Ask Paul: February 6 ⭐️

Happy Friday! Let’s kick off the weekend with some great reader questions. After all, I have a new game to play.

? The hybrid dream remains elusive

dremy1011 asks:

Is your wife still using the Pixel 10 Pro Fold? If so, what are her thoughts on it? You also mentioned that you prefer the iPhone (at least for now), I thought for sure the two in one nature might have been enough to replace your iPhone and iPad!

There’s a lot that goes into this and I do have reviews of both phones coming, hopefully soon. But the short version is that (mostly) eliminating camera quality from the iPhone/Pixel comparison made me realize that I do prefer iOS, overall, to Pixel Android. (To be fair, a big part of this is hardware as well.) And that I would very much prefer a folding iPhone, which does not exist, to a folding Android phone of any kind.

That said, the Pixel Fold is successful as a folding smartphone in that it works as expected. And I think many can and will replace two devices, meaning a traditional smartphone and a mini-tablet, with this or a similar folding phone.

I can’t. I used an iPad mini for several months last year and it’s a fine device, but I need a bigger screen. I’ve been using an 11-inch iPad Air since, and that works well. But now that iPadOS 26 is out, I kind of wish it were bigger for the laptop-like use cases. Regardless, I find myself back in that familiar “right tool for the job” place. I personally prefer a standalone phone and a standalone tablet.

My wife could switch to the Fold and probably will once I review it. But she’s now using my former iPad mini to read in the mornings, having previously used her phone (Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, I think). All things being equal, I don’t think she cares about the iPad per se, and she still reads on a Kindle Colorsoft at night before bed. But the reason I had her try the iPad in the first place was because we’re paying for whatever Apple One subscription, which the kids both use as well, and I thought she would really like Apple News. Which she does. And you need an Apple device to read Apple News.

That won’t prevent her from switching the Fold for a phone, and she’ll like using the bigger screen when it makes sense to do so. But I don’t see her dropping the iPad mini or Kindle. So in a way, a primary selling point of the Fold, its ability to replace two devices, won’t be a factor.

I think that’s OK. The one thing I really paid attention to with the Fold was whether the ability to open it up and have that larger display would matter in a day-to-day sense. And it does. I’ll go into more detail in my review, but in part because we’re getting older and our eyesight isn’t great, having that bigger display really does make a difference.

So maybe I will use some future folding phone whether it’s an iPhone or something else. But I suspect I will also keep using an iPad. And a laptop. And that’s just me being stuck in my way of doing things to some degree. But that’s OK, right? It doesn’t really matter, and having an expandable display of whatever kind is pretty spectacular. I’m looking forward to having a laptop, for example, with a display that expands to the left and right and maybe up as well when opened.

? PCs and video games

jrzoomer asks:

Paul where are you at with PC Gaming? You were into it many years back, then became console only I believe, now you’re back into PC gaming again? Give us a rundown of your adventures over time and where your thoughts are as we stand today.

I wrote about much of that history in A Few Thoughts on Portable PC Gaming (Premium) a few summers ago. But when I moved from the Amiga to the PC in the early 1990s, I recall downloading games like Jill of the Jungle (by Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney, go figure) from a local BBS so I could see what was out there. At that time, PCs had one advantage over the Amiga from a gaming perspective: flight simulators, for whatever reason, always looked and played better. But people like Sweeney and Id’s John Carmack managed to wring some incredible graphics and performance out of the most inept PC hardware, and off we went. Castle Wolfenstein 3D was impressive, but then DOOM and the entire 1990s happened. And I was a PC gamer.

I remained a PC gamer until the release of the Xbox 360 in 2005. I had an OG Xbox, of course, and friends with PlayStation and PS2, but the 360 is what put consoles over the top for me. Transitioning from keyboard/mouse was difficult, just as difficult as previously transitioning from keyboard to keyboard/mouse had been (which I did because of Quake). But with that hurdle cleared, I played on Xbox through the Xbox Series X|S, until early 2023 when I put the console aside, mostly to fight my Call of Duty addiction. Three months turned into forever, pretty much. Sometime later in 2023 or maybe 2024, I went back to the PC.

