Ask Paul: October 6 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another incredible set of reader questions to kick off the weekend a bit early. So settle in, this is a long one.

Belief isn’t enough

JustMe asks:

These days between smartphones and computers, consumers give up a TON of information – willingly or not. Tech in general is everywhere and constantly wanting access to your data. This looks to be getting even worse with the current AI push. My question: will we ever get to a point where the consumer (at least in the US) will say enough is enough when it comes to data protection along the same lines as Europe’s GDPR? Even California’s laws dont have the teeth Europe’s do.

This topic disturbs me greatly because I agree that the U.S., in particular, is not just behind on this issue but is dangerously stupid, and that the broader problem is that you can’t convince the general public of the issue.

I will use a simple example: I advocate the use of Brave for all the right privacy and security reasons (and I understand that most will not go that route, even in the technical circles we’re in here, and so I then I advise that if you’re going to stick with a browser that’s designed to track you, like Chrome or Edge, then at least install the right extensions to protect yourself.) But the pushback I get, even from technical people, is sometimes astonishing. After I railed against Edge one time on Twitter recently, a guy who also writes in the technology space, retorted that he sticks with Edge because it offers a History button in its toolbar and Brave does not. So that was his choice: The convenience of a stupid feature (just type CTRL + H for f’s sake) outweighs his personal privacy and security. And that’s a smart/educated person.

We have a lot of problems in the U.S. but if I can overgeneralize, they mostly come down to people behaving against their best interests, and I think it’s tied to the whole American individualism thing, that no one can tell us what to do, we can’t stand people who think they’re smarter than us and know better, and we’re so confident in our non-existent knowledge or skills that we just blunder through life. And there is no end to this. You can explain calmly and with great evidence why a conspiracy theory is complete nonsense, but you will only be met with, “I just know it’s true” or “I just believe it” or similar, and there is no getting past that. That’s the conversation stopper because the other side is not listening.

And that’s for important things like vaccines or justifying domestic terrorism. When you get to something like Google and all of the wonderful functionality they give us for free—the answer to any question, instantly, the ability to get to where you’re driving as quickly and efficiently as possible, etc.—no one is even paying attention anymore. They are happy to give up some personal information to have those features. Happy to not pay for it (directly). And view any step back (by paying now or via reduced functionality) as a step backward. What price is your soul?

When we think about why Europe is so different from the U.S. in this regard, it really does come down to that different worldview, which I view as the battle between individualism and the greater good. And California, as some ultra-liberal (for lack of a better term) place, is in some middle ground, societally, for whatever reason. The good news for the rest of the country is that California is big enough economically to be its own country, and so the policies it adopts are often first in the country and often then trickle down to much of the country or in some cases nationally. So that’s where a lot of this starts here.

To your point: Will we ever get there? I hope so. I do think so, at least some spectrum that we get closer to that. (And there are people who will argue that Europe has swung too far in the opposite direction, with too much regulation, and maybe even an anti-American bias. I think those views are both patently wrong: We are behind on regulating Big Tech, period. Even in Europe. But at least they’re doing something material now. Finally.)

But that’s the debate. The intractability of either side of it is the problem. Finding consensus is hard. It’s doubly hard when one side isn’t interested in facts or reality.

AI and branding

OldITPro2000 asks:

I appreciate that Microsoft has branded their LLM AI efforts around Chat and Copilot, but there are so many products now with this branding that I’m no longer clear on what does what, what will incur an extra cost, etc. Unless I’m mistaken, by the end of the year we’ll have:

• Bing Chat
• Bing Chat Enterprise
• Microsoft 365 Chat
• Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Copilot for Teams/Outlook/Word/Excel/etc.
• Microsoft Copilot
• Copilot in Windows
• GitHub Copilot
• GitHub Copilot Chat

I searched around for a concise piece of Microsoft documentation that summarizes all of these but I couldn’t find one. If you ask Bing Chat what the difference is between Bing Chat and Microsoft Copilot, it says that Microsoft Copilot is tied in with Office 365 and Microsoft Graph. Okay, but I thought that was Microsoft 365 Copilot?

