Ask Paul: September 8 (Premium)

Happy Friday! And welcome to the end of what felt like a very long week despite the Monday holiday. Let’s dive in.

Gatekeeping

Based on the EU designating gatekeeper products, I wanted to ask:

What changes would you predict the EU implements for each product?

This is a rather broad topic, and I have some aggressive ideas. But related to my initial complaint about the FTC blocking Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard—“In a world in which Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta are abusing very real monopolies, you’ve decided to go after … Microsoft?”—I would go for the low-hanging fruit. Which in this case means the most abusive products and services. Looking at the letter of the law and the products and services I expect to be impacted, I would start with these five:

App stores. Apple and Google maintain a duopoly in mobile app stores, but it’s also a Japanese-style cartel arrangement by which they (explicitly or implicitly, doesn’t matter) both compete and collude by setting prices arbitrarily high because there is literally no direction competition. I’ve made this case before, but Mastercard and Visa, which are considered monopolies/duopolies by the U.S. government, charge vendors fee structures in the very low single-digit percentage (1.5 percent to 2.5 percent, AMEX is as much as 3.5 percent) and abuse their dominance in various ways. (Witness the recent antitrust suit over so-called “interchange” fees, which is exactly like Microsoft charging PC makers for Windows even on PCs that did not include it, which is the type of abusive behavior that occurs when there is no competition.) Apple and Google, meanwhile, still charge up to 30 percent for most transactions, about 10x established credit card companies. That is completely unacceptable, and Job One for regulators.

Advertising. I would prevent any Big Tech platform maker from also being a seller of advertising, since this behooves them to unethical and illegal behavior in which they undermine the user experience and violate user privacy, which is disadvantageous to users but advantageous to them. This is about the relationship we have as individuals (or businesses) and the platform maker, in which they are providing them a service that we pay for, but in undermining their customers they achieve even further riches. It’s also a key example of enshittification, where it makes financial sense for the platform maker to make things worse for the customer, which I think most would agree is not right in any sense of the word. This is why we have tracking, crapware, and forced Edge usage in Windows, for example. Taking that away is interesting—Google would drop off the face of the earth, for example, though I think spinning off parts of that company would work—but this is both the prickliest part of antitrust remedies—divestiture—and, in this case, quite necessary.

Big online services including e-commerce. Services like Google Search and Amazon’s online store provide those companies with incredible insight into what people are looking for, and that allows them to abuse companies that would otherwise be their partners by offering their own versions of those services and then artificially diverting customers to their own services. (Or, they could offer this service to the highest-paying partner.) The “soft” version of this is all over the place: we see “suggested” results at the top of app store searches on both iPhone and Android, for example, which should be seen as paid placement. But the “hard” version of this is one of the reasons why Google is in trouble with regulators in both the U.S. and EU: Google has a rich history of diverting users to its own products and harming competing services that are either “better” (subjective) or literally the service the user was looking for (objective). The U.S. is about to file an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon for much the same issue (and other abuses). So. What’s the solution here? Well, some of this is tied to that advertising bit: Big Tech platforms that don’t own ad platforms would not benefit from some of the collateral revenues associated with the display of search results (Amazon could not both sell to consumers and show them advertising). But some have already been dictated by the EU: these companies cannot artificially divert users searching for something to their own products and services. Search would, in effect, be “pure.”

Social media and messaging. Because Meta virtually owns social media, it is able to engage in the ad-based and online services-based enshittification activities linked above by controlling what users see and pushing paid content over the information that users want. Facebook actively and knowingly engaged in the weakening of democracy over several election cycles here in the U.S. (and likely elsewhere, I’m not up on that) by allowing the spread of misinformation and lies because it was financially advantageous to do so. I would take a hardline stance on that: big platforms have long argued that they should bear no responsibility for the content that their users create, and that’s an interesting debate. But I will not debate whether knowingly being paid to spread misinformation is wrong. I would hold this company accountable for their actions, and I do believe that here, too, divestiture is required: Facebook and Instagram (and WhatsApp, a messaging solution) should all be spun off.

