Ask Paul: April 6 (Premium)

This week, I tackle some new questions plus provide updates on the evolution of Thurrott Now and the timing of Ask Paul.

Changes coming to Thurrott Now

We created a site feature called Thurrott Now which addresses a concern I had raised when I first came to BWW a few years back: I wanted a blog-like way to address smaller topics that I felt didn’t warrant the time it would take for me to write up personally. So we have this widget in the upper-right corner of the home page, and it required a bunch of custom coding, etc.

Well, after using this thing sporadically for several months, I finally came to the conclusion that Thurrott Now wasn’t the right approach. I have a hard time filling it with several links each day, for starters. But worse, it’s this additional “thing” and it just takes up space on the homepage. Which is too cluttered and, yes, will be redesigned.

So I came up with a solution, and I’m interested in your feedback. My idea is that we remove the Thurrott Now widget from the home page ahead of our planned redesign—in fact, we could implement this fairly immediately—and I will instead create Premium forum posts for those topics that used to go into Thurrott Now.

There is some internal (to BWW) debate about whether these forum posts should be under a new “Thurrott Now” topic, but my opinion is that we already have all the relevant topics we need, and that my posts should simply coexist alongside everyone’s else. I don’t personally care about Thurrott Now as a brand/thing/whatever.

So that’s my plan, at least. Let me know if this makes sense to you, please.

Thanks! —Paul

The timing of Ask Paul

Just a heads-up about the timing of this article series, because I know there are questions. I do intend to post an “Ask Paul” each Friday, and, yes, I often don’t think to write a forum post for the questions until later in the week than is ideal. Sorry about that.

But in those weeks where I’m not just traveling but literally unavailable for the entire Friday that week, I’ll be skipping Ask Paul. It’s just too time-consuming to do otherwise.

In a weird coincidence, we just hit two Fridays in a row where this was the case: On Friday, March 23, I was at the local Microsoft field office for an all-day developer user group event. And last week, on Friday, March 30, I was in Colorado looking at potential colleges for my daughter. (This was literally two 8-hour full days of being out of the loop, and that the Microsoft reorg and Terry’s dismissal also happened concurrently was the worst possible timing for me.)

Long story short, I do intend to do this every week. It will not literally be every single week, however. Because I’m human, etc.

Thanks for understanding. –Paul

Samsung Galaxy S9+ review

Daninbusiness asks:

Will you do a full review of the Samsung Galaxy S9+? Or are you leaving it with the First Impressions article?

Yes, I will publish a full review. My goal is to have that done by the end of the weekend.

I can give you the high-level conclusion now, however. This is clearly the single best smartphone on the market today. Period. It’s amazing.

Microsoft Teams

davidD asks:

Given Microsoft’s many failures in recent memory, what have they done differently to make Teams such a well-regarded, critically acclaimed & successful (at least in its field) product?

It’s funny, I’ve asked myself the same question.

Coincidentally, we (BWW) are moving from Skype (and related collaboration tools like Basecamp) to Teams and Office 365 soon. And we’re talking about doing a set of “real field reviews” to document our challenges in doing so. It’s not like Teams suddenly solves all of anyone’s problems.

But with regards to your question, Teams is unique in that it is the first new Office app to arrive post-Office 365 that is truly successful. The adoption rate is off the charts, and the feedback looks mostly positive, with Microsoft quickly addressing the most obvious complaints (like guest access).

The simple answer may be that Teams just addresses a very common, real-world need, whereas other newish Office 365 apps are useful but not as broadly-useful. It also speaks to a younger part of the workforce, where legacy tools like Exchange and SharePoint do not.

The complexity of having so many different ways within Office 365 to communicate and collaborate is something that Microsoft will need to address over time, however.

The Last Jedi

StevenLayton asks:

Now you’ve seen it, what did you think of The Last Jedi? How does it fit into your ranking of the films?

I’m of two minds on this one. Maybe more than two.

My central issue here is that the new trilogy’s storyline was not written as a cohesive arc that occurs over three movies. Instead, JJ Abrams wrote a clear homage to the original Star Wars, which was OK, and then left it to Rian Johnson to do whatever he wanted for the second one. The result is kind of a mess: Plot lines that seemed important in “The Force Awakens” were quickly dropped, the central villain of the trilogy was easily and unceremoniously killed, and then the whole thing was just handed back to Abrams so that he, or other scriptwriters, could figure out what to do next. I’d have liked this to have been better planned out. It feels like one of those writer’s workshop things where someone writes one sentence and then the next writer writes the next off the top of their head.

The movie is also too long, with far too many characters and moving parts, and far too many callbacks to “The Empire Strikes Back.” The whole casino bit was a pointless waste of time and really dragged out the running time. It was just too much.