You left out a lot of copilots, actually. 🙂 And you separated a few that are one thing (Microsoft 365 Copilot and the individual copilot capabilities in the various apps). But that speaks to how confusing this all is, it’s not your fault.

A couple of thoughts.

Generally speaking, Microsoft is making a sweeping strategy shift around AI this year, and like past strategy shifts—the Internet tidal wave in late 1995, .NET in 2001, cloud computing starting with Azure, etc.—the speed at which this is happening, which is driven by a combination of fear of aggression, will lead to mistakes. Branding is among the smallest of those mistakes perhaps—remember that every Microsoft product was going to have “.NET” appending to the end, as in Windows.NET, Office.NET, and so on—but then again, it’s the public-facing bit so it’s important to get this right. But speed leads to mistakes.

I gave (and still give) Microsoft credit for mostly stepping back from the naming confusion on its consumer-facing AI services, as announced at the special event last month. And we should know that this change wasn’t just about branding, it’s important to developers, who will have a single target (Microsoft Copilot) for their foundational AI services that will apply to multiple Microsoft products across Bing/Edge, Windows, and Microsoft 365. That was the right decision, and it was made at the right time: Doing this after these things had shipped would be problematic.

Here’s the confusion. Microsoft is adding AI capabilities across its ecosystem. These capabilities will be delivered in three different ways over time. When they are added side-by-side with pre-existing apps or features, these capabilities will be described and branded as copilots. And what Microsoft is doing, and just announced/clarified, is that the set of copilot capabilities that is common across the ecosystem, what we might call foundational capabilities, will be made part of what is now called the Microsoft Copilot. You will get these features in Bing/Edge, Windows, and Microsoft 365.

But each could/will expand beyond them, and how these products and services do will be context-dependent. For example, Windows will gain AI capabilities that are related to configuration and toggling features that are specific to Windows. Microsoft 365, as the richest and most diverse of these environments, will get many more AI features, and many will be app-specific: There are features that will benefit Excel, say, that do not apply to Word or PowerPoint. (Let alone Windows or Bing.)

Microsoft Copilot capabilities are free. They are expensive to Microsoft, yes, so it will still try to monetize them. In Bing/Edge and apparently Windows, that will mean ads. In Microsoft 365, you will only get the AI capabilities via a paid subscription add-on (for commercial, we’ll see how they handle the consumer stuff later).

It’s also not clear how these all tie together, if at all. For example, let’s say an enterprise user pays $30/month for 365 Copilot on release in November and then opens Edge where they are signed in with that 365 account. Does Bing Chat Enterprise tie into 365 Copilot automatically? What about Copilot in Windows? Can you ask it to do something with corporate data in Office 365 or do you have to go to the 365 Copilot interface to do that?

These are very specific scenarios, but that’s how this works. And in some cases, I have to guess based on what I know (which is still limited, and I have no experience yet with some of this) and what Microsoft has said. But to your point, let’s say you are a Microsoft 365 commercial subscriber and you/your work pays for the $30 per month Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on. What do you get?

• You get all the free stuff, of course, wherever it’s free: Bing/Edge, Windows, etc. (Mobile apps and so on.)
• You get all the normal perks of Microsoft 365.
• You get the Microsoft 365 Copilot features across that entire ecosystem, in each app and so on.
• If you are in the right Microsoft 365 SKU (E3, E5, Business Standard, Business Premium), you get Bing Enterprise Chat and the Microsoft Edge for Business sidebar.
• You get Microsoft 365 Chat.

And this will evolve and shift. I’ve probably left some things out. Etc. And Microsoft hasn’t announced bits of it yet. And we left out all the other copilots in the commercial space, and there are many. Plus how your organization may configure things will change what you see, etc. It’s a mess, because so much is happening.

I’m mostly curious how this evolves in the consumer space. There will be free, ad-supported capabilities in the cloud/web, but what will Microsoft 365 Copilot consumer look like? We don’t know yet.

Surface PCs

louiem3 asks:

Hey Paul, will you be testing or writing about any of the new Surface hardware released?

I would if they offered it. But they have not.

Two related points.

