Ask Paul: April 7 (Premium)

Happy Friday! We’re finally settling down after the move and are looking forward to a normal weekend. Which we will kick off early with some great reader questions…

From Windows to Linux

Eric_Rasmussen asks:

With Windows losing focus these days, I’ve been thinking about how Microsoft could get away from the OS game. They’ve got a ton of Linux kernel experience now, I wonder if they would ever build the Windows shell on top of a Linux kernel? I actually really like the shell of Windows 11, it’s the filesystem hiccups, the way drivers are handled, and how updates are delivered that drives me mad. Microsoft Linux 23.10 / 24.04? It’ll probably never happen but it’s fun to think about.

This comes up from time to time for various reasons, and I’m reminded that the first scoop I got after moving over to Windows NT Magazine was that Microsoft in 2000 commissioned a company called Mainsoft to port Office to Linux just in case. (I happened to be in Israel that year for work and the CEO of the company I was at allowed me to interview two programmers from Mainsoft who were visiting that day. Weird coincidence, and in the end, nothing came of it, of course.)

Anyway. The issues with Microsoft replacing Windows are many, but consider that it’s failed hard with versions of Windows that aren’t full Windows (Windows RT, Windows 10 S/S mode, Windows 10X, Windows on Arm, etc.) and with mobile systems including Windows Phone/Windows Mobile and even the Android version it uses on Surface Duo. So it’s not just like creating the thing is enough. If things that look and mostly work like Windows haven’t been successful, it’s not clear why a version of Linux, which would presumably look and work something like Windows, would be either.

But I am with you: I am fascinated by this possibility and would love to see Microsoft do what it did with .NET, which was to start open-sourcing key technologies and then introduce a plan by which it will completely open-source the platform over time. And it should do this for the same reasons it did so with .NET: the community could contribute in meaningful ways and, over time, could become the key driver for improving and advancing the platform. Today, we get what I think of as “feedback theater,” where there is an Insider Program whose contributions are either imaginary or minimal at best, and it’s not clear what party is driving Windows forward and why.

Put another way, a “Windows” that is built on Linux would be like what Apple did with Mac OS X, which was to build a “Mac OS” that was built on the solid underpinnings of Unix. It would push the responsibility and expense of maintaining is core foundational technologies into the open source community, though it could still maintain a leadership presence for as long as that was needed. It would be a win-win for both Microsoft and its users. And Microsoft would still charge for support: there is no need for this change to erase its corporate licensing revenues.

And it will never happen, I’m sure.

Bing chatbot and code

Eric_Rasmussen also asks:

My question this week is whether or not you’ve spent some time with the new Bing Chat, especially the creative mode? It’s quite good at coming up with stories, expanding on ideas, and creating images from text prompts.

Yes, but I’ve mostly used it on the image side, not for creating text-based content. I guess I’m a little leery of that, but I also feel like I don’t really need it. Maybe there will come a day when I have writer’s block. Anything is possible.

I wrote about this in passing once, but I used DALL-E to create the new logo for Eternal Spring, which you can see on our YouTube channel. And then I used it to generate ideas for the Windows Everywhere and Windows 11 Field Guide covers. One of the images it came up with inspired the Windows Everywhere cover, though I went with a (freely licensable) photo that closely resembles the Windows XP “Bliss” wallpaper instead of the painting-like image it created. Oddly, some of the images it came up for the Windows 11 Field Guide were very reminiscent of the Windows 7 background imagery, which didn’t seem right. And in the end, I searched for a freely available image that was like the Windows 11 toilet paper background image but was colored and styled differently enough to be unique. So no AI there, I guess.

My dream is to have this kind of AI that understands source code, specifically the semantics of why code is written a certain way. If I could have an AI write unit tests for me it would save a lot of time. At that point, however, the same AI could probably do my job too but left as just a tool I see AI being an amazing sidekick.

This is something I am going to explore. I spend a lot of time Googling how I can do something in a particular language with a particular framework, and that usually lands me in Stack Overflow or a similar website. And it’s always the same conversation after a question: overly-technical jerks tell this person that they should know how to look up the answer, one guy will provide an answer that looks OK but doesn’t address the actual question, and then sometimes you get lucky and actually get the answer. I would love for AI to curate this nonsense and just get to the point. (The answer.)