The part of this story that I’ve not discussed enough, I think, is tied to an issue I have elsewhere in life. That is, I am a lifelong reader, love to read, and yet I find myself having a shorter attention span these days. I struggle to read long-form content sometimes and so I try to reread long books that I loved in the past, sometimes successfully (The Stand, The Lord of the Rings, the original Foundation trilogy, etc.) and sometimes less so (It, for example).

With video games, there have been several eras and game style transitions. The Amiga was strong in sideways scrolling titles with parallax effects, but it wasn’t as good at the first person games that Epic, Id, and others made in the 1990s. Online play transformed gaming for me, as well, starting with DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D and games like that. By the time I started playing Call of Duty, originally on PC (and originally as Medal of Honor), the single player experience was everything, and then it morphed into being both single and multiplayer. And then Call of Duty: Modern Warfare arrived, and I didn’t start the multiplayer experience until I finished the single player campaign and I was immediately behind: Multiplayer had become so involved and complicated that I didn’t even know where to start. But since then, multiplayer has just taken over. I’ve skipped the single player part of most recent games.

There’s a reason for that. I could always jump in and out of multiplayer quickly, so if I was playing and something important happened, work-related or whatever, I could just drop it immediately. This made playing single-player games more difficult because you have to pay attention and then retain what you’re doing and where you’re at in the game. Years go by and this is like reading. I’m still interested. But I find myself not enjoying it as much.

So I’ve been trying to branch out a bit. The most obvious starting point was games sort of like Call of Duty, multiplayer titles like Fortnite, PUBG, and Battlefield 6. I’ve done what I do with books and replayed older single player games I always loved, like Half-Life and Half-Life 2/Black Mesa, and that’s been pretty good. But I also want to try new games. This came up recently, but I like horror books and movies, so I’ve played a few Resident Evil games in recent years with mixed results. And I just started playing Silent Hill f, though I think I might like a traditional Silent Hill game better. I don’t know. (If you like this kind of thing and haven’t seen it, the live-action, movie-like trailer for the next Resident Evil game looks amazing.)

I have enormous libraries of games I can play across Steam, GOG, and Epic Games, and I dived a bit into some of them too. I have the two Alan Wake games, Control, pretty much all the Resident Evil games, various modern-era Wolfenstein titles, The Evil Within, the BioShock collection, the Metro games, and many, many others. And I try, sometimes. I guess it’s like riding a bike, but it’s difficult to find the time/incentive.

Related to the above, justme asks:

You talked recently about trying to look at/for games that pique your interest that are not CoD. With your love of Star Wars, have you ever considered either Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order or its sequel Star Wars Jedi: Survivor? While both have been out for several years – IMHO, they have aged fairly well.

I hadn’t, but watching the trailers for both convinced me to try, so thanks for that. These games are both inexpensive now, too, which helps. (You can buy a bundle with both games on Steam right now for just $10.42, so I did that.) I’ve always loved Star Wars, of course, and I have played several Star Wars games over the years. But it’s been a while. And these do look very interesting.

Thanks! I will dive into the Fallen Order this afternoon, assuming nothing else is happening. It’s installing as I write this.

?️ It’s like a second screen. On your face

wright_is asks:

Have you looked at the Viture glasses that you got from Richard, what are your impressions? I just dug mine out again and I am trying to use them. I think they are a great solution, especially when travelling, I don’t need to lug around my 44″ display with me, it would also make my desk more tidy that having a huge display stuck on it, or multiple displays.