• I used to review all of their hardware, and I think I did a great job with that. Panos Panay was not fond of my criticisms of the business, however, so he personally nixed that. And now that he’s gone, maybe that will change.
• Surface is not particularly relevant in the wider world, and so the impact of this on me personally isn’t all that great, though I know this audience would appreciate these write-ups. But in the scheme of things, my time is better spent reviewing PCs and other devices that people will
• The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is sort of interesting to me personally, but I don’t think convertible PCs make sense for most people. And the other new Surface PCs are of no interest to me personally at all.

Close your eyes, it’s the 80s

andrew b. asks:

Pick any car from the 80s, any album from the 80s to listen to while driving said car, and a road/route you’d want to drive.

I have so many ideas for each of those that this is hard. But … given my life experiences and what was available at the time, I would go with a white 1987 Porsche 924S with the sunroof open, Def Leppard’s Hysteria, and the drive from Boston to Stowe, Vermont.

That said, I was more of a mix tape guy (now a playlist guy). But Hysteria is pretty close to being perfect from beginning to end. We don’t get albums that good anymore.

Alternate histories

MartinusV2 asks:

Do you think Microsoft could had a similar deal as Apple did for the search engine default? Would had not be better than pumping so much money into Bing? And Use Chrome as the default browser instead of Edge since they can propose code to the Chromium project?

I do think that Microsoft and Apple could have reached a deal on search engines, maybe, but the current court case shows us that it was never serious in part because Google paid Apple so much and in part because Bing needed so much work. Imagine Apple making that shift, even now, and publicizing how, yes, users will have a worse experience for a few years, but that your privacy will be protected. And then think about what I wrote to the first question, realize that 90+ percent of users would just switch to Google anyway, and know that this all played a role in Apple’s thinking.

Not sure what you mean on the Chrome/Chromium side. But even Chrome does offer Bing as a search engine choice today. Is there any major Chromium browser that defaults to Bing? Or any Chromium browser that has over 10 percent usage share besides Chrome? No, right? I don’t think so.

For a consumer as myself, it’s starting to be harder and harder to stay with Microsoft. I am feeling that my Windows is getting more of a closed ecosystem like Apple. Is Linux being the last open OS ecosystem now?

So this ties directly into this broader topic I’ve been struggling to define lately (and comes up again below). Right now I’m thinking about it as an “ecosystem” discussion and I believe that there’s a suddenly urgent need to address these issues because of enshittification across the personal technology market. (Which includes the ever-escalating price of subscription services.) And it is so broad. So broad, that I’ve started taking notes, among them not just article ideas but themes that need to be addressed throughout. And among those themes, I’ve noted:

• Free vs paid
• Open vs. proprietary
• Owning vs. subscribing

And many others. I will get to a more formal write-up soon, I hope. But it’s big. And just something like “open vs. proprietary” is a huge discussion. It’s sort of like the CISC vs. RISC architecture debates of the 1990s: It makes sense to debate this on one level, but it’s also fair to say that the lines have been blurred, and so the debate has to shift somewhat too. So Apple and Microsoft were once purely proprietary, then Apple seemed to embrace some openness when it was convenient but is not almost purely proprietary, while Microsoft is a mix of both. So you have to get more granular. And Windows, like macOS, is mostly (purely) proprietary. Does that even matter? Can you use open solutions on Windows exclusively and does that matter? It’s a whole can of worms.

(And on mobile, neither is open, though Android is more open. Is it open enough? Do we need a pure Linux for mobile? Etc. It never ends.)

In the end, this needs to be about being pragmatic. Doing the right thing for you. And compromising where it makes sense. Different people will arrive at different conclusions. Huge topic.

Because if it wasn’t for games I like to play on my PC, I could do the Linux way and have a VM for that one Windows application I want to keep.

Right.

And many others will just use Windows. Many others will choose the Mac and the warm embrace of Apple’s broader ecosystem. Some will choose Chromebook because they’re in the Google/Android space. Each of these decisions has merit. Each has pros and cons. Some will make more sense for some and some for others. We can mix and match (also on my list of themes) as it makes sense.

And … I just don’t even know where to start on this, which is why I’m taking notes. I don’t know where it’s going to go let alone where it will end. Or if it ever ends.

