Ask Paul: April 28 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Thanks to some great reader questions, here’s an epic installment of Ask Paul to get the weekend started a bit early.

Too big to fail

johnlavey asks:

What if INTEL rolls over and plays dead….or actually fails….who will do all the “stuff” they do? To what extent will the US, to name just one country, be impacted?

I don’t see Intel failing, and to be fair, it still controls a majority share in the PC and datacenter/server markets. It’s just that those markets are doing poorly right now, and unlike Microsoft, which differentiated beyond those markets, Intel has not. (It tried: its mobile efforts went nowhere and Intel sold off most of it.)

Intel’s new strategy is … interesting. Meaning, I get it, but it’s risky, and in the short term it is very expensive. And if there is any indication that it starts missing its milestones along the way, the impact will be devastating to its stock price and its cash flow. A sort of reverse virtuous cycle, if you will.

The most likely outcome here is that Intel emerges as a smaller and less influential company. It will almost certainly retain its market share lead in the PC market, albeit with a smaller share. But it will also almost certainly lose more share in the datacenter/server space to more efficient competition, most likely Arm-based. The trick for Intel is to grow, and for that to work, it needs its foundry strategy to pay off. It needs to become the next TMSC.

And that’s a long shot. But if they can win some key partnerships there—Apple being the white whale of this industry—then they can be successful. They just have to actually do it. And that’s why I’m not sure it will happen. I see little positive forward momentum right now.

For whatever it’s worth, this is what would have happened to Microsoft had it not gone all-in on the cloud. Diminished size and influence, diminished relevance, and fears for its ability to even survive.

Paid extended support

SherlockHolmes asks:

Hi Paul, with the end of Windows 10´s development cycle I wonder if there is any chance that Microsoft will extend support for Enterprise clients? Having an OS without some Updates for a few years would be really nice 🙂

Yes, this is the open question about Windows 10 right now. Microsoft offered paid extended support for Windows XP and Windows 7, both of which were, in turn, the best-selling/most-used versions of Windows. And now we have Windows 10, which has surpassed both, heading into the end of support. Will Microsoft do for Windows 10 what it did for those other two versions?

It seems obvious to say yes, of course it will, that Microsoft has always bent over backward for its enterprise customers and that if enough of them demand it, it will simply do so. That’s sort of a safe bet.

But were I betting money on this, I’d go with no: arbitrary hardware requirements notwithstanding, Windows 11 is Windows 10, and is most clearly viewed as just another Windows 10 version upgrade. And perhaps what Microsoft could do instead of continuing to support Windows 10 is to allow customers to install Windows 10 Enterprise on what is now unsupported hardware instead. It would be easier (for Microsoft), and most enterprise customers are using some kind of security solution that obviates the arguments Microsoft made about those requirements.

But this will hinge on what they demand and what the mix is of Windows 10 and Windows 11 PCs. The one thing Microsoft has going for it is that many of these businesses are about to hit a hardware upgrade cycle anyway. 7th Gen Intel Core chipsets, which are unsupported by Windows 11, will be 7 years old when Windows 10 hits EOL. It will be hard to justify using such old systems.

Surface peripherals

VMax asks:

Wondering if you’ve heard anything on Surface accessory updates, specifically Surface Headphones. The v2 model has been out for a while, and I note that the black version has been out of stock at the Australian Microsoft store for some time. I’d quite like to buy them, but if a new version is likely any time soon, I’ll hold off for that, or a discount on the current model.

(…posted this before seeing the relevant article recently published here. Question more or less still stands I guess, though it sounds from that article like they’re not too keen to make a v3.)

He’s referring to Microsoft Moves All Hardware Peripherals Under Surface which is about Microsoft responding to a Nikkei Asia story claiming that it was scaling back production of its Surface PC peripherals. Microsoft stated instead that it was killing off its Microsoft-branded PC peripherals and would go forward with the Surface brand instead. So it seemed that Microsoft was refuting the report.

But I was walking this morning and it occurred to me—this always happens like this—that these two things could both be true. That is, Microsoft is killing off its Microsoft-branded hardware to go forward with only Surface-branded hardware, and it is scaling back production of its Surface PC peripherals. In other words, all of this stuff will be Surface branded, but there will be less of it.