The Viture glasses are very interesting. I’m sure many think of them as some sort of AR/VR solution. But they’re literally a second display for any device–phone, tablet, PC, whatever–that supports USB-C-based video out. And that, to me, is much more useful. My eyes are such that I am not comfortable wearing them while working at home, but they’re great for plane rides, and I’ve watched a few movies with them. It’s difficult to judge the perceived size because there’s a “distance” element. But comparing them to our 60-inch TV from the couch, about 10 feet away, the Viture screen seems about the same size. It’s closer, visually, so I guess it’s maybe the equivalent of a 30-inch display? Something like that.

I tried playing Call of Duty with them and it works fine with just a bit of additional lag. But I move around a lot when I play, apparently, which I only noticed because the screen moved with me, and that can be almost nauseating. Either way, the entertainment use case seems to work best for me. I have to wear contacts to use the Viture glasses and though you can correct the focus on each lens independently, it’s never quite crisp enough for me for normal productivity work (writing, reading, coding, whatever). Newer models probably work better in that regard.

My only real problem is I need corrective lenses and I haven’t gotten around to ordering the prescription inserts, the dioptric adjustment doesn’t go high enough for my eyes, unfortunately, which is the problem I have with all VR headsets to date, with the possible exception of the Apple headset, if I could afford it and the lenses… I still think the Apple headset is closer to what I am looking for, but I don’t need it to be intelligent, tethering it to my Mac would be ideal, if it cut the cost down by a couple of grand…

Yeah, this may be similar to what I’m experiencing. At some point, I would like to try a newer version, but I wouldn’t want to pay for that unless I was sure it had improved enough to be usable for me. Still, I am more impressed by these glasses than I had expected, and I can see a version of me using them more if I could get the clarity I need.

? Go, Pats!

spacecamel asks:

Any analysis/predictions on the “big game” this weekend? How many touchdowns do you think Seattle will win by?

Football is tough because it’s one and done, and there are many examples, too many, where the lesser team has come out ahead. So we’ll see. But I’m so far removed from the Patriots at this point that I don’t know anyone on the team aside from the coach, so it’s an unknown to me. Seattle is even less interesting. So this isn’t the Super Bowl anyone wanted, and it could go either way.

? Proton is the Little Tech gateway drug

Markld asks:

One month in and happily using everything Proton makes.

Nice. I love Proton and have a Proton Unlimited account, but I still only use Proton Pass and Proton Authenticator daily, plus Proton VPN as needed here in Mexico. (Actually, I am experimenting with using it full-time on my iPad on this trip, so far so good.) If it wasn’t for Google Workspace, which is in some ways a need but in others also worth having, I could see moving further into the Proton ecosystem.

You reported 100 million was the amount of users in August 2024?, but it must have changed, any ideas?

That was the last update, and I don’t see anything more recent with regard to a user count. It seems like the company’s reorg back then set it up nicely for the future, at least. I feel like they’re going to be around for the long haul and will escape the enshittification that’s ruining Big Tech.

? Snapdragon X2 on desktop PCs

lenh51 asks:

I was hoping that some manufacturers would announce full sized desktop PCs using the Snapdragon X2 chips. To date, I cannot find anything except some mini PCs and some all in ones. Have you heard anything about any potential full sized desktops coming to market anytime soon? Thanks.

No, but Qualcomm stated explicitly that there will be a variety of desktop PC designs, and it’s only a matter of time. Of course, that was going to be true of the first generation as well and as far as I can tell, only a single mainstream PC, and it is a small form factor (SFF), ever shipped. That it’s not fantastic is both odd and unsettling.

Full-sized desktop PCs aren’t really volume sellers these days, so I assume the first X2 desktops will be SFF or NUC-type devices, not towers. Plus, there is no expansion card standard for Snapdragon, and no dedicated graphics option, though the Extreme SKUs should be pretty impressive.

And Nvidia has confirmed that it is working with MediaTek on new Arm-based Windows PCs. There will be two Nvidia Arm CPUs, the N1 and N1X, and these appear to be portable designs like Snapdragon X, Intel Core Ultra, and AMD Ryzen AI 300/400. But given Nvidia’s dominance in graphics, they could be beefier and perhaps warrant the desktop PC treatment too. I am curious.