I hope to have more on this soon.

Windows 365 for consumers

SherlockHolmes asks:

I heard on a few german news site this past week that Microsoft plans to offer Microsoft 365 cloud PCs to consumers as well. Do you have any information on that? I would pay happily for that when that means that all the ads and restrictions will go away.

I don’t know anything about this, but I have heard the same rumor.

When Microsoft first announced Windows 365, I’m sure many of us wondered what a consumer version of this might look like. And I’m still struggling to understand how this could work. For starters, Windows 365 is incredibly expensive, and so a consumer version would have to be cheaper. Worse, it would almost have to be marketed as a way to run Windows (Windows apps, really) on non-Windows devices like Macs, Chromebooks, iPads, and perhaps even phones. And those are not Microsoft devices, so why wouldn’t Microsoft just make Windows 11 as good as it can be instead? It’s possible that an inexpensive Windows 365 offering would simply accelerate the move away from PCs. It would be dumb for Microsoft to do that.

But I don’t see Windows 365 for consumers offering anything but the standard Windows 11 experience, which includes ads, crapware, and tracking. The one possibility here that could make sense, however, is remote app access (vs. remote OS access): If users could pay for a subscription and then remotely run a Windows native app (say, Photoshop) on another platform alongside whatever apps they have there (especially when it’s an app not available there, or not as good there), without dealing with Windows, that would be interesting. And would further accelerate the move away from PCs. Which may not be smart on Microsoft’s part.

Round and round we go. I just don’t know.

Cyberpunk

j5 asks:

Hey Paul, we know you’re a big 80’s horror movie and book fan. But what about cyberpunk, do you enjoy this genre? I ask because it has roots back in the 80’s with books and films. But it also connects with other sub-cultures like tech and nerd culture. You’ve brought up many tech documentaries on YouTube. Have you seen this channel’s 3 part documentary on cyberpunk? I think it’s really great. The first 2 are the best.

I’ve not, thanks. Will check these out.

And if so can you recommend any cyberpunk books? Do you have any favorites?

I’ve read and recommend what I assume are still the two main classics of this genre, Neuromancer by William Gibson and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and the latter book kicked off a decade-plus of me reading Stephenson and getting ever more frustrated by the length and complexity of his books and then just giving up. (That said, Cryptonomicon is also excellent.) I am confused that Snow Crash has never been made into a movie.

Also, I know those are obvious choices, so I’m not helping anyone there.

As for movies, I suspect I am falling into a similar Captain Obvious mode. I have always been fascinated by Blade Runner, which I didn’t understand at the time of its release and grew to love, especially as it was remixed/updated over the years and I got older. (I’ve since rewatched this dozens of times.) And God help me, I enjoyed the recent sequel too. But many movies that are considered cyberpunk now are just science fiction. And some sci-fi books that were made into movies became more cyberpunk in those adaptations, Ready Player One being a great example. (Terrific book, not necessarily cyberpunk.) I mean, sci-fi is all about dystopia when you think about it. The lines are blurry. Is Tron cyberpunk? Or just sci-fi/fantasy? Star Wars?

Anyway. Johnny Mnemonic, Ghost in the Shell, and Videodrome are maybe in that vein. Maybe The Matrix? (Does popularity impact its cyberpunk credentials?) 12 Monkeys is a favorite (and I liked the short-lived TV show too.) This is a tough one. Maybe because what was once considered cyberpunk has gone mainstream and lost its soul. Like punk did with music. (Compare 90’s Green Day to the Ramones and the Pajama Slave Dancers.)

That goes for books, too. Was Asimov’s Foundation series really cyberpunk? It kind of qualifies. Because most sci-fi does now.

I wonder if there are lists of “pure” cyberpunk content now. There should be.

Travel stuff

IanYates82 asks:

Do you think you’ll get back to home swaps, or at least European travelling, once the renting situation & move in PA settles down, and you’ve explored enough of Mexico?  Or are you on to the next phase and have “finished” Europe?

I don’t know.