Bundled/default apps. From Windows to mobile to online services, Big Tech builds their platforms to be virtuous cycles in which using one part of it (the OS on a device, one dominant service in the cloud) can lead to customers uses other parts of it (apps and services on devices, other services in the cloud). This behavior, most advantageously seen in Apple’s ecosystem, has both good and bad qualities, but the bad can overwhelm the good when the company or product becomes too big (i.e. with monopolies or dominance). In the Apple case, fans laud the interoperability, but critics point out the closed-garden nature of these solutions and the lack of interoperability with the outside world (iMessage vs. RCS, Safari vs. the world, etc.). The web browser is an obvious example in Windows, because we’ve seen it get worse. This system went from purely open (pre-Windows 11) to sort-of open but purposefully hard to change, but with system components using Microsoft’s browser no matter what the user wants (Windows 11). This is enshittification, obviously, but then Microsoft is just following the Apple playbook thanks to its jealousy of mobile. No matter: Big Tech should be required to allow users to switch to the product or service of their choice and should build their platforms in such a way that the in-house app/service can be plug replaceable by third parties. This is not harder to architect, it’s just pro-consumer and pro-competition. That means really using Firefox in Windows for everything web-related, really using Chrome when you choose that on an iPhone, and so on. Not forcing your browser—or service, or whatever—on customers. This is the Teams/Microsoft 365 model that Microsoft just announced. But only in the EU. Sigh.

I know. Some of this is pretty radical. But we live in a world in which people cannot be bothered to be educated to protect themselves, where we all just shrug when we’re told that Google, or whomever, is selling our personal information to advertisers. “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” doesn’t even resonate. Governments can play many roles, but a key role is protecting the people, and this can take many forms, including those in which many people simply won’t do the right things for themselves. It’s like requiring a motorcycle helmet: you can argue for freedom or choice, or whatever—I would call it Darwinism in action—but that conveniently leaves out the obvious retort: these people are individually a danger to others and are collectively a danger to mankind.

Which of the remaining products under investigation (Bing Search, iMessage, etc.) do you predict will be included?

Again, a very broad topic. 🙂 I name several in the above bit. But any product or service made by any Big Tech company that falls into whatever combination of active users/revenues buckets you care to use, should at least be examined. In the Microsoft space, Windows, Office/Microsoft 365, and Azure all absolutely demand scrutiny. Bing … is a tough one. I would say no. For Apple, anything iPhone or services related for sure, including the iMessage specifically because it harms users who interact with non-iPhone users. And as I noted in the article In the Footsteps of Giants (Premium), “3 billion people use Android every single day, and Google bragged at its most recent I/O event that six of its offerings have over 2 billion users each while another 15 have over 500 million users each.” All of those need to be examined. Amazon’s online store and AWS. Meta’s Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp services.

To be clear, I am not saying that all of these things break whatever laws or will/need to be regulated. But they all need to be examined. Sooner rather than later.

And most importantly, do you foresee companies limiting these changes to only the EU?

Yes.

And … it’s nuanced.

Granted, there will be legal challenges elsewhere once companies publicly proclaim, as Microsoft did with the Teams/Microsoft 365 unbundling, that what they’re doing in one jurisdiction (the EU, usually) is fantastic for everyone involved but then don’t make those changes. So I see some element of that.

But there is also the hope, and I do have it, that at least in some cases these companies will simply make whatever behavioral or product changes universal if only because it is easier to do that. There are lots of examples to look to for prior art, if you will, the “right to be forgotten” and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements in the EU, or even Apple’s “decision” to switch to USB-C on the iPhone, in which the firm was initially rumored to only make that change in the EU but stick with Lightning elsewhere.

That may sound far-fetched, but there are often differences between U.S. iPhones and those sold elsewhere: the iPhone 14 line is eSIM only, but only in the U.S., for example. Anyway, they are making USB-C universal at least, so that particular EU ruling will impact us all in a positive way. Apple will tout it as them doing something amazing for customers, but it was just easier and more cost-effective, I bet.

Over time, I hope that this sudden and long-overdue scrutiny of Big Tech will benefit everyone. It may take a while, but I can see it happening.

Prices go up, they are never coming down

MichaelMDiv asks:

Do you think we will see a significant price increase with the Pixel 8? I want to get one, but I am skittish about paying a premium, given their quality issues (i.e. overheating and fingerprint scanner).

There are rumors that the Pixel 8 lineup will be more expensive than their predecessors, and, not unrelated, that whatever the big iPhone Pro is called this year, will be much more expensive (like $200 more per unit, yikes). This is the world today, where it seems like everything is getting more expensive in ways that feel artificial to me. (I don’t want to go off on this too much here, but I really do believe that the pandemic-era windfall that Big Tech and other companies experienced artificially increased corporate expectations to the point where the post-pandemic lull felt, to them, unsustainable. This resulted in layoffs and price increases, both of which most of these companies could have easily avoided, with an understandable level-setting of the financials going forward. But that’s not how Wall Street works, so here we are.)