I just started to list out some specific mini-projects I’m curious about, and I will see how it does.

Mayor of Kingstown

DKRowe asks:

Have you watched any of the “Mayor of Kingstown” TV series? I’m just catching up on season two and the reason I thought to ask is that about half of the establishing shots they use to set the locations for the upcoming scene feature trains. I don’t recall that about season one, but maybe your recent mention of trains has made me notice them more.

I have not, but I just discussed this with my wife, and we added it to the list. (We just started Succession so it may be a month or so. I’m not sure I even like Succession, but I feel like we’re going to get through it.)

Also, when I first read this question, I mistook the show for Mare of Easttown, which we liked quite a bit, and I was excited to see that a second season had occurred. Ah well. 🙂

Office futures

will asks:

Have you heard or know if Microsoft is working to move not just Outlook and Teams to Edge WebView but all of the Office apps?  Word, Excel and PowerPoint?  It seems like this could be a possible next step for the platform and easier to support and deploy for O365 users?

This is probably related thematically to the question above about Windows and Linux in that we’re discussing an important legacy codebase with billions of users and the trouble of moving that forward to more modern underpinnings. And here, too, I don’t see that happening. But it’s interesting to wonder about what could have been. And then wonder if it could still happen.

As you may recall, Microsoft literally announced its plans to move the Office desktop apps to web technologies at the same time it announced Windows 8 and there were universal versions of the core Office apps that ran across Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Phone. (On Windows Phone, you could use Continuity to connect the phone to a USB-C dock and those apps would appear like full-sized apps on an external display.) This was a good idea, in theory, but the web wasn’t capable of duplicating the decades of features in the classic apps, all written in different languages and technologies, and the Office team quickly gave up on it. Plus, Windows Phone was killed off.

But is it possible to “port” these classic legacy apps to web technologies today? Possibly. And more probably if there are hard decisions made about killing off rarely used, esoteric features. But the question is … why bother? I can think of a few reasons—like a single code base that works across Windows, Mac, and Linux—but it’s not clear that the benefits outweigh the costs of doing so. And we have Office web apps to compare with and see what’s happening and what’s not happening.

And here’s a conspiracy theory on a conspiracy theory: doing this only makes sense if Microsoft also decided to base a future Windows on Linux. It’s not like they’re going to create native app versions of these things on Linux, right? That’s when cross-platform solutions really make sense.

But I don’t see this happening either.  Instead, I think the Office team is going to keep doing what it’s been doing for years, dating back to now-forgotten apps like Mix and Sway. Which is to keep the classic desktop apps hobbling along because they are still so heavily used, but keep pushing forward with newer, more modern apps that users will hopefully transition to over time. The biggest success here so far is Teams, of course, which started as an alternative to Outlook for collaboration and now does literally everything but email. And the next one will hopefully be Loop, which should make apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint redundant over time while coexisting in the short term (just as Teams and Outlook coexist). This is a smart strategy because it appeals to the old-timers who will never give up what they’re used to as much as it does to younger users who want more modern solutions. Over time, the old timers retire and die off, and the new stuff becomes what Office is.

Still. It’s an interesting idea. Is the new Outlook, which is clearly just Outlook.com packaged as a web app, the first step towards moving the rest of Office to the web? (Or, making the web apps installable as apps and available offline, etc.?) It’s … possible. The functional gap is big and may never be fully bridged.

Framework laptop

will also asks:

Have you considered or thought about reviewing a Framework laptop?  I saw one for the first time the other day and I was pretty impressed with the idea of a fully modular and upgradable laptop. Curious of your thoughts on this.

I’m fascinated by Framework and would love to review one. I would have to ask, however, which I rarely do. And I’m just coming down from one of the busier times in my life between the Mexico residency and home sale/moving stuff, plus another huge change I’ve yet to discuss. So there’s been a lot going on. As things calm down this year, hopefully, I can start thinking about this kind of thing.