My wife and I discuss this, of course. And as each change comes—kids move out, selling the house, cats to deal with—we sort of reevaluate where we are and what we want to do. We have this apartment in Mexico City, which is small but could be interesting as a home swap destination for others. So it’s possible. But for now, no, we won’t be doing any home swaps in Europe. That said, we’re also not done with Europe. We watched Emily in Paris and Lupin on Netflix largely because it’s an excuse to see Paris (and there is a new season of the latter), and we will go back. My wife’s favorite city is Barcelona. We want to revisit Rome and Berlin, and we love Ireland. We’re not done. But we are in a holding pattern right now because of life.

We also want to see more of Mexico. This year, we’ve focused on keeping the costs down because of taking this site over and all the expenses related to that, but we have a list of places in Mexico to see. And then more of Central America. And South America. We’ve never been to Asia. There’s so much out there, so little time, and so little money. We have to prioritize.

But yeah. Europe. We love it. We’ll be back. No specific plans yet.

I drove around the UK and found it not too dissimilar from Australia … So I thought Paris might be similar.  It was, instead, quite a shock…  Traffic seemed to just go wherever it pleases.  Everyone is impatient and leaning on the horn.  Right turns & left turns happen from odd lanes, with other cars just fitting through gaps in traffic I’d think a motorcycle couldn’t use.  I took a video from the top of the Arc de Triomphe last night of the roundabout there and somehow, no one had an accident, but it was like watching ants scurry about after you’ve messed up their trails.

In short – did you ever drive in Paris and if so, did you find it to be as wild as I perceived it?

Yes, I have. Also in London, throughout the UK, and all over Ireland, multiple times, and all over Europe actually. Spain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, etc.

Oddly, driving in Ireland and the UK wasn’t as bad as expected, despite it being on the “wrong” side of the road to me: We always rent stick shifts, and that being on the opposite side of the road forced me to pay attention, and so shifting into that mode somehow worked for me.

And yes, driving in Paris is exactly the disaster you describe, and I’ve done the Arc de Triomphe “etoile” rotary (as we call it, but, yes, a roundabout) thing and will never, ever do that again. But Paris is still better than Mexico City: I will never under any circumstance drive there again after my one harrowing experience two years ago.

Just as a general bit of advice, you’re always better off not driving in big cities, no matter what your life experiences are. I grew up driving into Boston and have often felt that my time on the Jamaica Way there trained me to handle the worst that any place could throw at me. But there are bigger cities with bigger problems, and all big cities are disasters for those in cars. It’s best to leave that to the experts (taxis, Ubers) or use public transportation.

Console compulsions

madthinus asks:

With the Console market in the state that it is, $350 for the Series S and $399 for the PS5 Digital for the same storage and $499 for the X and PS5. Considering the leaked refresh, is that the correct move or is X at a lower price point better? The savings on SSD and the Bluray drive should be good for $50. $299 for the S sounds great but the size of true next gen games makes that poor value considering. Thoughts.

This is like anything else in life, really: We’re all different, we all have different needs/wants, different price points that make sense, etc. All I can say is that I was an Xbox-only gamer from 2005 until this year, and I never once thought that the Xbox Series S didn’t meet my needs. The only issue there, of course, is storage, but that’s solvable with the new SKU and more storage.

But that might not meet the needs of others. And it may one day not meet my needs: I haven’t turned on my Series S since early March over 7 months ago, but a new Call of Duty is coming with nothing but the classic multiplayer maps I love so much, and that might bring me back into the fold. What if this is the point where the Series X really pulls ahead graphically? Will I miss out?

I guess the choice here is about future-proofing. I wouldn’t make a change now, personally, but given the leaked Series X Gen 2 console, I could see that being the logical upgrade point. And I could see someone being lured by the PS5, though I think the backward compatibility library benefits on Xbox make that a tough switch for many too.

This is very much tied to that broader ecosystem/enshittification thing. Literally, as video games is one of the many items on my list. It’s a debate to be had, but there are no clear winners. Just a set of things to consider and then a choice to be made. And we’ll all make different choices.

For me, Xbox is the ecosystem, and I don’t see that changing. Where I play could change, has arguably changed already, if temporarily. But for a console, I would stick with what I have now, a Series S, and then think about that new X when it arrives.