No one has to agree with any of that, of course, but whatever the reason, the price hikes are real. And looking specifically at the Pixel, we see that the previous two generations—the Pixel 6 and 7 families—were notable for a few reasons, including the introduction of Tensor (good on some levels, but triggering heat, battery life, and slow charging issues), a more premium design, and the return of something I feel all underdogs much achieve if the goal is unit growth, lower prices than their dominant competition (in this case, Apple and Samsung). And there is a good chance that the Pixel 8 series will not really come through across the board, with a minor third-generation Tensor that doesn’t solve the issues, the same basic design as before (which is fine/understandable), and … wah, wah, waaaaah … higher prices.

But the goal here should be to still undercut the competition. Samsung raised the prices on its flagship smartphones this past year and relies more and more on the even more premium folding products, and Apple will do so next week. And so the bar is lowered (well, raised, you understand what I mean) on what it means to be less expensive. And we have some Pixel-specific examples of this, too, in the Pixel 7a and Pixel Fold.

The Pixel 7a, a traditional, handset, came in at $50 more than its predecessor, the Pixel 6a. So it is reasonable to expect price increases of $100 per model in the Pixel 8 series. But my worry is that the increase will be more, because … that’s what’s happening this year.

But wait. The Pixel Fold did not undercut the competition despite all the obvious downsides to a) buying a Pixel and b) buying a first-generation device of this complexity: it starts at $1799, the same price as the more mature Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4. What if the Pixel 8 series price hike is worse than expected?

I don’t know. But, yeah, I do expect the prices to go up. I’m bracing for the worst and hoping for the best.

Visual Studio Code vs. enshittification

andrew b. asks:

Any chance of getting a review of Arca Noae’s ArcaOS, the “modern” OS/2 Warp distribution?

I was not even aware of this. 🙂

But in looking it up … no, probably not. However, my Tech Nostalgia series will almost certainly touch on this era and OS/2 in particular. So I could see looking at it then.

Now a serious question: How long will it take Microsoft to kill VS Code’s reputation with feature bloat and ads?

I don’t see that happening, and I had never really considered this. Though in thinking about it now, I assume you’re thinking of the Chromium/Chrome example and drawing a reasonable conclusion. But no, Microsoft has achieved something with Visual Studio Code that is special on so many levels. It’s a product of the “new” more open Microsoft, a living implementation of that Satya Nadella quip about “meeting the customer where they are.” And it’s the first Microsoft product to be widely embraced and loved by the open source (even anti-Microsoft) crowd.

But it’s more than that.

To me, Visual Studio Code is also the embodiment of how desktop apps should be built today. Open, literally. Cross-platform. Based on web technologies. Updated with the explicit partnership of its enthusiastic user base. Updated on a non-arbitrary, predictable (and not too frequent) schedule. And componentized, where the base product delivers a specific (even minimalist) level of functionality, and then you, the user, can add in the extensions that are specific to your needs and, as crucially, restore the app to that exact state on any machine in the world, and even on the web, by signing in with a (GitHub or Microsoft) account.

This is huge.

And it’s how Edge should be built. It’s how Teams should be built. It’s how everything new on desktop should be built. And it’s so right, so perfect, that, no, I don’t believe Microsoft can or will screw it up. And if they try, others will simply build their own versions, just as developers created new web browsers based on Chromium that strip out all the Google terribleness. (Ironically, Google is doing just that with Project IDX, though not because Microsoft did anything wrong.)

The future of podcasting

helix2301 asks:

You said recently you think the future of twit is subscription-based. Thurrott.com was way a head on this 😉 Do you think its harder for podcast network like twit to get advertisers vs a website? Just wondering your thoughts I know a lot of sites have started subscription services twit was I think a little late out of the gate with this.

I don’t have much of a handle on the business side of podcasting, though it’s been clear over the years when things were going well or not, and we’re definitely in the biggest downslide I’ve seen since I started in 2006. (Sometime this month will be my 17th anniversary from the start of Windows Weekly.) But I don’t understand why TWiT wasn’t acquired during the podcast mania of the past year or two. And I’m even more unclear on why it isn’t even more viable in the current climate thanks to its quality and independence. And I watched as idiots like Joe Rogan became unfairly rich beyond any sense with a weird feeling of dread because it was clear, even from the outside, that that model (basically, spending money on content like you’re Netflix) just wasn’t sustainable. And it isn’t.

