Ask Paul: December 20 (Premium)

Happy Friday and Happy Holidays! But let’s not barrel into the Christmas break just yet. We have a great set of reader questions to get through first.

⛵Yacht it up, furball

spacecamel asks:

HBO has been doing a series of music documentaries. The latest one was on Yacht Rock. Have you seen any of these? Any that you liked?

I wasn’t aware of this–I don’t subscribe to Max at the moment–but this is one of those interesting coincidence things. In this case, several back-to-back coincidences.

I watch a lot of music videos–and videos about music–on YouTube. And Yacht Rock has come up several times recently for whatever reason. I recently watched a couple of videos about Yacht Rock (including this one), and one of the channels I follow, The Hindley Street Country Club, has a growing series of Yacht Rock cover song compilations. (They’re incredibly talented.)

Even weirder, my favorite podcast, The Rewatchables–as mentioned in my year-end wrap-up–finally did an episode this past month about one of my favorite 80s movies, Running Scared. And that movie is notable, in part, for its use of a Michael McDonald (of Doobie Brothers fame) song, Sweet Freedom, which has always been a favorite of mine. In the early days of digital music, it was impossible to find, and I recall making that effort many times.

But in yet another coincidence, Stephanie and I watched Running Scared over Thanksgiving with our daughter, and that was before I knew that podcast episode existed.

And though I already knew this, because I’m a Van Halen fan, YouTube keeps recommending a video about how Michael McDonald helped cowrite their song I’ll Wait but wasn’t originally given songwriting credit. (Off-topic, that video is one of many Sunset Sounds is part of now, and they’re always quite good.)

In looking all this up, I also saw the trailer for the Music Box: Yacht Rock episode. I will definitely watch it at some point. Thanks 🙂

?I have the power

CharlesVincent2 asks:

Surface 7 snapdragon 15” laptop battery life… getting poor battery life. Feel i recall you maybe mentioning a power setting in windows that you found made a unusual difference? Any power settings advice?

No. And this surprises me greatly: My Surface Laptop gets the best battery life of any Windows PC I currently have, and it’s not even close. (Only the MacBook Air is better.) But I didn’t change any settings. Looking at the Power mode, it’s just set to “Recommended.” I’m curious what you’re doing that could be causing that. I’ve never heard of anyone with a Snapdragon X-based PC having battery life issues.

I think what you’re recalling is what I had to do with the first Lunar Lake-based laptop I got, which was almost unusable in its default “Balanced” power mode. The advice there was to change that to “Best Performance,” which killed the battery life but made the PC work normally. Not so much for you, but for anyone out there wondering about Lunar Lake, the ThinkPad X1 Carbon I’m currently reviewing does not have that problem. It’s set to Balanced, I’ve been using it normally, and it’s getting 7 to 8 hours of battery life in normal usage. So I think the expected firmware updates have occurred and are working. This is what it was supposed to be like.

FYI – On week 2 as new daily driver.. no arm program challenges. (Primarily productivity applications)

So, this at least does not surprise me. That has been my experience as well. I was just working on my .NETpad modernization project this morning with two Visual Studio instances running in addition to all my normal apps, no issues at all. And the battery life, if anything, has gone up. Looking just at the battery report, which isn’t necessarily the best source for this, I see 13 hours 10 minutes, 12 hours 18 minutes, and 11 hours 9 minutes as the three most recent battery life estimates.

Are you using any unusual, non-mainstream apps?

?Nostradontmas

anderb asks:

Any plans for a “2025 Predictions” post? e.g. AI bubble to burst, no further xbox consoles, apple to release windows version of M4 chip with the only restriction being you have to use the resurrected version of Safari for Windows, X to merge with Truth Social

I wasn’t, but that’s an interesting idea. I’m not very good at this kind of thing, historically, and life has a way of surprising me on a regular basis. I don’t see any change to the chaos in Windows, Copilot, or AI generally, I guess. I don’t see any major shifts in mobile or desktop usage or market share. I don’t see Apple ever licensing its chips to third parties, as it’s a competitive advantage. I do think consolidation is an ongoing thing across personal technology. Price hikes and subscriptions will never end, and we’ll complain, but no one is really going back to physical media or whatever. I think the antitrust battles with Big Tech will continue, as will the whole win some, lose some nature of that.

But I guess if I was going to predict anything about this coming year that cuts to the heart of my focus, I would go this notion of an AI bubble bursting and that the impact on Microsoft could be devastating, lead to shareholder demands and, if it goes badly enough, even to the ouster of Satya Nadella. Do I expect that? No. And as long as growth is good overall, there are few worries. But the amount of money that this company is flushing down the toilet on AI is astonishing, and the recent comments by Google CEO Sundar Pichai that Microsoft doesn’t even use its own models is dead-on. I feel like there are big battles brewing between OpenAI and what Microsoft is doing internally, and that that could be a trigger for problems as well.