Pixel futures

ggolcher asks:

I’d love to get your thoughts on the future of Pixel phones.

Let me share my story. Yesterday, my Pixel 5a died and it’s out of warranty. Fixing it is more than buying a new phone, so I did the latter. I found that all Pixel phones are heavily discounted in the Google Store. In fact, the Pixel 7, which I bought, is especially discounted.

Yep. This happens from time to time, and it’s part of the reason I just bought the Google Pixel Buds Pro.

The Pixel 7 is less than 6 months old, yet it’s $150 off to $450. On top of that, if you buy it to use in the Fi network (even as an existing subscriber), you’ll get a monthly statement credit over two years until you get the $450 back. This can be combined with a trade-in to the point where you get money back!

That seems like an amazing deal to me, but also reflects something I’ve anecdotally noticed: that Pixels seem to always have a discount. I’ve also heard that Pixels are not selling well. Is this right? Are Pixels not doing well? If so, what do you think are the future prospects for this phone?

Pixel has never sold well, it’s like Google’s version of Microsoft Surface. The last time we had hard data on this was last October, when IDC reported that Google’s claims of success with the Pixel 6 were overblown and that the Pixel line overall has never sold well. Having owned almost every single Pixel ever made, I look at the relative sales numbers for each model and can understand what happened: Pixel was on a nice upward trajectory with the first three generations, though each had specific build, quality, or reliability issues. But the Pixel 4 was a miscalculation and the moment at which Pixel ceded its leadership position in computational photography. It’s pretty clear that Google was plotting its own chipsets by that point but that continual delays triggered a Lumia-like strategy in which it temporarily went lowball to save on costs over the Pixel 4a/5/5a series of phones. And so by the time the Pixel 6 appeared with a unique new premium design, they had some work to do to make up for the losses. But the Pixel 6 was only successful compared to its predecessor; it was outsold by all other Pixels except for the original model.

As I wrote in my Pixel 7 Pro review, a few small changes made a huge difference from a user experience perspective, and it looks like the Pixel 8 Pro will likewise provide a similar generational improvement. And so I feel like Pixel is back to being in a good place from a positioning/capabilities perspective. Has the Pixel 7 series outsold the Pixel 6 series and is this growth sustainable? I don’t know, and I don’t think we have any data on that yet. I hope so: I like to see positive product improvements rewarded that way, and Pixel is still small enough that it can make big year-over-year gains. We’ll see.

But Pixel 6 sold possibly 4 million units, so even a very healthy 50 percent sales gain, which is unlikely, would lead to just 6 million units for the Pixel 7 series. Which is a drop in the bucket compared to what Samsung and Apple sell. Those are not big numbers in the smartphone market. The question is whether they make sense for Google. And when Sundar Pichai started talking about cutting products in the wake of the post-pandemic downturn, I’m sure most Pixel fans immediately feared the worst. I did.

Beyond the product line continuing, the thing I care most about is that there be a viable ecosystem for a clean Android smartphone and a surrounding ecosystem of products and services. Google has that, today, with its earbuds, watches, laptops (such as they are), accessories, and subscription services like Pixel Pass, Google One, and Google Fi, but it’s fair to say that when there is an Apple comparison there (and there is for basically everything but Fi), the Apple products and services outsell the Google/Pixel offerings by such a wide margin that they don’t even appear to compete in the same markets. At some point, this just becomes a sore spot of comparison that makes Google look bad. I hope that doesn’t trigger a massive rethink. (One of the things I loved about Nokia’s entry into the Windows Phone market is that they brought along an incredible ecosystem of accessories, apps, and services. Pixel reminds me of that.)

Anyway, what this comes down to, I guess, is whether these things make sense for Google. When Microsoft announced the Surface Duo, I had lots of complaints about the form factor, and in speaking to Microsoft’s Frank Shaw, he asked me rhetorically whether the Duo would make sense to me if it just broke even or made a small profit. And … sure. I feel the same way about Pixel. It’s never going to outsell the iPhone. But if it can establish this nice niche where those in the know can turn to a product line and ecosystem that they feel is superior, then there is value to that. Of course, this assumes that the products are top-notch and without major issues, and that’s eluded Google pretty consistently. But I also think the Pixel 7 series is the best they’ve done from a quality perspective. I hope that it stays around. But I also hope it expands. How about some new speakers, for example?

