Ask Paul: May 8 ⭐️

Ask Paul: May 8
Happy Friday! It's shaping up to be a busy day, and we fly home from Mexico one week from today. But Ask Paul is blessedly light, so that will buy me some time. Let's jump in.
💻 Above the Surface
Gary asks:

Microsoft Surface laptop 8th edition, either Intel or Qualcomm, any predictions for launch date?

My understanding is that we will see both, and I did see a rumor suggesting that the Intel version, which will be for businesses, may be announced first. But I do expect a Snapdragon X2-based version for consumers as well.

Speaking of which, I'm surprised the rollout of Snapdragon X2 laptops has been so muted. CES came and went with just a few announcements that were lost in all the Intel/AMD announcements. Then Mobile World Congress in February came and went with literally nothing. This whole year, so far, I've been waiting for ... something substantial.

So far, that's not happened yet. There was the ASUS Zenbook A16, which uses the highest-end Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme chip, so that's automatically interesting, and I'm excited to finally see that when we fly home. And then Lenovo has the Snapdragon X2 Elite-based Yoga Slim 7x and the X2 Plus-based IdeaPad Slim 5x that I will review after we get back as well. (Having to fly back and forth with these things is not the greatest, but that's the timing, unfortunately.) And ... that's about it. So far.

Of course, with Surface, there's always that back-of-the-mind worry that Microsoft will finally give up on this product line. It's always been unprofitable, it's post-Pro attempts to create new product categories have all fallen flat, and the product line has been scaled back dramatically.

But it's also overdue for a Snapdragon X2 refresh, of course, Pro and Laptop. And if the business edition uses a Panther Lake processor, that will be quite interesting too. I do think they happen, and soon-ish (maybe by or at Build, which is in June this year). I just hope this isn't the swansong. I really like Surface, and despite all the issues over the years, the current product line at least makes sense.

Tied to this, Qualcomm this week coincidentally launched a Snapdragon Compute 2026 marketing push called "Snapdragon. That's How" this week. There's a new landing page for Snapdragon X/X2 on its website and a new YouTube playlist.
"Meta’s Embrace of A.I. Is Making Its Employees Miserable"

Working at Meta should be enough to make its employees miserable
🎧 Living la vida metadata
spacecamel asks:

On WW, you mentioned that you were going back to the MP3 life for music streaming. Have you considered making your own streaming server on your Synology with your MP3s? There are some very good opensource servers that run on Synology’s Container Manager such as Navidrome that work well. There are apps that work on Android, iOS, TVOS and Windows.

There's a story here, sorry. A long story.

I get a lot of PR outreach, as you might imagine. Hilariously, some of it is...