And … yeah, that does make sense. It makes sense for Microsoft to sell Surface Pro keyboards and docks and so on, but it’s unclear to me why Microsoft ever got into headphones and earbuds. It’s not like they have any expertise in that, or like the market isn’t well-served by those that do. My bigger fear is that key products I use and rely on, like the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard, will disappear. The Surface-branded ergonomic keyboard is/was terrible.

Anyway, I think a lot of Microsoft hardware is going to disappear. The question is which products. And we don’t know that yet.

Related to this, hastin asks:

Your thoughts on Microsoft branding exiting the PC accessories space after 40 years – Do you feel that it’s justified given the current marketplace – or does this feel like a mistake?

It’s a huge mistake.

Surface is not a good brand in the sense that it doesn’t have mainstream awareness and using the Surface brand on PC peripherals will send the message—to those that do understand it—that these things are only for Surface PCs. And some of them will be, of course. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has been making hardware for almost as long as it’s been making software—it included the first Microsoft Mouse in the box with the first version of Microsoft Word for MS-DOS in 1983, for crying out loud—and many of its current keyboards and mice are well-regarded and well-made. Microsoft hardware is so well known that the company recently brought back the classic IntelliMouse. You don’t walk from that.

Outlook spam

harmjr asks:

We need a Thurrott rant worthy of a gong on Outlook.com spam issues. I don’t get how they own what has to be the largest email systems in the world (consumer + enterprise) and can’t keep spam/phishing down. At least once a month it’s like their spam filters just break for a day. In floods 20+ emails though out the day right to the inbox nothing in the spam folder. Today was repeated COVID test and debt relief. Yahoo does a better job. Yes I said yahoo! Sorry this “Brian rant” over now. ? Any recommendation on any settings to make this better?

This is kind of a no-win situation, unfortunately.

On the one hand, I use Gmail (through a Google Workspace custom domain, thurrott.com) for all my email, and I forward the email from all of my other accounts to there. This is semi-coincidental, as I had previously moved this domain back and forth between Microsoft and Google, but semi-not, as BWW Media uses Gmail/Google Workspace, so I probably would have had to switch when I when there anyway. Long story short, I don’t have a lot of experience now with Microsoft’s email solutions.

But the other issue, as I understand it, is that this isn’t something that can be fixed by Microsoft’s customers. It’s not like there’s a switch you can toggle or a setting you can configure that will fix this. It’s all happening on the backend. I’ve seen all the reports, and that this issue keeps coming up from time to time. And yeah, this would drive me nuts too.

Sorry I can’t really help here. I’m not sure if anyone else reading this knows differently and can help. And I’m sure there are lots of opinions about switching to some other service. But I’m not sure what can be done.

Notion vs. Loop

christianwilson asks:

Do you intend to move from Notion to Loop soon, or at any point in the future? Or is it a “wait and see” situation?

I will be moving to Loop.

A comment was made by Leo about TWiT continuing to use Slack over Microsoft Teams because using applications and services can be “sticky”, something I understand well. I’m curious if you see Notion as the temporary step between OneNote and Loop or if Notion has a future for you.

I used OneNote for almost 20 years, so I certainly understand how the stickiness of familiarity and content storage can keep one from moving on to a better solution. But OneNote was so frustrating that finally taking that step forward to Notion made it all worthwhile. I will never use OneNote again, I don’t care what happens with it.

Moving from Notion is a very different proposition. I like Notion, and I use it for several many different things both personal and professional. We use it for the Windows Weekly show notes, of course, and the live collaboration capabilities are reliable and seamless, unlike with OneNote. I use it for meeting notes, and I use it to keep tracking of the weight machines at the gym. My wife and I use it to track what we need to do in our Mexico City apartment and we used it to track what needed to happen for our house sale and move. We also use it for our Eternal Spring show notes.

So why would I ever leave this useful and free service?

Because Loop is a superset of Notion. It offers everything that Notion does, at least as far as I need and am using, and it has familiar Word-like keyboard shortcuts, plus other capabilities, like arbitrary text sizing and page zoom, that Notion does not. It’s tied to my Microsoft account and my OneDrive storage, and so I never need to worry about hitting any limits.

And I’ve only been using Notion for about a year, and extensively (not just Windows Weekly) for about six months. I can fairly easily copy anything that’s in Notion into Loop if I want to.