Also possible, though again I can’t say I expect it, is Apple and Google finally coming around to the notion of settling antitrust cases so that they can impact the outcomes and not get worst-possible scenario rulings against them. It took Microsoft over a decade to get to that point, but it worked. And it’s impossible for these companies to justify their business behaviors, let alone reconcile reality with their marketing. Google won’t get broken up in 2025, but it could do the work to make sure that never happens too. They should. We’ll see.

I would also like to see Microsoft and Google put the weird animosity between them aside and partner where it makes sense. If Google and Apple can do this, any two companies can.

But the biggest outlier is whether Apple finally turns the iPad into a viable laptop competitor by improving iPadOS with all the obvious missing functionality. My bet is that this is inevitable. But I doubt it happens in 2025.

I don’t know. I guess I need to think about this more.

?Hungry like the wolf

BobSC asks:

Hello, about your HPMini PC, did you uninstall the Wolf Point Security software? It seems to be more trouble than what it is worth for me. It is buggy and keeps putting my browsers under the your browser is managed by an organization or however it is worded.

I always uninstall Wolf. This software is unnecessary for individuals, as the security protections in Windows work well and go unnoticed. But Wolf is a pain in the butt. It flags things that are not problematic, and it pops up notifications routinely. I don’t like it. So yes, I always uninstall it.

I’m sure from HP’s perspective, this is both a value-add and an upsell, as it’s something businesses might adopt in volume. But they’re starting to include it on prosumer/consumer PCs, too, and I hope it doesn’t grow into a family of upsells like we see on Lenovo consumer PCs. It can be heavy-handed.

On a positive note, I love this thing. It’s G9 version? The top is solid, no holes for vents. It boots incredibly fast too. I also ordered the Microsoft – Surface Full-size Wireless Keyboard – Silver. It’s on sale at Best Buy, I also had $10 in BB rewards.

Interesting. The one I have is also a G9, but there are vent holes in the top. Maybe there are different configurations. This particular PC is nice for a number of reasons, but I really like the mix of ports, and the HP Flex expansion capabilities are really cool. They’re consistent across many of their commercial and workstation PCs, and provide a lot of, well, flexibility. And a modularity that’s unusual outside of Framework. It’s kind of amazing for a PC this small to have so many configurable parts and expansion ports. I really like it.

?Speed reading

jrzoomer asks:

Paul I just read your article on top books and audiobooks 2024….how do you find time to do it? Are you a speed-reader? If not, please share your strategy I’d like to get to your level thanks.

I mistakenly answered this earlier, thinking it was tied to that books and audiobooks wrap-up post, sorry. When I go through comments in OpenWeb, they’re detached from the articles and ordered by most recent, not by post, and I wasn’t paying attention to the article name.

But the short version is that, no, I’m not a speed reader. I wish I were. I just love to read, and I make time to read every day, usually an hour or more in the morning and then 30 to 60 minutes or more each night before I go to bed. Audiobooks are more problematic. They compete with other audio content, not just podcasts, but music. And I just have less time for that. So I listen when I shave/shower, do dishes or other housework, in the car, at the gym, and on planes when I fly, which is even rarer. Sometimes I’ll get the Kindle and Audible version of a book together and then switch back and forth as I do. I did that with my favorite book of the year, Brothers, for example.

If it matters to you, you can find the time.

☄️Alternative space lifestyles

jrzoomer asks:

Paul how do you feel about the Alt+Spacebar shortcut being taken by some of these new apps like ChatGPT? I use it all the time (esp Alt-space then C to close, or N to minimize)! I know it’s an oldie but I find it very useful! What do you think.

I don’t like that Microsoft is taking this keyboard shortcut for Copilot in Windows 11. It already has a keyboard shortcut, Winkey + C, that it’s not even using anymore. And Alt + Space is used by a lot of apps, including Microsoft’s PowerToys Run (no doubt inspired by the Mac’s Start-like Spotlight search feature, which uses the equivalent Cmd + Space shortcut on that platform).

But the biggest issue is that this keyboard shortcut is already used by Windows, and that’s been true since the very first release. Windows was originally designed to work equally well with just a keyboard as it did with a mouse, because of the usage norms of that era, when most PCs didn’t have a mouse. And Alt + Space is used to this day–try it in any app–to trigger what’s called the window menu, which comes off the icon the upper left of the app window, in the title bar. It often appears there even if there is no title bar or app icon. It’s a system feature.

