Ask Paul: November 1 (Premium)

Happy Friday! October flew by in a blink somehow, and now it’s November already. But we can lighten that inconvenience with some great reader questions. Maybe we can finally relax a bit this weekend, too.

Surface + NFL

helix2301 asks:

I know you talked about Microsoft surface business declining and them keeping business going. On my question last week on ask Paul. Where do you think the NFL deal lands in the mix of surface, revenue and business?

Like so many Big Tech partnerships–witness the incredible Apple/Google deal for search defaults on iPhone that neither company has disclosed to shareholders or the SEC–the Microsoft/NFL Surface partnership is now completely secret. The original deal was for five years, and that was extended at least twice. But as of now, no one outside of Microsoft or the NFL knows the terms: How long it lasts, how much money changes hands, etc.

That said, no I don’t think this partnership impacts Surface or its future in a material sense. The most recent report I can find claims that the NFL is using approximately 2,000 Surface Pro whatevers. That’s not a big number, so it’s not a revenues issue, it’s more for marketing and getting the Surface and Microsoft brands out there, and in a market (sports) that is dominated by Apple and iPad. This one is tricky because Apple technically wouldn’t need to do anything to own this market, since most networks and broadcasters would simply use iPads regardless, the exception being a company paying them to do otherwise. So that’s what Microsoft is doing.

But it could kill Surface tomorrow and let the Surface NFL partnership go until its conclusion easily enough. At most, it would just need to rebrand the cases to Microsoft, Windows, Teams, or whatever else and remove the Surface name, to save face or whatever. There’s no way this deal is lucrative enough to warrant keeping the Surface business alive: Hardware is incredibly expensive and has extremely low margins (unless you’re Apple, of course), and in Microsoft’s case, it’s losing money. But the original 5-year deal was valued at $400 million ($80 million per year, $20 million per quarter). Even in the context of just one quarter of revenues for More Personal Computing–$13 billion-ish in the most recent quarter–that seems like chump change.

iWork, uWork, we all Work

helix2301 asks:

Jason Snell on MacBreak said iWorks free and is Apple way of giving you everything you need on Mac and that you really don’t need office on Mac. Just wondering your feeling on iWork considering office was actually first made for Mac.

Apple’s iWork is incredible, and it’s the right set of features for most people. You can see it as a minor example of Apple’s strategy of ending its reliance on any outside party, where having that in the OS makes sense because it can be one item on a bulleted list of reasons why one might choose the Mac (or Apple’s broader ecosystem, really, as the apps are on iPhone and iPad too and have nice iCloud integration). This is one of many areas in which Apple’s broader strategies pay off for its customers too, a nice win-win.

Office–Excel, really–was made first on the Mac because Windows was ready yet, and Bill Gates was betting big on GUIs. There’s a whole history there, obviously, and Office for Mac factors heavily into Apple’s resurgence under Steve Jobs, etc. It has to be a relatively small business compared to Office on Windows or Microsoft 365 more generally, but whatever, it’s also probably a solid business too. For Apple users, it’s nice to have the choice. Those who need Office can have it, those that don’t get iWork for free.

I would bet money Office for Mac is a better/more profitable business than Surface, by the way.

Big Tech is gonna be Big Tech

helix2301 asks:

As far as Amazon goes on Twit Leo talked about businesses Amazon owned that they kind forgot about goodreads, twitch and Luna to name a few. Twitch is huge business but Amazon said never been profitable I’m trying to understand where do they go with it doesnt fit with prime the same way office productivity suit never took off didn’t fit in.

You’d have to focus your entire life on Amazon to even vaguely understand that business or remember every company it’s snatched up along the way. I think Amazon forgets about this as well, in the sense that it’s a huge company with too many employees and executives, all of whom are focused on their own part of the company. In many ways, you can look at these (relatively) little acquisitions in the same way we might with iWork and Apple: Not the focus, but one of many things that makes the broader ecosystem valuable to customers.