So I don’t know. I’ve always vaguely liked the idea of the free (with ads)/paid split, and I think it can make sense. There is another side to that when you’re on the hook for what I call premium content, and I’ll discuss that and related topics in a coming article in that Behind Thurrott.com series. And there are ways to get it wrong, like when newspapers charge subscribers and then still sell ads. But I feel like TWiT’s model is solid, in that it’s inexpensive and has a lot of value. And I hope it works out, obviously. But feel that it should, too.

Was TWiT late to subscriptions? Maybe. But there are reasons for everything, and the company had been doing great for a long time with an established model. It at least did it right, and it has adapted over time.

Windows on Arm?

jrzoomer asks:

Paul I noticed you haven’t written about Windows on ARM in a while. Is Windows on ARM dead? What is the state of Windows on Arm today?

It’s not dead, but it is in a holding pattern mostly caused by the continued performance issues of Qualcomm’s PC chipsets. There are a couple of things to look forward to short-term: Qualcomm should announce its next-gen, Nuvia-based chipsets before the end of the year (November or December, barring some Microsoft need to have it happen sooner), and then the first PCs based on these chipsets should appear in early 2023. If they can achieve what we all need—actual parity with the performance of Intel/AMD designs—then WOA becomes very, very interesting indeed.

But there is a related story that I think speaks to Microsoft’s view of WOA and the future that came up on this morning’s First Ring Daily. And this is a story I saw in a headline sense but haven’t yet looked into let alone written about yet (but will): Microsoft is going to stop servicing third-party printer drivers via Windows Update in Windows.

Two things here. Why just printer drivers? And what does this have to do with WOA?

On the first question, Microsoft is offering enhanced support for something called Mopria-compliant printer devices (network or USB) via its class drivers, and this means that hardware makers no longer need to “provide their own installers, drivers, utilities, and so on.” So printers will just work out of the box.

To the second, that benefits WOA greatly because drivers are the only remaining compatibility block on that platform, and one that will never be fixed. WOA PCs only support class drivers because virtually no hardware makers explicitly support that platform (so they ship x86 drivers and utilities only). In the past, this meant a substandard print experience on WOA, but going forward, that is no longer an issue. If the printer supports some specific features, they will work in WOA thanks to this new generation of class drivers.

Is this a big deal and/or am I misreading this? Like I said, I’m just finding out about this. But we’ll see. (I will spend time on this today or tomorrow.)

And as for WOA, same thing. We’ll see. But assuming Qualcomm finally figured it out—or, barring that, Microsoft opening up WOA to more chipset makers—I do think WOA has a future. And could even become the future of the PC.

Music

wmurd118 asks:

Under the topic What You Use, what music player app do you prefer for your iPhone when using that device?

I use YouTube Music regardless of device, but it’s particularly good on the iPhone because AirPlay 2 lets me control my Sonos gear directly from that app. On Android, I have to use the Sonos app, which I don’t like as much for a variety of reasons. AirPlay 2 is great on a lot of levels, but its broad compatibility is a big part of making the iPhone particularly good for music and videos.

Coincidental to this, I’ve been going through my local music collection (which is really my NAS-based collection) and will write about that as part of that Digital Decluttering series, which will soon expand to music, videos, and a bunch of other topics. And I mention that because in cleaning up that collection—as with my documents and photos, I had a curiously large collection of “loose” music files dumped from various services—I will be uploading it to iTunes Match, which makes Apple Music an interesting option on iPhone even if I don’t pay for a subscription music service. I’m probably not going that route, but I will at least look at it. (I can also upload my music collection to YouTube Music, FWIW.)

Reading

j5 asks:

What are you reading right now and what have you recently read, books and articles.

I read a lot, every single day, and in addition to the news I read in the morning (across The New York Times, The Washington Post, (occasionally) the Wall Street Journal, my Google News feed (for Tech), and my Google Discovery feed, I also read through Pocket, Medium, and the Kindle app. Pocket is a good direct source for interesting things to read, but you can save any article to it via a browser extension on desktop or the app on mobile, and I do that regularly.

Most recently, I’ve read Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ’80s Hard Rock Explosion (incredible if you’re a music fan and experienced the 1980s), Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (I’m only partway through this now), and The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating. And I just started Holly, the latest Stephen King book. Also, a bunch of things related to the Tech Nostalgia series, like The Game Console 2.0: A Photographic History from Atari to Xbox, Creating Q*bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games, Adventure: The Atari 2600 at the Dawn of Console Gaming, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom: And More True Gaming Stories (which I do not recommend), Commodore: A Company on the Edge, and Doom Guy: Life in First Person, which I reviewed.