It’s also important. If you somehow manage to position a window off-screen and can’t grab its title bar with the mouse cursor to move it, you can use Alt + Space to open that menu, and even if you can’t see it, just type M (for Move) and then you can use the arrow keys to move it back on screen. This works every time, and it’s a great tip. For this reason, I remap the PowerToys Run keyboards shortcut to Winkey + Space. This makes more sense to me.

Playing devil’s advocate, I suppose Microsoft could argue that the window menu is no longer necessary and that all the functions you or I have mentioned work with other keyboard shortcuts now too. For example, Winkey + Up arrow would snap it to the top half of the current display. And … sure. Maybe it is time to revisit this legacy feature. I don’t know. But I still use it fairly regularly. It’s like a muscle memory for me. (In working on an update to my .NETpad app, I’ve had windows with no title bar, window buttons, or controls of any kind, and Alt + Space still works normally, allowing me to move the window around.)

In short, this is mostly an issue only for people who know about it. And those people are older, more experienced, and can probably figure out a way around it. But it still bugs me for some reason. It just feels unnecessary.

And speaking of Winkey + C …

?‍✈️Chaos is my copilot

will asks:

A year ago, Microsoft was generating excitement around Copilot, positioning it as the next thing, aka Cortana 2.0, and a key driver in integrating AI across Windows, Bing, Edge, and the Office suite. The company’s public partnership with OpenAI, its substantial investments, and its on-stage collaborations with Sam Altman suggested a clear, unified vision—with a desire of making Copilot as big of a deal as the Start menu was in Windows 95.

I wish that wasn’t literally true, but Satya Nadella is perhaps overly fond of stating that the Copilot is like the new Start button, and if my constant re-reading of Steven Sinofsky’s Hardcore Software has taught or at least reinforced anything for me, it’s that the PC user base is resistant to change, and messing with things that just work rarely goes well. Microsoft experienced this with Windows 8 when it removed the Start button and Start menu, and kept Metro apps full-screen only and separate from desktop apps. And to a lesser degree when interactions that might have made sense on mobile–like Cortana (voice) and live tiles (at-a-glance updates)–made no sense at all on the PC.

What’s odd to me now is that looking at the way you wrote the above, you’re describing what I think is the right way for Microsoft to implement AI–“across Windows, Bing, Edge, and Office”–but what Microsoft also did was make AI, in effect, a new SKU of Microsoft 365, something customers would have to pay extra for in addition to what they were already paying, per user and per month, for Microsoft 365 itself. This was one of the primary inspirations for my I Will Not Pay for AI (Premium) post, while I have no problem paying for useful functionality that uses AI. For example, a product like Photoshop or a service like Grammarly or whatever. And I guess I’m not alone. One of the many Copilot flip-flops we saw this year was Microsoft moving more to that model. We can expect Microsoft 365 price hikes, for sure, but it won’t be as bad as paying separately for Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Pro. Those subscriptions are price-gouging.

Today, however, the narrative seems fragmented, and in many ways, Microsoft is acting like the past six-twelve months did not happen. The once-promised synergy and seamless integration are not there. The specialized Copilot key and NPUs—once touted as essential—now feel like sidelined priorities. Office has been rebranded, seemingly just to align with a new “Copilot” button, and features like Recall for business users are disabled and largely undiscussed.

From the moment that Microsoft spaz-announced its AI push with Bing, of all things, it was clear that the company was making it up as it went along. If we forget the chaotic stupidity of 2023–multiple renamings, multiple products announced, multiple things named Copilot, etc.–it may because 2024 was even stupider and more chaotic. Tied to the prediction question above, it’s reasonable for Microsoft shareholders and customers to ask hard questions about this behavior. And dear God, if could draw the most tenuous connection imaginable, related to a separate and completely unrelated question above, I will point out that it seems that Microsoft, wait for it, is running scared. This is not the type of behavior we expect from Microsoft, and certain not from the presumably more mature parts of the company, like Microsoft 365.

I said this on First Ring Daily this morning, but Microsoft’s methodology these days is sadly reminiscent of Netscape in the 1990s (“ship it, then fix it”), which may have made sense for a single new kind of app, as the web browser was at the time. Or of Facebook/Meta’s”move fast and break things” slogan, which was always stupid because Mark Zuckerberg is an overrated idiot with undeserved fortune and influence. But this is not the right way to run a mature software business that, by the way, is the second-biggest company on earth and one of the most powerful entities the world has ever seen. This isn’t a drunk driver at the wheel, it’s worse. It makes no sense.

