Ask Paul: April 18 (Premium)

Happy Friday! This is a weird one, thanks to the holiday weekend and our last-minute trip to Oaxaca, here in Mexico. This will be a lot shorter than usual, but that’s fine. Let’s dive in!

? Synologistic

spacecamel asks:

On WW, you mentioned that you were still looking at a Synology for your storage needs. Did you see the report in Tom’s Hardware that we’re requiring to use their own drives? Another example of enshittification.

I saw the headline, but since you mentioned it, I went and read up on it. And it’s semi-defensible, though Synology uses Toshiba and Seagate drives, and doesn’t make its own. So the worry here is that there will be some markup on Synology drives and/or that it will artificially limit feature availability based on which types of drives you have. The latter seems to be underway and the former is, well, we’ll see.

That said, I’m not sure whether this changes my mind on Synology per se. The value of this ecosystem is very high and while there are some other options I’ve considered, it’s almost a no-brainer to go with Synology. I do hear you on the enshittification. But when I do get a NAS, I’ll be getting new drives anyway. So having to get Synology drives is … whatever. Assuming they work reliably, don’t cost more (or, at least too much more), and are supported properly because of this requirement.

Plus, I expect the feedback from the community to be overwhelmingly negative on this. A better approach would be for individuals and drive makers to assess the quality of various drives to see whether they meet whatever needs Synology has. A sort of Synology certified score/program. I’d be surprised if this didn’t evolve into something like that.

? Dreaming of streaming

christianwilson asks:

My family made it clear they do not want to switch away from Fire TV, which I’m generally fine with, but I think we’d be better served with a different platform.

Now I’m intrigued. Why on earth would anyone feel strongly about Fire TV? Is this about Amazon content? For example, most of the movie/TV content I purchased was via Apple, which is what helps put Apple TV over the top.

I like Apple TV for its hardware performance and clean UI. I’d gladly move to Google TV if it weren’t missing Xfinity Stream (I am baffled it is still not there). Roku holds no appeal for me anymore.

Yeah. I’ve tried all the streaming platforms at one time or another–and I’ve spent a lot of time on Roku and Google TV/Android TV, in particular–but they’ve all fallen a bit in my eyes thanks to rampant advertising. Apple TV has some of that before shows, but not in the UI. And though the hardware is due for an upgrade, it feels like a higher-end device with better performance too.

Jason Snell recently did a comparison of the major streaming device platforms on Six Colors and found a lot to like, and not like, about each. I know you are settled in with Apple TV as your streaming device of choice but have you considered doing a comparison of the other major players like Amazon, Google, and Roku for the site?

I haven’t, but that’s a good idea. I will look into this when we get home in a few weeks. I do feel like I’m a bit behind on these things.

Never say never, of course. And things change. For example, Amazon is allegedly moving FireTV from its AOSP-based Android to a new platform called Vega that it’s already using in some Echo/Alexa devices.

Apple TV is hard to beat, though. Nothing is perfect, but I settled on Apple TV for a few reasons. We have several hundred purchased movies and TV shows in Apple, and while some of that is viewable elsewhere thanks to Movies Anywhere, it’s not the full collection, doesn’t include all the extra features, and so on.

But thanks. Will look into this.

?️ It’s like reading, with pictures!

jrzoomer asks:

Paul I know you read books but do you read comics? And conversely, I know you watch TV shows but do you watch anime? And any interest in these things, now or in the past?

I do read some comics and graphic novels via Kindle on my iPad, but I rarely watch animated shows or anime specifically. I wrote a little bit about the former in My Favorite Books and Audiobooks of 2024 (Premium), and as I noted there, the comics I’ve read most recently should disappoint just about anyone. It’s all Star Wars-related. (Sorry.)

Semi-related, I find the iPad mini I’m now using to be a bit small–and the 13-inch iPad Air it replaced to be a bit too big and heavy–so I’ll almost certainly be replacing it with a more traditionally sized iPad of whatever kind when we get home. Meaning, it’s unlikely I’ll read any new comics or graphic novels until that. But I was just looking through the Kindle store, go figure.

I’ll try to branch out a bit more this year. If you have any recommendations, fire away.

? Scroogled by its own petard

train_wreck asks:

Google’s been taking lots of hits recently, in the courtroom and in the public sphere, and that’s outside the many years of dysfunctional attention span to products/services. What do you think is going on there?

From a timing perspective, it’s coincidental that Google has lost three U.S. antitrust cases in the past year–I forgot to mention Epic v. Google in my write-up of the most recent loss–and that the European Commission (and, less prominently, other regulators) are going after them as well (as with other Big Tech companies). So it feels like this kind of piling on. I’m sure it does from Google’s perspective.

But I view this from the other direction: This is all quite overdue, and these cases and more should all have been raised long ago, and not allowed to fester for so long, with other companies (competitors and partners) and consumers all being victimized by Google’s anticompetitive behavior for so long. As with Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft, Google has been given a long leash, and it’s gotten a bit too used to that freedom.

So this is a welcome course correction. More–much more–is needed. But I celebrate every step forward. And this is very much a step forward. I’m curious to see what sanctions the judge will impose and which pieces of its ill-gotten empire will finally be chipped away. We’ll all benefit from this.

Specifically what do you think of the leadership of Sundar Pichai? (IMO one of the worst CEOs in modern times).

I don’t feel like I know as much about Pichai as I do some other tech CEOs (everyone from Microsoft, of course, and Apple, and a few others). But he’s from the engineering side of the company, which always feels right to me for tech firms, and he has the right background. I feel that the vocal criticisms of him after Google’s initial AI stumbles in the wake of the Microsoft Copilot/Bing/Open AI stuff was a bit off-base and unfair. But then there are different kinds of leaders, and one that is appropriate in one era may not be the right person for another. And maybe that’s what we’re seeing here. What Google needs is some risk-taking and not necessarily the slow-and-steady approach it had been taking.

This stuff changes every single day, literally. But when I look at AI and where it’s at, and at the various companies up and down the stack and all they offer, I still feel like Google is ideally situated to come out on top or at least in the mix at the top. It’s impossible to say right now where things will land, but if you look at Microsoft, there’s a case to be made that its previous decade of cloud infrastructure improvements are paying off now. And with Google, there’s the AI investments, in which it was (and maybe still is) a leader, and, of course, the rich data it has via Search, an asset no one else (including Microsoft) can match.

If Pichai bungles this, then he needs to be replaced. But I’ve never had a visceral reaction to the guy, good or bad.

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Apologies for the brevity. We have a flight to catch …