I mentioned a bulleted list above, and this type of bulleted list is often as much about the reasons why customers shouldn’t leave an ecosystem as they are about why one might choose the ecosystem. These things are just cogs in the wheel, things that complete the picture for some customers and prevent them from thinking about going elsewhere. The difference between iWork and the Amazon services you mentioned and, say, Surface, is that the latter is the most terrible of those businesses with the most overhead, the lowest margins, and the biggest risk. Microsoft does a terrific job on margins with software and services. Not so much with hardware.

Videogames good, bad, and indifferent

will asks:

A little over a week ago, you mentioned that you would be skipping COD this year, and I wanted to reflect on that. Almost a year ago, in December, I completely removed the Xbox X from my life, and now that a year has passed without a console, I can honestly say that I am better for it. I acknowledge that everyone reacts differently to gaming, and I still play some games on the iPad, but those days of sitting and playing COD or similar games for hours are over.

So, that’s been my experience as well.

My relationship with COD is/was toxic, I guess, more of an addiction than a hobby or something fun to do. To be clear, this isn’t a knock on videogames or even COD specifically. That was just my experience. I think many or most can have healthy relationships with that game, and I think videogames are a net positive, a form of entertainment or even art that is as worthy an endeavor as anything else (books/literature, movies, whatever).

In many ways, I could argue that the Xbox Series X|S or any other modern console made it too easy to play COD, in my case, too much of the time. And that this ease, which I will still tout as a primary benefit of gaming on a console, can be bad when there’s the right (wrong) mix of an addictive game and a person who can be pulled into that. I could just turn to the left, press a button on the controller, and be in a new multiplayer game in several seconds. I mean, yikes.

Switching to the PC has been interesting. Fans of PC gaming (over consoles, mobile, or whatever) probably see this as some kind of victory for their preference. But that’s a bit simplistic. PC gaming is more difficult than console gaming, especially in my case. I can’t play games on any PC, and can’t play modern games well on almost any PCs. And when I do, that’s what I’m doing on a device I normally get work done with. That’s the point, in a way. I’m trying to make it more difficult. And the result is, I’ve played less. A lot less. And that’s good, for me.

Your comment, “if you are really good at something bad for you, is that a good thing?” resonated with me as true. This year marks the first time in over a decade that I have neither played nor purchased the latest COD game. The initial months were challenging, but over time, I found myself engaging in other activities. I spent more time reading, working on house projects, spending time with family, and doing various small tasks. While I did not undergo an epic life transformation, there was a different sense of accomplishment in achieving tangible things versus spending hours in virtual worlds learning a map or trying to get a specific weapon.

Saying no to something is freeing in its own way. That’s especially true if that thing is bad for you. For whatever it’s worth, I have played the new COD briefing, in part to test Xbox Cloud Gaming yet again, and then given the surprising success I had there, to test how well it runs on the AMD Zen 5 and Intel Lunar Lake-based laptops I’m reviewing now. I probably spent an hour in the game all together, mostly multiplayer, and that’s the most time I’ve spent in COD in almost two years. But it didn’t inspire me to keep playing the game. I’m just testing the performance of the laptops at this point. I will continue doing what I’m doing.

I’m not sure if you have played COD recently, but I’d like to hear how reducing your time on Xbox and gaming has impacted you and whether you feel any improvements because of it.

Oddly, I feel like I don’t play games enough sometimes. I don’t say that from an addictive standpoint, obviously, if that was the issue, I’m sure I’d find the time. But I do feel like videogames are good overall, I’m interested in the stories and the interactivity, and I feel like me sticking to single player experiences for the most part is the right way forward. Ironically, perhaps, or maybe just inevitably, I am often very busy with work and never seem to catch up to where I’d like to be, and it’s easy for to me to work all day and into the night every single day. So I need some balance there. You know, as soon as I catch up. Kidding.

In an ideal world, this would be a choice, there would be set times each week or whatever where I could just relax and enjoy games–or not–the way I find time to read or whatever else. So far, I haven’t swung back into regular game playing. I may not be able to. The new COD isn’t the way forward for me. But maybe some other new game will do it, at least for a time. Or not.

