Ask Paul: September 26 ⭐

Happy Friday! We’re about to undergo a grueling trip back to Mexico City that will see us arrive at 4:00 am tomorrow. But rather than dwell on that too much, let’s kick off this weekend a bit early. If only to distract from the above.

? Google on the rise

jrzoomer asks:

Paul, Gemini topped ChatGPT in the Apple App store recently. They are really coming on strong after starting way behind. Do you see Google’s new AI image generation 2.5 Flash (aka nano banana) as a potential tipping point when we look back, similar to what IE3 and IE4 did to Netscape?

Yes. Google’s new image-to-video model is impressive and I think it served as a wake-up call that it has caught up, generally speaking, in AI. Though to be fair to Google, this really happened quite a while ago. But it is interesting how badly its first missteps, with Bard and then its original image generation tech, set it back from a public perception perspective. Plus, the weird popularity of ChatGPT.

But Google releases so many AI updates now I can’t even keep up. This company is really moving quickly, and though one could argue (and I have) that its pace is as chaotic as what Microsoft is doing, it doesn’t feel as slapdash, if that makes sense. Both companies clearly see AI as both their greatest opportunity ever and a potential existential threat in the sense that if others take the lead, they will become less relevant and start shedding customers.

? But is it safe?

ianceicys asks:

Paul, after reading Apple in China I started reading If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All

I’m a daily user of Copilot, ChatGTP, Perplexity, and Claude. Would love your take on AI Safety and your views on the unseen dangers of AI.

As with most things, I’m hitting this one from the middle until I see any evidence to the contrary. Meaning, AI is like any other technology in that it will be used for good and for bad and that the problem here isn’t technology, it’s people. It’s almost always people. AI is made by people, so it’s flawed. On and on we go.

We have a curiously good grounding in the possible issues here, thanks to the classic sci-fi writers of the 1950s to 1980s, people like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, and so on, plus others like Michael Crichton. The trick is keeping it out of the hands of bad actors, which is impossible.

I probably told this story, but a couple of decades ago I went to some zombie movie with two friends and we were hanging out in a coffee shop afterward talking about it. One of them said something about how they would handle a zombie uprising. And then the other chimed in about a robot uprising. We agreed that in both cases, the course of action was pretty clear.

But after a moment of silence, the first one suddenly asked, “Yeah, but what do we do if both of those things happen at the same time?” My response to this was that you can only plan so much and that if that were to happen, we would have to just wing it.

So that was just silly humor, but as technology evolves, we are getting to a strange point where most people, even those working on it directly, don’t seem to understand it very well. There’s a chance that the real-world version of zombies and robots rising up at the same time is artificial general intelligence (AGI) and quantum computing both happening at the same time. Certainly, those are two things I can’t claim to understand well.

Anyway. I’m not well versed on this. and while the alarmist nature of that book is a bit off-putting, I had been thinking about reading it. And so I did order it just now, thanks.

? One turkey and one eagle don’t make an eagle

MartinusV2 asks:

Regarding the nVidia investment in Intel, there are all sorts of theories for the why? One that I think is to kill AMD’s momentum in laptops, AI and server market. nVidia knows that the Intel brand in the laptop area is still very strong compared to AMD. And I feel sorry for the Arc branch of Intel for their GPUs. They had a rough start, but they were starting to get there. At least from what I saw, for people wanting to build a budget gaming PC, it was great value.

Last week, Nvidia announced that it was partnering with struggling microprocessor giant Intel. The two will co-design custom data center and PC processors based on the x86 architecture. On the PC side, Intel will integrate Nvidia RTX GPU chiplets into some of its x86 chips, which should make them more competitive with the AMD CPUs/APUs that have been eating Intel’s lunch for the past year. But this raises all kinds of questions.

The most obvious being, why?

Seriously, why would a company as rich and powerful as Nvidia tie itself to a company that’s been circling the drain for years and is in imminent danger of splitting off its foundry business, the only part of Intel with a potential future? Intel will never “help” Nvidia in any material way. So one can only assume that this is political, with Nvidia doing what it can to prop up the U.S. government’s ridiculous intervention/“investment” to help offset the tariff costs and anti-China regulations that are causing it some problems.