Short answer: I won’t lose anything by moving from Notion to Loop, I will gain some things that are not available in Notion, and making this change is almost frictionless. The stickiness is offset by the fact that Loop is so much like Notion. This is either ironic or hypocritical, I don’t know. But I feel like everyone needs to make the choices that are right for them, and Loop just lines up nicely. (Where OneNote, to me, most definitely does not.) There’s nothing wrong with Notion, nothing I can’t work around. But Loop is better for me.

The timing is unclear, I guess. This year, obviously. I’ve already started with the transition, so we’ll see.

Efficiency

jrzoomer asks:

Paul can you share how you manage to accomplish so much with your time? With doing podcasts, writing articles for your site (or your book), keeping up to date with news, listening to your own podcasts and audiobooks, occasional gaming or TV shows (+ family time maybe)? I must be doing it all wrong!

Well.

It’s not like I work in a coal mine. I benefit from a natural ability to write at volume—no guarantees of quality—and I really enjoy writing, so it’s nice that I fell into this line of work. This is a weird coincidence since it’s almost never this busy, but I somehow managed to write 10 posts yesterday (plus post Windows Weekly). That’s a lot of writing, but there are instances where a single Ask Paul can be just about as long. And there are days when I get almost nothing done. You take it as it comes.

But I’ve been doing this for a long time. I started writing books about Microsoft products in 1994 or so, I started “blogging” (we didn’t call it then) shortly thereafter, and I created the SuperSite for Windows in 1998. I started podcasting in 2006, but that wasn’t something I did, it was something Leo and TWiT did, and I just showed up (beyond coming up with the show notes, which basically cover what I’ve written about in the past week). There were many years where I did a lot of public speaking, which I hated, or webinars, or whatever. But I try to stick to what I like, and what I’m good at. And that’s mostly writing. The podcasts to me are 2 or 3 guys talking about personal technology, which is enjoyable on its own level. The key to all that is to keep doing it. Anyone can start a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel. The trick is to keep at it.

And I think I’ve just developed a loose schedule that works for me. There are specific times for the podcasts, obviously, but I can write prolifically in the morning, in the afternoon, or at night, so whatever the need, and whatever the circumstances, I can make it work. The book stuff is … harder, in some ways. But it scratches another itch. And during that three-week trip to Mexico in March, where all we did was work and go out to eat locally, I flew through the editing of Windows Everywhere in a way that was almost manic. Microsoft would call this being in the flow, but I think of it as being in the zone. You forget to eat, etc. because it’s all coming together so efficiently.

But I can be ground to a halt by exterior events too. Meetings are the worst, for me, because they’re times I’m not writing but am forced to pay attention to things that are often uninteresting or not pertinent. I have appointments out in the world sometimes, obviously. And then there are things I like to do, or need to do, like walking for 40 minutes before work each day, or going to the gym, where I just make the time. Those are important too, because that’s when your mind is free and things come to you. (I note one such thing above.) I listen to podcasts and audiobooks when driving, walking (alone), and at the gym. I also make time to read every day. I read for an hour when I get up and for at least 30 minutes before I go to bed, every day. My wife and I watch a 22-minute-ish sitcom-type show during lunch and dinner each day (Monday to Friday) and we watch two hours of TV (some Netflix-time binge-show) at night (Sunday to Thursday).

I don’t know what this all adds up. It’s just my schedule, I guess. What I do. I care very much about efficiency and productivity, and I do try to optimize my schedule or even individual tasks, and I actually do think about that stuff. But I think I’m just lucky that I like what I do. It’s not always like “work”—I mean, it is work—but it’s not physical work. It’s mental work. It’s enjoyable and there is often a sense of accomplishment. It makes the days bearable.

When I was younger and first married, I worked in banks. And that work was not usually that interesting. It involved a good commute—30 to 40 minutes each day—the usual office personalities, and it was just not what I cared about, even though I was really good at counting money. So good that I ended up being the commercial teller at each place I landed. But boring. Anyway, back then, work was something I had to do, of course, like anyone else, but what I thought of as my life occurred outside of work. Or, in some small ways, during work when I could read in slow times or at lunch about things I did care about: learning to program or whatever. The people I worked with thought I was nuts.