DuguaySarah84 asks:

I am looking forward to your thoughts on how invasive tech has become. I listened to Windows Weekly this morning while at work and you had a plea for the community to start thinking about tech “They pushed us so far in a direction, and I think there will be pushback” [paraphrasing] “I think we need to start thinking about this.” 100%.

That was me trying (and in some ways failing) to describe this ecosystem/enshittification thing. Here’s the inspiration for this. It’s not hard to understand enshittification, nor is it hard to see it everywhere you look once you’re aware of it. But there are these triggering events that build up over time. And for me, I feel like I’ve hit some weird threshold. The sheer number of subscription services I pay for and how each hasn’t just gotten more expensive but a lot more expensive, and without any commensurate improvements that benefit me. The products and services that I use and rely on most for productivity getting worse and worse until they suddenly appear to be working against me and not for me. And I hit this wall. What am I doing? Why do I put up with this? Is there a better way?

And … I am looking at this. As noted, it’s a huge topic. A rabbit hole, really. It’s what happened to me with the digital decluttering stuff, where I saw a big success and then wanted to keep going and finally hit a wall. Because you realize to your horror that this whole world is literally arrayed against you to make it hard or impossible to switch services, improve your situation, or get exactly what you want. It is a tragedy in the making. And it just keeps getting worse.

So. I will be writing about this formally soon. As noted above, I’ve been taking notes and trying to turn this into something cohesive that will make sense to people and have actionable advice. But it’s big. Really big. And it could see it consuming me in the sense that this becomes my overall focus. And I need to be careful about that.

Soon. I promise.

New NAS?

MichaelMDiv asks:

I have really enjoyed your decluttering articles and I am starting to take some of the same steps you did.

Fantastic. It’s hard work, and while it’s not worth it to some, I found it very rewarding.

I have a WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra but I am worried that Western Digital will end support for it soon (like the EX2 you had) and/or Microsoft will cut off TLS 1.0/1.1 which it uses for network access. Do you have any info on Microsoft’s plans with TLS? Should I just upgrade to a Synology or something similar?

First, my general advice is simple: Keep using what you have. Use it for as long as you can. And spend a bit of time now researching the next steps. A Synology NAS seems to be the consensus on that, and it’s the direction I’ll be heading soon.

But with regards to Microsoft and TLS support, yes: Microsoft will disable TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 in Windows soon. The timing isn’t completely clear, but it looks like these protocols have been disabled in Windows Insider builds (not clear which channels) so it could be within the next year or so. On the other hand, Microsoft also says that users can re-enable TLS 1.0 or TLS 1.1 if they need to maintain compatibility. How long will it work? It’s impossible to say. Microsoft says only that this is a temporary solution and that “support for these legacy TLS versions may be removed completely in the future.”

I assume you’ve researched whether your WD NAS can be upgraded to support a more modern protocol, but if my experience is any guide, I bet you will see a similar situation in which you will need to disable external (Internet) connections first and then the device just goes out of support. You can still use it on the home network, as I do with mine. And then TLS 1.0/1.1 support will finally end in Windows for good, probably a few years down the road. Point being, you do have time. It’s just not clear how much.

My guess is you have a few years. And that you won’t wait that long. But this is the right time to research what’s next.

Pixel 8 Pro vs. iPhone 15 Pro Max

LordMartarius asks:

Once you receive your Pixel 8 Pro, I can’t wait for your review and also one of the Pixel Watch 2. I also hope you do a comparison between the iPhone 15 and the Pixel 8.

I will, thanks. I will have a choice to make about which phone to move forward with in a day-to-day sense, so that will definitely be its own write-up. In addition to separate Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2 (and iPhone 15 Pro Max) reviews.

Why YouTube Music?

LordMartarius asks:

I have a question that I have been meaning to ask you: I am curious why you chose YouTube Music over Spotify or other music streaming services? 

I sometimes frame the decisions we make as a “matrix of choices” because it’s increasingly rare that a single aspect of any product or service is the sole reason we choose it. Everything has pros and cons and so you compare the full list of each, weigh certain things more heavily, and then choose accordingly. And it’s rare for that choice to be “perfect”: We all use things for good reasons but don’t like certain things about them.