This isn’t just a distraction. There is no real-world upside here for Nvidia.

This is a company that earned $47 billion in revenues in the most recent quarter, with most of that coming from Arm-based datacenter products. Its PC-related revenues are less than 10 percent of its total revenues, coming mostly from gaming GPUs. PC makers sold 65.8 million units in the most recent quarter. You can assume that Intel chips are inside 80+ percent of those PCs, but those with chips that will one day use Nvidia integrated graphics (Core Ultra, I guess) are just a subset of that. Let’s pretend it’s half. If Nvidia earns $10 per chip, another made-up number, that’s $330 million per quarter in this best-case scenario. That’s too high a number, but it’s also immaterial to Nvidia at that level. What’s one third of one 47th? Nothing.

Arm is the future in the datacenter and it’s the future for PCs. Nvidia knows this, and it’s not halting the Arm investments that actually do matter to its bottom line.

Speaking of which …

? It’s real

MartinusV2 asks:

As for the new Qualcomm Elite X2, were you able to play with one laptop and see that they are really delivering on performance? If so, how did it feel?

The current-generation devices are already amazing, including the lowest-end Snapdragon X in the OmniBook 5 I’m using to write this. We’ll have to see what shipping hardware looks like, but the X2 Elite and X2 Elite Extreme both offer double-digit gains in real-world CPU, GPU, and NPU performance, so this should be impressive across the board.

When we wrote about this the other day, I was surprised (but not really) to see pedantic complaining about Qualcomm’s performance claims. This is unfounded. I spoke with Qualcomm senior vice president Kedar Kondap privately about this, and he told me that it doesn’t make sense to fudge numbers because everyone is going to benchmark real devices when they’re available and the truth will come out. So I asked specifically about GPU performance (not performance per watt) and he was very specific: The new GPU is literally twice as fast as the first gen. Apples to apples.

I also ran into the two guys from the benchmarking company (I didn’t catch the name, can’t find it now, but will look it up) who were at the Summit for the first time ever. And without mentioning that previous conversation, I asked them about it too. Same answer: It’s twice as fast. They are blown away by how good this chip is.

?️ You can’t spell Mental without Meta

ianceicys asks:

On the topic would you ever buy a Friend or Meta Ray-Ban Meta glasses… I have several friends with them on pre-order….and it feels like we are 12-18 months away from being in a black mirror episode?

I will never pay Meta/Facebook for anything. They have taken enough from me—and from my country—as it is. But generally speaking, I would be more inclined to try smart glasses than a pendant/wearable-type device because I already carry a phone, use a smart watch and smart earbuds, and don’t need yet another “thing.” But glasses are potentially additive and less intrusive in a public setting, so that is interesting. Just not from Meta.

These things happen in stages, of course, and many of the current generation of smart glasses are just too big and silly looking. I do have a pair of Viture XR glasses that are really just a glorified 1080p external display, so they’re nice for watching a movie on a plane from your phone, iPad, or laptop. You could do work on them, I guess, but I haven’t and probably won’t. But once you move into a truly smart device, you have to start thinking about ecosystem and lock-in. So I am curious about what Google is doing with Android XR. And I would consider anything that was platform agnostic, if such a thing were possible.

You can kind of see where this is going, too. Smart glasses will get more elegant. There will be smart contacts. And then embeddable tech. It’s getting weird.

? Why Mexico?

tomhere asks:

Why Mexico? I am looking at retirement in the face, and have considered moving abroad, for at least part of the year, like you seem to be doing with Mexico. In my case I have been thinking of moving to Denmark. So apples and oranges, but I am still curious about your whole experience and process with your decision. I don’t know if you have written about it, so I thought I would ask. I have a friend who really wants to move to Belize but his wife won’t go, so naturally he thinks that is where I should go. 🙂

I have written about this, yes. There is a lot that goes into something like this, and it evolves over time.

For about 20 years, my wife and I visited Europe for at least a month each year. We had vague ideas about maybe splitting time between Europe and the U.S. after the kids were out of the house. Retirement isn’t really in the cards for us, but same idea.

When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, we stayed home other than driving our daughter to college in North Carolina. The following year, we could have gone to Europe again, and planned to. But the U.S. wasn’t allowing Europeans to fly into the country that year, so our normal 3-week summer home swap couldn’t happen. When this became obvious, we started looking around at what else we could do.