I’m often inspired by podcasts, streaming TV series, or whatever, to learn more, and we just finished watching The White House Plumbers on Max before canceling that service. I highly recommend this show, it’s incredible, and it made me want to learn more. And I bought but have not yet read, The White House Plumbers: The Seven Weeks That Led to Watergate and Doomed Nixon’s Presidency and Dorothy, “An Amoral and Dangerous Woman”: The Murder of E. Howard Hunt’s Wife Watergate’s Darkest Secret.

I’m reading The Mater Switch – Tim Wu. I started it a long time ago but saw it on my shelf and remembered how interesting it was. Highly recommend for anyone that’s into tech/pop culture. It’s amazing how right/applicable everything he brings up in the book is to right now with tech and news.

I’m also re-reading Alexander Hamilton, American by Richard Brookhiser. I’ve read other Hamilton books. But it’s been a while since I read some American history from that era. But a co-worker asked me if I saw the Hamilton play. I could only get through the first few minutes of it because that wasn’t how I imagined Hamilton to be like lol. I imagined a tough short mean not signing and dancing man lol. Anyways the book is pretty good. An easy read. Too many bios can be snoozers. This one isn’t.

And one of my friends sent me this Atlantic article about American consumers shopping at brick and mortar stores and online. It was really interesting.

Nice, thanks for all this! I added that article to Pocket.

Paul + Microsoft

jchampeau asks:

If Microsoft hired you for a one-year contract and paid you $10 million to be the Chief Customer Experience Officer, and said you could make whatever changes you thought were necessary throughout the organization to make Microsoft’s products and services better for users and customers, what changes would you make?

You know, I’m often asked how I would run (or “fix”) Microsoft, but I realized very quickly, and literally during my first trip to Redmond in 1996, that I could never work there. And that’s even more true now than ever. Though now I finally have some idea of what it’s like to run a very small company. And this just isn’t my area.

But my ideas for Microsoft would mostly be about the consumer- and client-side products and services that, frankly, Microsoft is not very good at and likely never will be. Or, more to the point, wouldn’t work regardless. I always think back to Windows Phone 7 and these ideas about centering it all on the user, and making it about tasks (photos, music) rather than about specific apps, and of how I thought this made perfect sense and was “better” than existing systems, and then the harsh reality that this system was never going to work because powerful brands don’t want that, only users would ever want that. And that Windows Phone 7 was, in its day, an anti-enshittification move, and a real-world example of what happens when you try to do the right thing and run into dominant companies and platforms that won’t just ignore it but will fight it and kill it.

And so rather than foist some list of similar losing ideas on you all, I will circle back. And if I were really being pragmatic here, I would tell Microsoft to phase out or spin off its consumer offerings and just accept the fact that its future is in infrastructure, in being a faceless backend, and that this future is lucrative. And that its strengths in building platforms should never again be tied to specific hardware platforms and should only be cloud-based or, when a client UI is needed, web-based or otherwise cross-platform. (As with Teams and Visual Studio Code.) I’m not sure how far $10 million would go in this scenario, but I feel almost any of us could save this company billions by simply scaling back in the right places.

Stop nudging me

andrew b. asks:

Under “Notifications and Actions” in Settings (windows 10), I have “tips, tricks, and suggestions” unchecked. So, why is my work PC spamming me with ads for trade in deals on surface and Xbox controllers?

Oh, it’s because Microsoft doesn’t respect your privacy and that everything in Windows 11 related to this is what I call “privacy theater.” 🙂

More specifically, in the Windows 11 Field Guide, which is available in web form to Premium members, there are two chapters related, in part, to this topic, Windows 11 Personalization First Steps and Customize Your Privacy Settings (which needs to be updated, come to think of it). And in the former, there is a section called Eliminate “suggestions”.

Open Settings, navigate to System > Notifications, and then scroll down to the Additional settings section. Here, you will see three options to consider disabling: “Show the Windows welcome experience after updates and when signed in to show what’s new and suggested,” “Suggest ways to get the most out of Windows and finish setting up this device,” and “Get tips and suggestions as you when using Windows.”

You need to at least consider hit all three. Also, you can tell the pop-up notification toast to stop that type of notification if you see it as it happens. And then in Settings, you can toggle off “Show me suggested content in the Settings app” and “Tailored experiences.” That’s in the second of those chapters.

It’d be nice if these settings synced. But then that would be user-friendly.