were more clear-cut. It’d be nice not to have to think about this.

Subjectively, my heart is with Pixel. But I’ve been burned so many times, and it’s hard to reconcile what I wish was the case with what is the reality. Moving back to the Pixel 6 Pro won’t solve too many of my problems because it still has the issues—-size, curved display, fingerprint reader, etc.—that it always had. I wish there was a Pixel 6-sized Pro with a better fingerprint reader. But there isn’t.

I could go on and on. I guess I did.

Subscription prices

spacecamel asks:

Since every other subscription service seems to be raising prices and an Activision cost coming, when is Microsoft going to raise the price of Game Pass? How much should we expect the rise to be?

I don’t expect that to go up anytime soon, at least: $9.99 is kind of the baseline for most subscriptions, and $14.99 (the cost of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) is up there, even for a premium subscription. I think the more reasonable approach is for Microsoft to add that Family Pass it’s now testing—the Xbox equivalent of Microsoft 365 Family—and make it such a no-brainer that it gains a lot of traction and helps raise the average price per subscription. What will that cost? $19.99 at the minimum, but I bet it’s $24.99 or $29.99.

Of course, there are higher-priced subscriptions, too. My Netflix subscription is the highest-cost “Premium Ultra HD” plan which costs $19.99 and I know that they’re looking at adding family plans that will obviously land in the $24.99 to $29.99 range and will allow family members in other locations to use the subscription. With two kids in different places, I have little choice.

I assume the recent Disney+ price hike is what inspired this question, but Disney+ has been, to date, curiously affordable, which I assume helped maintain its strong growth. Them matching the prices of the other big services makes sense, and I bet we see Apple TV+ follow suit by the end of next year. Beyond the big players, tier-two services like Paramount+ are usually in the $4.99 to $9.99 range, but those that are on the lower end of the spectrum will need to raise prices at some point to remain competitive. The question is how high these things can go.

Getting back to your original question, the addition of Activision Blizzard content might be the time to do two things: raise the price of each Game Pass subscription tier by $5 and add that Family Plan, probably at $29.99. But that could be several months away. I can’t imagine they would do so before then.

$29.99 a month. Yeesh. I get cable TV, phone, and Internet in Mexico for that much.

HP Spectre x360 13.5

dremy1011 asks:

I was wondering how things were going with the HP Spectre x360? Trying to decide between the HP and the new Macbook Air M2. I’m usually an Apple guy but trying to move toward being more platform agnostic.

I brought the HP Spectre x360 13.5 with me to Mexico and it will be the next laptop I review, and that will happen before we fly home next week. I don’t want to subvert that review, but the experience is excellent and there are no red flags to speak of. I will say that I used it for the entire flight here and still had roughly 45-50 percent battery when we landed, so the Spectre is delivering much better battery life than the HP Pavilion Plus I just reviewed. The display, performance, and keyboard are all excellent, but I miss that vertical column of Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys as expected; using Fn-key shortcuts isn’t great. (And I have no idea why HP removed those keys.)

We’ve been using the HP to watch Netflix (The Lincoln Lawyer) at night since we don’t have a TV here yet, and the display and audio quality is terrific.

Anyway, the review will up within the week. I am intrigued by the MacBook Air M2, of course, but I won’t be upgrading anytime soon. Maybe next year on that.

Cost savings in the cloud

Ianceicys asks:

Microsoft saved $3.7 billion dollars by changing the useful lives of Azure servers and hardware from 4 years to 6 years. $3.7 Billion dollars. Would you want to be running a 6 year old machine? Would you want your cloud to run on 6-year-old hardware (what that would be is Windows 8.1 hardware)? Any thoughts on leading edge hardware, and or if you have any 6 year old machine’s lying around?

I was kicking myself for not putting that in my post-earnings Short Takes last week, as Microsoft made the revelation in its conference call and I somehow zoned on it. But I view this as a pragmatic cost-saving measure: Microsoft previously replaced its datacenter-based server and network equipment every four years and can obviously save a lot of money by moving to a six-year schedule. The math there has to be similar to how insurance companies work in that it has evaluated the expected costs of replacing hardware that fails in that extra two-year period vs. the cost of sticking to its normal six-year schedule. And while we’ll see how that pans out over time, clearly they feel that they’ll win big time, financially.