Xbox games for 2023

christianwilson asks:

I know Call of Duty is the game you play most of the time but are there any upcoming Xbox games you are looking forward to this year? 2023 is looking good with Ghostwire Tokyo, Red Fall, Minecraft Legends, Forza Motorsport, and, of course, Starfield.

I’m currently undergoing a detoxification period in which I’ve not turned on my Xbox since before we went to Mexico City, so about 5 weeks. And that means that I’ve not played Call of Duty in that time frame. Possibly my longest break in over 15 years. I’m not sure.

What will break this for me, most likely, is Minecraft Legends. I’m curiously interested in this game. And I was thinking that it would be interesting to be a sort of itinerant game player by taking advantage of Xbox’s “free play days” to sample different games from time to time. We don’t really write about this on Thurrott.com, but the most recent announcement includes  PGA Tour 2K23, Black Desert, Bravery and Greed, and The Elder Scrolls Online, and all you need is an Xbox Live Gold subscription to do this.

But as for the biggest upcoming Xbox titles that would make me consider putting Call of Duty aside, I would also look at the Resident Evil 4 remake (which is out now), the Dead Space remake (also out now), Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Dead Island 2, Assassin’s Creed Mirage (which is supposed to be a return to form), Alan Wake remastered/Alan Wake 2, and maybe even The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, if only because I’m a Tolkien fan.

Video editing

helix2301 asks:

I am small content creator. I have been using my dell xps with clipchamp to great videos and I bought the clipchamp subscription which is working out well. What do you use for video editing? Would you recommend adobe over clipchamp?

I use Adobe Premiere Elements 2022 and like it quite a bit. But I think Clipchamp is fantastic, and the only thing holding it back for me is that you can’t output to 4K, even if you pay for it. I would probably consider using it otherwise.

What would you recommend for podcasting audacity seems a bit limited and there is not garadgeband on Windows which was my go to podcasting app on mac. I love the dell xps just need to figure out my new workflow.

I have never really used a dedicated podcasting solution. Someone recently recommended NVIDIA Broadcast to me, and that does look interesting. But for all the podcasting I’ve done, I usually just show up, so I don’t need to worry about that. For Eternal Spring, we experimented with some phone-based recordings, but eventually just settled on Zoom, which does a decent (if not particularly configurable) job of recording both audio and video, and you don’t have to pay for it. (There is a 40-minute time limit on recordings, or similar, unless you do pay.)

Apple Watch vs. Pixel

louiem3 asks:

Hi Paul, with the switch from iOS to Android what’s your experience using the Apple Watch? Do you still carry the iPhone around with you?

No, I leave the iPhone at home, which triggers a “you left your iPhone behind” notification every time I leave the apartment. This isn’t a viable long-term solution, but for now, I’m just using the Apple Watch as before. Longer-term, I will (re)test using my old Fitbit when I can find it in all the stuff we packed/stored for the move, and assuming it’s OK will likely use that until at least this fall when I can see what Google/Fitbit is offering. But the Apple Watch at least “works” in that it correctly collects data even without the iPhone nearby.

Sonos

louiem3 asks:

Now that you’re starting to settle in your new place how are you handling where to put your Sonos speakers? The new Era 300 has gotten really good reviews it looks like.

We have too many big Sonos speakers and will almost certainly be selling some of them. Right now, I have the Sonos Play Fives on stands on either side of the TV (which has a first-gen Sonos Beam soundbar) and we’ve only used them once for a music night here in the apartment. They’re usually connected to a Sonos Sub, but I’ve unplugged that since it’s just too thumpy even at low volume.

So I suspect the Fives and Sub have to go. The question is whether we replace them.

One option is to buy a second mid-sized Sonos Move (we have one) and put them on the stands where the Fives are now. The Sonos Move is sort of a follow-up to the Sonos Play:3 and seems like a good size for the apartment. I originally thought we could get a Sub Mini and put it on a stand, but I think that’s inappropriate for an apartment.