For YouTube Music in particular, I have/had some baseline features I needed. These include some common features like compatibility with all the devices I use, compatibility with Sonos (which we use for whole-house audio), and downloads for offline use, but also some very specific things. Key among them is the ability to integrate my own music into the service so I can access songs that are not in the service. And YouTube Music is one of the only choices left that let me do that easily. (The other is Apple Music with iTunes Match. Spotify sort of allows this but it’s hard.)

But YouTube Music also offers two niceties that I was not looking for per se but really put it over the top for me. First, I get YouTube Premium as part of my subscription, and that means I can watch YouTube without ads, which is huge. (And I watch a lot of YouTube.) It also lets me add YouTube videos to my YouTube Music playlists; this is also huge because YouTube has an incredible range of unique music content, including live performance videos, that are not available anywhere else. And I use that a lot.

YouTube Music isn’t perfect. I see YouTube (video) playlists in YouTube Music, which is just clutter, and I wish I could disable that. And it has nothing in the way of high-resolution/bitrate or immersive audio as do some other services. But the pros outweigh the cons … for me. For others with different wants and needs, maybe not.

Has any other daily use software you have change since your last What I Use?

Looking back at my more recent What I Use posts, not too much. I haven’t been using my Xbox this year, as noted above. I’ve switched around some AV gear here and there mostly for testing purposes (webcam, for example). I purchased a second Anker PowerExpand 8-in-1USB-C dock because the original is staying in Mexico, and I want one for myself for traveling. I go back and forth on smartphones.

Maybe the biggest change is that I switched from Adobe Premiere Elements to Clipchamp this past year.  I hope to drop Microsoft Teams soon and have one fewer messaging app to deal with. And I am experimenting with Google Drive on PC now (vs. OneDrive). But this is normal: I still use the same basic mix of software and services, and big changes are infrequent.

Motive

helix2301 asks:

Paul love first ring daily listen all time I love the rant earlier in week about onedrive I have same complaint.

Thanks … See my above notes about ecosystems/enshittification throughout.

My question is why unless you do bunch stuff cant you make a local account on the Windows 11 machine. Could you direct me to the spot in your book where to do this or link from another place on how accomplish this?

I explain this in the Windows 11 Field Guide, though I honestly don’t recommend it. Also here for the Windows Setup bits.

I don’t understand why every time I reload a machine with Windows 11 wants me sign in to Microsoft account get past screen its annoying especially if you are setting it up for friend.

Well, this is a “why” question and we have to speculate in part. Why would Microsoft require an MSA? Is it self-serving only? Is it altruistic only because there are real-world advantages for mainstream users?

It’s a bit of both, I guess. And that’s good: Part of this whole ecosystems/enshittification thing—and yet another theme on my list—is this notion of relationships between us and the products and services we use, and how these can be healthy or toxic, just as relationships can be in real life. And that enshittification is the process of a healthy relationship turned toxic. Anyway, a healthy relationship is a win-win. In this case, a win for both you (the user) and Microsoft.

And to understand why it’s a win for Microsoft, and, more importantly, why Microsoft might keep shifting the terms to make it even more advantageous for it, you need to understand (or try to understand) its motives. The “why.”

Microsoft benefits from you using an MSA in many ways. It gets telemetry data about your activities and, now, it gets data it can train AI against, and this is valuable on many levels. It gets you using its cloud services, which could lead to you paying for them to get more storage or whatever. It streamlines your use of other products like Edge that have pass-through sign-in. Which leads to more services, more ads, and subscriptions. And so on.

This kind of thing gets toxic when what was previously a choice (local vs. MSA during Setup) is no longer a choice. First by making it hard. And then by removing it. And that process, which we have seen in Windows 11 Setup, is enshittification, where Microsoft is choosing its own needs over those of its customers. (Some customers. Many prefer or want this.)

It’s a calculation on their part. Most people don’t care. Those that do can work around it. The worry is that even those that do will one day not be able to work around it. For now, we’re good. But the direction here is clear.