These days, work and life are intermingled, and that works because I like the work. People always talk about work/life balance, but work is life to me, as much so as my family and friends, not because it’s as or more important but because it’s just another part of it. I can work without getting in the way of anything else, and, again, that’s just a lucky thing. If we’re on a home swap in Europe and I work a bit in the morning and a bit in the late afternoon, no one I’m with has less of a trip because of that, and my kids and my wife (and my friends, when they visit) don’t have any examples of me holding things up. That’s a nice thing.

One final thing. Because of the nature of my work, it’s sustainable, it’s something I can do pretty much forever. You see professional athletes are forced to retire at young ages because that’s the nature of that world, but then they have decades in front of them where they need to figure out how to fill the days doing something that is not their previous focus. Writing isn’t like that. I’ve written as much in the past few months as I have at any time in my life, and I know I can sustain that. And I will: I don’t have to retire. I may want to slow down eventually, I guess. But again, it’s not a coal mine and I like doing this. I have no plans to stop. That’s kind of comforting too, right? There are great uncertainties in life for everyone. But in this one area, I feel pretty good about things.

I can’t imagine this is helpful, sorry.

Strategy games

helix2301 asks:

I know you only really play Call of Duty and you don’t really review games but have you thought about in your slow times possibly playing or writing about Stardocks games they have a few new ones coming out and I was just wondering your feelings on strategy style games.

I am not really into strategy games at all. There are probably a lot of reasons for that, but if you somehow got through me blathering about my schedule above, one of the issues is time. And the types of games I do play, yes, primarily Call of Duty, are games where I can squeeze in some quick game play between writing and can leave immediately if something important comes up. It can’t be something that requires my attention. Or my time.

(And I mentioned above this notion of things popping into your brain when you’re not really thinking about them. That works on walks and so forth, and it can work with mindless games. I feel like if I was too invested in what was happening in a game, I wouldn’t get that. But I do get that with Call of Duty. In fact, I’ve used it a break semi-specifically for this reason.)

Apple rationalization

helix2301 asks:

The other question I wanted to ask is I know you kind of keep a close eye on Apple stuff after WWDC usually you mess with beta (I remember you giving macbook air to your daughter and you trying mac mini and trading it in for air – long time reader and listen to FRD). My question is I was on Apple refurb store other day and Best Buy refurb site and all I see is intel macs and low end m1.

I read an article other day that said Apple has fallen victim to the quality again. Basically saying Apple 2 was so good no one wanted to buy Machintosh at beginning then again Macintosh was so good no one wanted to let it go. You watch YouTube and everyone saying stay with M1 pro or max if you have it better built better faster hard drive exc. Apple recently had to stop or slow production on m2 chips because of lack of buying. Now I know the economy and pandemic and lay offs is part of this but do you think this in another example of Apple we made something so good again people dont see need to upgrade.

There are so many things I cannot stand about the Apple community and about tech fanboyism in general, and this is one of them. In their view, Apple can’t succumb to the same market forces that impact the rest of the industry, in this case the post-pandemic PC sales lull. Instead, there has to be some other reason some Apple product isn’t doing well, some reason that is not Apple’s fault, and ideally there should be some contorted logic that makes Apple look good too. And the theory here is that Mac sales are down right now because the initial generation of M1-based Macs was so good that no one needs to upgrade anymore.

Oh come on. That boggles my mind. I do think that the M1 was a big enough leap over whatever they were doing before that subsequent generations are less of a leap and thus will naturally have slower upticks. But the Mac exists in the same market as PCs. It’s impacted by the same issues too.

There’s another recent example of this thinking out in the world, where Apple sites are touting that Apple now dominates the refurbished phone market. But while they’re all high-fiving each other, they’re losing sight of something important: Apple controls only 19 percent of the smartphone market and the reason is that its products are so expensive. And so the refurbished market is where normal people go to get into a used iPhone, perhaps one that’s a few years old. And there is nothing wrong with that. But Apple’s success with refurbished iPhones just tells us that this is a company that makes bespoke, premium phones, which we already knew. Most of the market is spending less on cheap Android devices and Apple isn’t interested in those people. Apple could make inexpensive iPhones. But they’re more concerned with protecting their margins and their luxury brand. And that’s fine. But we should just see that for what it is.

As consumers, we should also take advantage of refurbished products. I browse the Apple refurbished site regularly, for example, and have bought many items that way. And our car is a 2014 BMW x3 that we bought used; we would never pay for a new BMW, even a low-end model like ours, even if we could have afforded it. Which we could not.