We had never considered Mexico, ever. We’d been to Mexico a few times, border towns when we lived in Arizona and then Cancun with the kids one February, but nothing about those places was particularly interesting. But in researching other places to go in 2021, I kept seeing things about Mexico City, which seemed European in some ways, and was accessible. So we visited that June, loved it, and came back with the kids in August as part of a longer trip.

Many of the advantages of Mexico over any place in Europe, and there are a lot of them, are in the article linked above. Low costs. Convenience. No overnight flights, only a 1-2 hour time difference. The people are incredible. The history and culture are incredible. Mexico City has all the advantages of a city, there’s nothing you can’t get there. The food/drink scene is off the charts. Etc.

I love Europe. But our post-pandemic trips there, to Paris and then Berlin, twice, were stark reminders of the issues. I can’t sleep on planes and so those flights are always terrible. These places are incredibly expensive. The winters are awful. Etc. I still love these places. But now that we’ve been to Mexico City, specifically, I would never change what we’re doing. Mexico City has made some vague idea possible. Europe would be nothing but obstacles.

I recommend looking through the other articles on our Eternal Spring website. And we have a book as well. Mexico may not be the right choice for everyone, I get it. But Mexico City just ticks all the right boxes for us. Nothing is perfect, but this is as close as we can get.

?️ Why wait?

tomhere asks:

I was about to buy a Mac Mini M4 Pro (48gb, 1TB) when I noticed some rumors that there may be an M5 Mac Mini in the expected Apple October announcement. What’s your take on that? Will there be an announcement (as usual) and if so, when do you think it is likely? My guess is the last week of October. (I will probably buy the M4 as planned in October and just return it for the M5 if it is announced and if it has some feature that seems important to me.)

I’m not expecting M5 Macs of any kind in 2025, and even an M5-based iPad Pro feels iffy. But if you need this now, I would go for it. We’re at the point now where Apple silicon, which has always been excellent on the M-series Macs, is getting more incremental. The differences between an M2 and M3 MacBook Air are minor at best, and even the M4 version is only notable because of the improved webcam. On the Mac Mini, it’s safe to assume the form factor will stay the same, if that matters (for peripherals like add-on docks, etc. that attach to the mini in some way). The only Mac I would wait for now is the Pro series, since the current versions are so thick and heavy. But I bet the M5 Minis, whenever they’re released, will be minor upgrades and nothing to worry about.

? The game is in the palm of your hand

j5 asks:

Have you considered getting a handheld console? If so, what one/s? I’m still enjoying my Switch 1. I’m also not ready to drop $500 for a new one, especially when I’m having fun and get plenty of entertainment from it. I think I’ll get one either when my Switch 1 breaks/can’t hold a charge or when a new Zelda (Link version) comes out for the Switch 2.

So, yes, I think about this a lot. I almost bought various Switches more times than I can count. I am curious about Steam Deck, though I feel like that’s overdue for an upgrade. Lenovo did offer me a Legion Go 2, but I’m in Mexico, s that may not be possible. And the new ROG Xbox Ally gaming handhelds are obviously interesting.

I will likely get some of these things just to write about them. But what’s holding me back to some degree is just screen size, they’re too small, and use case. I game on PCs these days, but always laptops, and that’s good enough for me, plus I like the bigger displays. The game mode that comes preinstalled on the Xbox Ally devices will work in normal Windows 11, so I will be testing that as soon as possible.

But in this case, I already have lots of laptops that can play games, I prefer the screen size, and they are laptops I can use for work or whatever otherwise. I don’t need another device, wouldn’t play games on a plane, don’t commute, etc.

I grew up with the NES and get frustrated with regular consoles with all the frequent updates, UI changes, registering for every game, having to click through several menus before I can just go blow stuff up and escape from the grind for a while. I don’t know if that makes sense?