Anyway. Like so much else, this is all subjective or personal, and if you’ve found the right place for you from a mental health perspective, for lack of a better term, then you’re doing the right thing. Don’t second guess it, just take the win for the win that it is.

Fiction

christianwilson asks:

Have you ever tried your hand at writing fiction, even if just for your own personal satisfaction and not for publication?

Not seriously. My wife and I had an idea for a book many years ago and toyed around with doing it in some serial way in which we would continue whatever the other had written in turn. But life always gets in the way. People who are driven to do whatever will do that thing. And for me, and us, it was never enough of a pull. I feel like everyone has an idea for a book or a story, or whatever. But that nexus of idea, skill, and desire is magic. It either happens or it doesn’t.

Mac not so mini

ianceicys asks:

Paul you often mention the story of seeing the original Xbox and it being 2 G5 Mac Desktops strapped together and when you asked how is that <points to 5 feet of equipment> going to fit into that box? and you were told ‘We’ve got teams working on that’.

Yeah. This was two enormous Power Mac G5 towers that were tethered together, with an Xbox 360 controller wired to one of them so you could play games. Microsoft had just announced the console and had shown off the white, Apple-like design, which seemed elegant at the time. It had to have been about one-tenth the size of those two towers, so it wasn’t clear how on earth that was ever going to work. (The Xbox 360 used a Power PC processor, like the Macs of that era.)

So, with the new Mac mini that launched this week, and is in fact more powerful than a last gen Xbox, what are your thoughts on just traveling to Mexico with an iPad and a Mac Mini? You already have a keyboard and monitor in both locations, why not just upgrade to such a beautiful and POWERFUL TINY machine. Why have to deal with power issues with a desktop replacement laptop, when you can just travel with a fully powered desktop?

So, what you’re describing here is this dream I’ve had forever, almost literally, of a simpler, smaller, and more mobile computing solution that could meet my needs while traveling. And I’ve attempted to meet this need with so many unsuitable devices that I’ve likely forgotten most of them. But it may be worth highlighting a few, not so much for nostalgia, but because you can see the theme continuing to this day. Interesting, a lot of this is Microsoft ecosystem stuff. And maybe it’s important to remember that these things are personal in the sense that we all have different needs. Obviously, many people get work done on iPads or even phones, but this isn’t viable for me. I had hoped Apple would let iPad grow into a serious computer and it just keeps preventing it from happening. For me.

Back in the late 1990s, when laptops were expensive and big and bulky, I was involved in the first Windows CE beta, code-named Pegasus. The idea was to bring the Windows 95 UI and light Office apps down to consumer electronics devices, starting with mini mobile devices that would have keyboards like PCs. The first of these were little Handheld PCs, and those in the beta got breadboards to work with before device designs were ready. The first Handheld PC I got was a NEC MobilePro in 1996, and it was the size of a paperback book. So it wasn’t big enough to type on, but you could copy over a Word document and edit it, for example. It was like a more powerful personal organizer-type device, something between those and a laptop.

The first Handheld PCs never made sense for me or my use cases, but as the platform evolved, hardware makers started trying different form factors. Microsoft eventually went from Handheld PC to Pocket PC to Windows Mobile, so from mini-laptop to PDA to smartphone, basically. But in that mix, there were these really intriguing devices that I thought might make sense for me. They had different names–Handheld PC Professional was one–but aside from the obvious mini-laptop-like form factors, there was this one device that emerged that … I can’t remember or find right now. Rather than spend the whole morning on this, I’ll just say that this Windows CE device was wide and not deep, the size/shape of a keyboard, and that the screen was thus roughly half-height. And that Jerry Pournelle used one for a very long time and loved it. I wanted one badly.

I think what happened is that laptops matured. But while that was happening, I tried other form factors for that on-the-go scenario. I would travel with a laptop, of course, but coach airline seats have no space, and the battery life was terrible. So what else could I use? I owned almost every single PalmOS-based device ever made–not just from Palm, but from Handspring, Dell, Sony, and others–and at one point, they got really nice. I had a Sony CLIE (I think) or maybe Palm Tungsten PDA and a folding keyboard that, when open, was roughly the size of the keyboard on the HPC Pro I can’t quite remember the name of. And you would perch the little PDA on the bottom middle of the keyboard. And you could type, and then sync whatever you wrote back to the PC.