The saddest bit, of course, was the death of Carrie Fisher. The plan was clearly that her end would come in the next movie. But what blows my mind here is that they could have saved this by having Princess Leia, and not Admiral Holdo, sacrifice herself by teleporting the last ship in the fleet into the enemy dreadnaught. Then, Luke could have had his virtual battle with Kylo Ren … and then not died. And then Luke could have been the focus (and big sacrifice) of the next movie. This seems obvious and it looks like it would have been easy(ish) to implement given the circumstances. Now they have to deal with Leia’s character somehow, either via an off-screen death (terrible) or another actress (probably also terrible).

All that said, it was actually a pretty great Star Wars movie in its own way. And I appreciate that Johnson went in daring directions that challenge our assumptions of what a Star Wars movie can be. Many of the sequences are simply excellent and stand up well to the best that Star Wars has offered in the past. And as far as where it ranks among the movies, it’s actually still near the top. It’s a better movie than “Jedi,” “Phantom Menace,” and “Attack of the Clones,” by far, and like Empire, I think it’s better (overall) than its predecessor, too.

I’ve only watched it, and various commentaries, about four times now. I’ll need more time with it to really figure out where it sits in the scheme of things. And, of course, the next movie will help determine that too. I am worried about the flow of things. But that said, the prequel trilogy was even worse in that regard—the entire Clone Wars happens between Episode II and III? Realy?—so it could be just fine.

Non-Windows platforms

Polycrastinator asks:

With Microsoft’s repositioning of Windows, I’ve been thinking about other platforms. What would Apple need to do to make iOS a viable replacement to Windows (or OSX) for the majority of users? What it would take for Chrome OS seems pretty clear (more and better web apps, and portable web apps), but for iOS it seems like it’s more of a limitation of the platform and I’m interested in what you think it would take?

I kind of obsess over this stuff. 🙂

I feel like Chrome OS is much closer to being a viable desktop computing platform. That the addition of Android apps is really about addressing that issue I raise with Windows 10 S, the “last app” gap. That is, the system does almost everything you need, but there’s this one app that you do need that isn’t there and it ruins the experience. Now that we have Chrome-based tablets and 2-in-1s, the platform is pretty much there.

Apple didn’t really start to address its central iPad Pro/iOS inefficiencies with regards to productivity until iOS 11. But the usage model just doesn’t lend itself to traditional productivity scenarios. That Apple is rumored to be bringing iPad apps to the Mac makes sense to me, and it addresses the same concerns that Android apps on Chrome OS do. It makes sense. So I think a macOS + iPad apps future makes more sense as a Windows replacement than does an iPad/iOS for most people. The iPad is mostly about consumption, and that isn’t changing.

Of course, for Apple to address the majority of the market, it’s going to need to lower prices. It could easily do this, but I see no indication that they will do so.

Visual Studio Code for Markdown

Usman asks:

You’ve mentioned that you were testing out different mark down editors,VS Code has a markdown editor and they’ve recently added live preview, have you given it a try?

Yes.

Visual Studio Code is OK as a Markdown editor for writers: You need to install a few plug-ins for things like spell-checking, etc. But the bigger issue is that you have to spend a lot of time configuring the editor. The way Code does this is ponderous and it doesn’t sync all these settings between installs, which is an issue for people like me who use a lot of different PCs. I’ll keep screwing with it, but I’ve still not found anything as good as MarkdownPad for writing.

Paul Thurrott’s Short Takes

AnOldAmigaUser asks:

Is “Short Takes” done?

No. As noted above, I was out of the office for two weeks in a row. These things happen.

Today’s Short Takes is available here.

ARM-based tablets

hrlngrv asks:

Will there be any ARM-based Windows tablets? Or are ARM-based Windows devices only going to be laptops?

The Envy x2 is actually a tablet that supports both pen and touch, so one might argue that this has already happened. But the plan for Windows 10 on ARM was always to expand to additional form factors over time.

But … I’m wondering if this work continues, frankly. With Terry gone, it’s not clear that others will see the benefits of this platform. We’ll see what happens here, but I feel like Intel could improve its standby numbers and put a stake right into the heart of Windows 10 on ARM.

Google Hangouts Meet

helix2301 asks:

Do you think Google Meets can be a competitor with companies like GoToMeeting?

For those unfamiliar, Meets is the enterprise version of Google Hangouts, and it enables video meetings via the web and mobile.

But … Yes. I feel like Google has all the pieces it needs to kill Skype, too, and at least compete with Teams/etc. I’m curious why Google’s stuff hasn’t been more successful. That said, I’ve not used it. And with my parent company moving to Office 365, I may not try it anytime soon.

Also, someone commented about advertising, but Google doesn’t put ads in its G Suite products.