It does. One of the nice things about modern consoles, PC gaming, and even mobile gaming, is that it’s easier to jump into a game, easier to leave it whenever you want, and then come back to it. (And if you’re in the Xbox ecosystem, you can move between devices, too.) I grew up on Atari, Intellivision, and ColecoVision, and then the Commodore 64 and Amiga 500, and while each was terrific for games, the experiences were slower and less seamless. One of the best games I’ve ever played, Shadow of the Beast for the Amiga, is also one of the worst games I’ve ever played in many ways. It was stupid difficult and too easy to die and the game would just end. But also you had to sit there through this stupid end game animation/movie. There was no skipping forward. Really irritating.

But yeah I think it would be great to see you do some reviews on the handheld consoles and even some retro ones like Ambernic https://anbernic.com/. I think the handhelds right now fall directly into tech news. There’s a thriving tech market in the handheld space.

So, this is also somewhat interesting to me, and I love the game preservation aspect to these retro devices (and emulators, etc.). I’m just not sure I would ever use these things. The size, again. But also just the nature of the games. I have long liked the idea of playing a Call of Duty-type title on a handheld, somehow, and there was that brief moment where the PS Vita was a thing, had the right controls, and maybe that would work. But Sony killed it, and I’m a lot older now, and so the Xbox stuff is of more interest. But I also think I’m well-served by that bigger laptop screen. And I think that’s where I’ll stay for now.

? MagSafe tripod

2414studios asks:

Your magsafe tripod? Who makes it and would you purchase it again?

The one I got is the Nixive MagSafe Mini Tripod, which is more of a clamp than a true tripod. But I don’t recommend getting this exact one. There are tons of clones of this on Amazon, and there are similar things that either are “real” tripods, either mini or full-sized, or can connect to a tripod, which this doesn’t. It’s useful and I do like it, but you should look elsewhere. I am as well, because I want something bigger/taller as well. I will likely get something like that soon.

? Which iPhone?

dremy1011 asks:

Now that the dust has settled on the iPhone 17 release, will you will be purchasing one of the new phones?

I’m not sure.

The common recommendation right now is that the base iPhone 17 is the one to get. I would prefer a bigger screen.

What I’ve read about the iPhone Air is mostly fine, and the battery life limitations are workable. But the single camera and mono speaker are … weird. I don’t know if I could deal with that.

One thing I guess I will do is head over to the one Apple Store in Mexico City, not close to us, and look at the new iPhones. I can’t order a phone online in Mexico and trade-in my existing phone that way, like I do in the U.S., you have to instead bring the iPhone into the Store and they evaluate it there. So I will consider doing that. But these things are much more expensive in Mexico. A base iPhone 17 costs MXN$19,999 ($1090, about $290 more than in the U.S.) while the Air is MXN$25,999 ($1400, $400 more than in the U.S.).

I’ve seen the iPhone 17 Pro Max in Hawaii this week since so many are reviewing it. That thing is a beast. But the 8x telephoto is vaguely interesting. Not sure.

Complicating things, I would like to get a folding phone. And that will be either the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold7 or the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, depending on what reviews of the latter look like. Whatever I do will likely have to wait until November, when we come home from Mexico.

I will visit the Apple Store at some point and decide. I suppose there’s a version of this story where I just skip out on this year’s iPhones.

Also how have you found the final release of iOS 26 and MacOS 26, it seems to be polarizing.

Now that it’s out, I’ve toned down Liquid Glass as much as possible on the iPad, which is where I experience this the most. The Apple TV stuff is minor. And I’m using Pixels now, so the experience on iPhone and Apple Watch is not a daily issue. I did bring a Mac to Mexico, but we’ve been away for the week, and I don’t have it with me, and don’t use it every day regardless. But toning it down is how I will deal with this across the board.

One last curve ball, now that you’ve moved between One UI, iOS and Pixel UI, what are your thoughts on each ones health app and how they present that data? I always preferred Apple Health but that’s mostly down to what I’m used to. I’m moving over to a Pixel 10 Pro XL and looking for insight into how it stacks up.

The Apple Watch and Pixel Watch seem comparable to me. I like the Apple Watch faces much better than what’s on Pixel Watch, but I think I prefer the Pixel overall, and the battery life is better. But the health stuff is interesting. I feel like Apple gets great attention from the medical and research fields, so things seem to be happening first there. I hate Fitbit so much I could scream and Pixel relies on that. I just want some basics around heart rate, steps, blood oxygen, etc.