Whether this impacts uptime for customers is a concern, of course. But they’re already stocking for replacement parts as it is, so I’m sure they have that covered. The goal would be for no one to notice a thing, and for Microsoft to save a lot of money by being more efficient. I can’t speak to datacenter hardware, obviously, but given how much longer PCs and servers last these days, I bet they pull it off.

Be brave

justme asks:

You’ve mentioned in several articles how you have moved largely to using Brave as your browser. Given its privacy-focused provenance, which extensions do you use with it – given that some you might otherwise require are covered by the browser itself?

This is a great question, and I should have written about this already. I did mention my switch to Brave, of course, but let me be a bit more explicit here. I’m now using Brave, and (basically) only Brave, on all of the PCs I use and review. (I also install Chrome because I need to access our Eternal Spring YouTube account separately from my personal account.) I’m using it exclusively on mobile—iPhone and Pixel—with the obvious caveat that both platforms force you to use their own browser tech in various ways. And I’m using it on the iPad now as well. I’ve had no issues to speak of and have found this transition much easier than I expected.

Among the many things that are unique about Brave is the way that it handles cross-device sync. Unlike other browsers, there’s no cloud account that you sign into and use for data (passwords, bookmarks, etc.) and so you have to kind of rethink how (or even if) you do that. Depending on the PC, I do this one of two ways. The first is the Brave sanctioned method where you create or join a “sync chain” that consists of some number of PCs and devices, and you use a QR code or a numerical sync code to join.

The second is, in some ways, more interesting to me: you just don’t sync. Instead, you do a one-time data copy from some other browser that has your data (usually Chrome in my case), make a handful of manual configuration changes, and then manually install the several extensions you might need. It’s not automatic, of course, but it works for me and I kind of like the sync-free life on this. Granted, there’s always the chance that you’ll add an online account, change a password, or whatever, and not have it on other devices. But this happens rarely.

When you first install Brave, it offers to copy over your data and extensions from another browser, usually Chrome, but I don’t do that anymore because all I want are the passwords, and you can do that later. The reason for this is related to your question: I don’t need/want Brave to install all of the extensions I use on Chrome, and I always ended up uninstalling several of them.

As for the extensions, and your actual question, I install only six in Brave: Dark Reader, Google Translate, Grammarly, Momentum, Save to Pocket, and Simplify Twitter Web UI. (And one of those, Google Translate, is offered when needed so I don’t need to get it manually.)

In Chrome/Edge, whatever else, I install many more, most of which are related to ad and tracker blocking. For example, in Chrome I see AdBlock Plus, Disable HTML 5 Autoplay (Reloaded), Mercury Reader, and uBlock Origin, none of which are needed in Brave. (And a few others related to Google services.)

Favorite id Software title

madthinus asks:

Completely off topic: Your favourite id Software game?

I mentioned an incredible 5.5-hour John Carmack interview the other day in the forums and, as you might expect, this has triggered a round of memories of some of the greatest fun I’ve had playing video games. People often talk about Steve Jobs’ incredible run of successes with the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, but I think that pales in comparison to what Carmack and his id Software cohorts accomplished with Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM/DOOM II, Quake/Quakeworld/Quake II/Quake III Arena/Team Arena/Quake 4, and DOOM 3, not to mention the innumerable spinoffs like Heretic, Hexen, and so many others. Why? Because each was materially better than the last. But none detracted from the accomplishments of their predecessors, and it’s still fun to go back and play games as old as Wolfenstein 3D or DOOM, something I have done again and again and again.

Picking a favorite is literally impossible as so many of these games were key milestones, both for the industry and for myself personally as a game player. And I have such strong memories of almost all of those titles.

Wolf 3D turned my wife’s lowly IBM PS1, with its sad 286 processor, into a better gaming machine than my tricked-out Amiga. DOOM was my first network multiplayer experience and was a revelation, and it of course led to so many other amazing games like Duke Nukem 3D, and to Internet-based multiplayer. And Quake, my god, Quake. True 3D and then the beginning of the hardware-accelerated graphics era with dedicated graphics cards and incredible visuals and real-time lighting. And DOOM 3 with its legitimately scary moments. On and on it goes.

These games are all incredible, and it wasn’t until Halo and then Medal of Honor and of course Call of Duty that I started feeling a serious pull away from id Software. (Well, Apogee/3D Realms had some amazing moments, too, of course, as did the Unreal and Unreal Tournament titles. I may be forgetting some.) By the time Rage happened, my head was somewhere else.

But again, it is the replayability that should remind people of how good these games actually were. Because they are still amazing today. What an incredible accomplishment.