I could go off on the Microsoft branding thing for hours. You mention one great example: Let’s kill Office, inarguably one of the best and most recognizable brands on earth, and replace it with something that sounds like a new kind of 7-11. Or, let’s kill Microsoft’s well-regarded hardware accessories brand that’s been around since the 1980s, and hand that over to Surface, a failed, unprofitable business, and then let’s strip down Surface until all it does is sell two different computers, because it’s a failed, unprofitable business. Guys, wake the F up. This is nuts.

Copilot takes these problems, throws them in a blender, and arrives in an uncharted new world in which Microsoft has inexplicably landed on its best brand since (literally) Windows, and now it’s reusing that brand on everything it makes (as it did with Windows), and now there are so many products, services, and even individual features with the term Copilot in their names that this term no longer makes any sense. But it’s even worse than that. At Build 2023, Stevie Batishe laid out how Microsoft would implement AI across three different app structures (here’s one article that discusses that): AI beside, AI inside, and AI outside. AI beside is the least sophisticated of the three, it’s the one you can implement the fastest because it will work, literally, next to existing apps without changing them. And that’s Copilot. So as we shift to those other two app structures in time, first commingled but later in a way that makes the AI besides stuff dated and old-fashioned, the term Copilot won’t make sense anymore. Microsoft in a sense obsoleted this term just three months into this AI push, and its *still over-using it now. It’s incredible. But that’s Microsoft. It has no idea what it’s doing.

The Recall fiasco is another example of an “only Microsoft” moment. We all know that businesses are Microsoft’s biggest and most important customers. And that at least two thirds of its revenues come from this audience, and I bet it’s even more than that. And yet, in its zeal to push AI as aggressively as possible, it ignored that customer base by going out to consumers first (it’s faster and has fewer blockers). And then it did it again with Recall specifically, while adding an incredible nuance: Not only was Recall consumer first, not only was it not going to be tested before it went public, but Recall was also openly antagonistic to businesses. The message at launch was that this was for people, and if those people wanted to use Recall on work PCs, even their employers wouldn’t be able to access that data or prevent them from using it. Christ.

Microsoft was always going to bring Recall to businesses. But getting it in a state in which it could be managed with policy would take time. So its most important customers took a back seat to the vague promises of an AI strategy that may or may not ever pay off. This is what enshittification looks like in the corporate world.

What happened to Microsoft’s bold vision? Is Copilot heading down the same path as Windows Mobile, another big idea that never fully materialized? While Apple and Google continue to move deliberately forward with their own AI strategies, and OpenAI openly praises Apple’s products, Microsoft’s approach now appears unclear. Should Satya and the leadership team take responsibility for this confusion? Is there still a coherent path forward for Microsoft’s Copilot platform? Are Copilot+PC’s dead after this year?

What we saw in the chaos of 2024, I think, was the first effects of Microsoft’s best customers pushing back. Microsoft stepped back from the cliff of its all AI is paid AI strategy. It introduced the Copilot key on PCs, and it was then surprised when businesses ignored it and the Copilot client. And then it finally shifted things around so that what they were doing was more aligned with what its customers want. It took the full year, which is either a long time, or a flash in the pan, depending. But Microsoft can’t just target consumers like Google and Apple does. What it does with AI has to make sense for commercial customers.

Is Nadella and the senior leadership team responsible for this confusion? You bet they are.

Is there a coherent path forward for Copilot or AI in general at Microsoft? I would argue that’s never been true and that this company continues to follow the “ship it, then fix it” strategy of throwing it all out there and seeing what sticks. And will further argue that’s not technically a strategy, it’s the absence of strategy and thus the absence of leadership. And will point to my earlier remarks about customers and shareholders being correct to question this and demand answers and change.

Are Copilot+ PCs dead? Yes and no. On the one hand, the fate of Copilot+ PCs (and AI PCs more generally) was always that they would just become PCs, that all PCs will have these capabilities. This is what happened to Media Center PCs and Tablet PCs, for example. Those once unique features are just part of the platform now. But on the other hand, we’ve been talking about the Copilot key on PC keyboards a lot lately. And that key is not limited to Copilot+ PCs, though it is one requirement of that label. I mean, this key is on most PCs now, it’s just a standard key now. It would be amazing if that disappeared in a year or two. I guess I could see that happening. On the other hand, we still have Caps Lock, which is pointless, and many keyboards even have Insert keys. Who knows?

Maybe 2025 will be the great reckoning, per the predictions question. But it’s more likely, given history, that it will just be more chaos. Different chaos. But still chaos.

I wish I could feel good about this, just see the entertainment in it. But it feels immature and unnecessary.