So I was on a flight, writing away. I get caught up in it sometimes, and I never saved the document I was working on. The plane bounced, and the PDA shifted a bit off the connector. And it froze up. I had to reset it and I of course lost everything I’d written. So that was the last time I tried that.

Flash forward to today, and I guess I could fly between the US and Mexico and not bring a laptop. But I prefer writing on a laptop, I review laptops, and I’m always on some new laptop, so that’s not going to happen in the short term. We typically have a lot more space on these flights, so that’s not an issue. And since Apple never did make the iPad viable for my needs, there’s no reason to even think about it: My workflows are all PC-based, or at least computer-based, with synced cloud storage, the apps I prefer, etc. So even though non-PC devices are more viable now for more people, that’s not the case for me.

I always think about this. But I also stopped fighting this years ago, and I wrote my Right Tool for the Job editorial on this topic over a decade ago. Then, as now, traveling with a phone, a tablet, and a laptop is not a big deal. I am more likely to replace my iPad with a color Kindle than I am to replace my laptop with an iPad. (And look at that now, I see I tell the PDA/keyboard story in it; this is perhaps what inspired that article, come to think of it.)

I mentioned Jerry Pournelle, and he factors into this conversation a lot. He was always looking for things to lighten the load, and he tried every device imaginable and would often (ironically) travel with bags of gadgets weighing him down. One thing I remember clearly is that he used the Transmeta-based HP Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC for longer–far longer–than made any sense at all. This PC was notable for many reasons–the iPad later mimicked its look and feel almost identically–but that thing was so slow it was unusable. But he kept at it for many years. I think he suffered from the same bug I do.

Anyway.

I do use a small form factor (SFF) PC at home in Pennsylvania. Previously, I’d long used a series of Intel NUCs when those were a thing, and they are still among my favorite PCs of all time. I love what Apple’s done with the Mac mini–I’ve owned at least three over the years, come to think of it, including a brief foray with the original M1 version–in keeping with my recent article about 16 GB of RAM being the only viable minimum for a modern PC, please note that the Mac mini M1 I purchased in 2020 had 16 GB of RAM–but I’m a Windows guy, fundamentally. And I’ve considered getting a SFF PC for Mexico as well, of course. But what I have here is a good setup: It’s a docking station with a 24-inch display, and a full-sized keyboard and mouse, and I can just swap in whatever laptop I’m using at the time. For me, this is what makes sense right now. I come here with a laptop (OK, usually two or three), and it works as a docked PC when it’s here.

I’m having serious Mac Mini envy, what about you? And pardon me for a second question, but why hasn’t HP ever delivered a REAL Mac Mini solution, was intel the culprit all along?

Well. We’re assuming here that the Mac mini form factor is suddenly the most viable computer form factor. When Apple introduced this system, it was about switchers, and the marketing campaign was something like “bring your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor.” That was to save costs: Macs were too expensive for most people, desktop PCs were still the most common form factor, and the Mac mini was how Apple could work around those issues. Today, laptops outsell desktop PCs by 2-to-1 or 3-to-1, and they’re the best choice for most people. The Mac mini isn’t updated all that often because it doesn’t warrant it. So the new one is great, and I very much understand wanting one. But it’s not the right computer for most people.

Regarding HP, that’s the SFF I’m using at home. It’s not the size of a Mac mini, but it’s also a more viable computer. One thing no one seems to discuss with the new Mac mini is that this thing should be the size of, and compatible with, a VESA mount so you can put it on the back of a display. But Apple put the frigging power button on the bottom, as Apple does. That’s a stupid design mistake, and it bugs me that it still makes this kind of “form of function” decision.

So yeah, the HP SFF isn’t as pretty and small. But it’s a tool, and it gets the job done. It’s better for my needs, certainly. And I don’t blame Intel for any of this. It did make the NUC, after all. And those PCs did work properly with VESA mounts and were otherwise user-serviceable and upgradeable too.