Another thing we will explore is using the IKEA Symfonisk bookshelf speakers (which are Sonos One-level speakers) that we used to have in the kitchen as rears for the Beam and TV. I haven’t tried this yet.

We also have two Sonos Play:1/One speakers that we will just sell because there’s no place for them.

I would love to get some Era 300s, but I would want to crank those for the spatial audio effect and that’s a non-starter here. So we’ll probably hold off on the new-generation Sonos equipment for now at least. We’ll see what happens six months down the road: if we decide we need a bigger place, I could see maybe going in that direction (assuming we’re in a townhouse with no one above or below us).

Topics of interest

j5 asks:

Just curious as to what stories, current events, and topics thurrott.com choose to write about and cover? For example I don’t see many tech stories when it comes to security or data breaches. Not that it’s bad or anything … just curious about the writing process. What motivates you to pick the stories to write about etc.

This is more of a gut thing than a strategy, but if you think back to the SuperSite for Windows, I started that site because I was excited about what was then called Windows NT 5.0, which was supposed to be the release that combined Windows 9x with NT. That never happened—NT 5.0 became Windows 2000 and the grand unification was delayed to Windows XP—but over time, the coverage expanded to include lots of Microsoft platforms (Windows Server, Office, MSN, Zune, etc.) and, of course, competing products from Apple and elsewhere.

In those days, I had two overt goals: to not waste people’s time with non-essential stories (the tagline for WinInfo, my news site/service, was “news and information, no fluff”) and to not be so tunnel-visioned that I only paid attention to what Microsoft was doing. That is, I always felt that it was important to understand how the competition stacked up, and to be honest when it was better. This was not something that lots of early blogs did.

By the time I moved to Thurrott.com, I sort of expanded the and generalized the scope to “personal technology” in part because I worried that my Microsoft/Windows affiliation made me appear partisan or whatever. But I came around to the notion that this perspective was part of my identity and that my body of work would speak to whether I was truly impartial or not. And I came up with this Michael Pollan-inspired phrase that I use on Twitter and would like to use for the motto for this site: “Personal technology, with a focus on productivity, mostly Microsoft.”

And that’s sort of where I’m at, personally. That is, I’m more concerned with what I think of as productivity than I am with Microsoft specifically. That said, I live in a Microsoft-focused world, and that has stood the test of time in that I would have abandoned this mindset long ago if it didn’t actually make sense. (And I do, of course, walk away from Microsoft where I feel I need to. I use Brave instead of Edge, Google Search instead of Bing, and so on.)

Of course, Thurrott.com and I are not entirely the same thing. Laurent contributes most of the news on the site, and while he, too, has a Microsoft focus, he is also very interested in Apple, mobile, social media, and so on. And I think that’s an important and valuable perspective. It’s also in keeping with that motto. Personal technology. A focus on productivity. Mostly Microsoft.

So with regards to your specific question about security and data breaches, right. I don’t care about that topic too too much. But I do write about it when I feel it’s relevant—just this week I wrote about Microsoft fixing a vulnerability in Bing and Office 365, for example—and you can see how that intersects with my world and what the site is all about. But yeah, I use that same philosophy from WinInfo when it comes to ignoring things that I feel don’t impact a lot of people who read this site. For example, Western Digital is in the middle of a controversial episode involving its MyCloud Home service being breached in some way. And God, I just can’t care about this topic, not because it doesn’t impact some number of people out in the world, of course it does, but because I would never trust this company for this kind of service. I’ve tried to be very clear about the types of things people should be doing with their data. Not that I have all the answers, obviously. Just an opinion. Hopefully semi-educated and experience-based. (And if you do care about WD, someone was nice enough to post about it to the forums, which is nicely done.)

That said, I suspect that we will cover the WD stuff when there’s more information. But we’re also not the go-to site for that type of coverage. And I guess it’s mostly just an interest-level thing. The idea being, not that I’ve really thought about it explicitly, that many of the people who do read this site are coming at the world from a similar place as Laurent and me and have largely similar interests.