The problem here, of course, is that these things don’t mix thanks to Big Tech walled gardens. So you can’t use an Apple Watch with Pixel, which would be ideal for me. I wish you could sync an Apple Watch to an iPad, but Apple doesn’t do that for all the obvious lock-in reasons.

In some ways what I really want is a big screen like the current watches, cross-platform compatibility, and multi-day battery life. And by cross-platform, I mean that broadly: Integration not just with the phones but with the underlying services like Apple Health and Google Fit. This is an ongoing thing for me and I could jump ship any time I see such a thing. (I also don’t care about keeping health data over years of time, but that might be a thing for others.)

I would at least look at the latest Samsung Galaxy smart watches. They are better than expected by all accounts. But that assumes you stick to Android.

? Old but not ancient

yb asks:

What do you think of the new Microsoft concession to Windows 10 users within the EU, allowing one extra year of free security support- no need to pay $30, accrue reward points or back up stuff to OneDrive? why so they think they did they do it? did they fear the wrath of the EU commission? do you foresee a chance that Microsoft might further extend this to the rest of the world?

Microsoft has consistently done the right thing with Windows 10 EOL, and that is a weird thing to write, but there you go. Anyone in the world can get an extra year of support simply by backing up once, which is not problematic, and now anyone can get it without even doing that.

Yes, I do think the tying of backup to a Microsoft account (MSA) was an issue in the EU, where they take things like tie-ins and product bundling more seriously. But I also never saw the issue there. Just as you could sign into a PC with an MSA and then create a local account and never use the MSA again, one could back up once to get the year of support and then never do that again either. No big deal.

Not sure about doing that worldwide, but as noted, not sure it matters. This isn’t an onerous request.

This reminds me of the way they mismanaged the Recall app last year, and many other episodes.

I appreciate your comment that after 10 years, Microsoft does not have to provide support for software; this is a fair practice, long established for other companies.

I see both sides of this, but the thing I keep going back to is that anyone actively using a PC every single day is going to want to upgrade regardless of support lifecycles if their PC doesn’t meet the Windows 11 requirements. And those that use a PC intermittently don’t care anyway. The whole notion of support is overblown in the sense that few people ever get “support” directly from Microsoft anyway. But Microsoft also can’t make a good case for just delivering security updates since Windows 10 and 11 are essentially identical in this regard. How difficult would it be to just release those patches for Windows 10 going forward?

But business life is sometimes strange:

We run one project, ending in Jan 2026 – and we have to use Window 7 on a dedicated laptop- for accounting purposes; why? because the cost of the alternatives are not funded, and the time and effort of an upgrade is not justified by the remaining short life of the project.

How do we keep it safe? when we use the laptop, we turn off the Modem, so no internet, and getting downloads by using a USB key. It it cumbersome, but it works.

So, that’s sensible, but it’s also more cautious than most, which is good. I see a lot of out-of-date, out-of-support PCs out in the world. And sometimes in places like doctor’s offices where you feel like maybe they should be more up on this stuff. Maybe there’s an IT department handling this I don’t know about.

The instances in which a large install of out-of-support PCs is compromised in some way are high profile, but this is also rare. For individuals, it just comes down to engagement. If you’re using it in mainstream way every day, it’s time to upgrade. If you’re not, you’re probably going to fine for a long time to come.

On another project, the bespoke software necessary for it can not be used on W11. We are forced to use a stand alone W10 laptop for it; we do not subscribe to a business M365 account. Hopefully we will get an updated version of that software next year, so we can move on.

I wsometimes wonderif this Windows 10 EOL drama is a real problem or a Y2K-type situation. It’s probably somewhere in the middle. But a lot of this is just common sense. The issue is that anything can be amplified so easily these days, so we get contorted warnings about something like Recall that was never going to impact anyone anyway. And that colors the Windows 10 EOL for me, in a way. I’m not sure if this is unique compared to when Windows XP or 7 exited support. But if you pay attention to the tech news, it’s like the end of the world. And the people being the loudest about it aren’t even impacted by it, as usual. (As with Recall.) Are we just drumming up noise as a community here?

I guess we’re about to find out. Except not really since the “real” EOL date is 13 months from now for consumers and up to 3 years from now for businesses. This doesn’t feel like an emergency to me.