Ask Paul: April 20 (Premium)

Happy Friday, everyone. Here’s another round of Q&A to jump-start the weekend.

PWA interviews

Chris_Kez asks:

A few months ago you published an interview with some PWA guys, and around that time I seem to recall you referencing another interview that you had in the works. Is that right? I would love to see more of that type of content; you talking with people “in the trenches”– whether it is developers or device makers or designers or whatever– and combining your perspective with their specific content knowledge. I’m sure you’ll talk to a lot of Microsoft people on and off the record at BUILD, but is there any chance you might line up a few developers or other attendees to get their perspective coming out of the event?

The interview Chris is referring to is found in my article Microsoft’s Bold Plan to Bring PWAs to Windows 10 in case you can’t find it on the site. It’s worth a (re)read given that this stuff is finally happening now.

Regarding me referencing another interview at the time, I don’t recall that. But I agree that talking again with Microsoft and/or developers about PWAs now makes tons of sense. And Build is right around the corner. So I’ll see what I can do.

Great idea, thanks.

Pixelbook + Windows?

dcdevito asks:

Paul, what are your thoughts about the recent discovery that Pixelbook/Chromebooks may have the ability to run Windows?

I am following this with great interest. I almost wrote on this topic this week, but it’s not 100 percent clear what the AltOS mode is for.

I believe the rationale behind this is so that developers can use a Pixelbook. The question is whether that means “while using Windows or Linux or both.” A lot of the speculation is around Windows, but that seems like a strange thing for Google to enable.

That said, the Pixelbook is a fantastic laptop/2-in-1, and despite some goofiness (like the foam padding on the wrist-rests, I really love the design. And, as terrible as it is it even contemplate this, it would give Surface Pro/Laptop a nice run for the money, so to speak.

Also, this AltOS thing could just be about Fuschia. Which would be a “sad trumpet” ending to this whole thing.

Office 365/Teams transition

helix2301 asks:

I know your company is moving over to office 365 from Google just wondering how that has been going and is it done yet?

Also, will asks:

This week you and Brad have started to use Microsoft Teams and it sounds like it has not all been “rainbows and unicorns”. You mentioned in one of the FRD posts this week that now that you are using Teams is lacking and needs some serious work. Microsoft said at Ignite that they are working to get Skype for Business and Teams merged toegther by the end of the this year. With delays being more and more common with Microsoft I am guessing this will not happen by 2018. We are just started to look at using Teams for our organization so I am curious what your feedback is?

The transition is … happening. We’re using Teams now instead of Skype, and Planner instead of a tool called Basecamp (that we all loathed). These things take time. And my initial impression of Teams is not overly positive. It’s kind of goofy how much of the UI is just poorly-done, especially given that it’s basically just Skype plus a few extra features. I did use Teams on my phone for a conference call yesterday for the first time.

The thing is miss most from Skype, ultimately, is multi-windowing. It’s really a necessity on the PC desktop. And even the integration of OneNote into Teams is an example of that: I want to see the notes while we are doing the podcast. What a stupid limitation.

Still to come is our transition to the email/calendar/etc. part of Office 365: I assume we’ll be doing scheduling, etc. that way soon. But this is all via new BWWMediaGroup.com addresses: My [email protected] account will likely remain on Google because moving that would be pointless. Anyway, there is still a lot to do.

We’ve talked internally (and I think publicly) about documenting some of this. What I’d really like to see is some of the less forward-facing people we work with discuss their experiences. Maybe an interview format or on video. We will discuss this again soon. (Actually, we’re meeting today, which is off-schedule.)

Andromeda

KingNerdTheThird:

You and Brad have been apparent about how you two think Andromeda might (well, probably) not do so well once released to the public. I was wondering if you see this device as something that you, personally, would have a use for?

As I noted last week, I did finally receive some more up-to-date information about Andromeda from two sources: Andromeda is a dual-screen device running Windows 10.

So … do I need or want such a thing?

No.

But I should reveal something else I had heard about Andromeda, and I’m not sure why I didn’t add this last week: It is aimed at productivity, not at content consumption. That is literally all I heard on that point, but I feel safe guessing that it will be a note-taking device, where you can write on one screen and read on the other simultaneously.

The issue for me is that the way I work is to type. So I need a traditional PC, and that’s true whether you’re talking desktop or portable.

I feel like Andromeda will be interesting to some niche audiences: Enthusiasts, obviously, but also student and corporate note-takers. But assuming I’m correct about its purpose, it just doesn’t seem like something I would use.

OneNote for Windows 10

hrlngrv asks:

UWP OneNote requires a MSFT account, doesn’t it? So not only no way to use it with local/offline notebooks (which could be in folders synced with DropBox, Google Drive, Box, iCloud, etc), also no way to use with local accounts unless also signed in using a MSFT account. Not only a Windows 10 exclusive, also a MSFT account exclusive. I guess OneNote users don’t get to define privacy for themselves.

Yes, OneNote for Windows 10 requires a Microsoft account (or an Azure Active Directory, or AAD, account in corporate and educational environments).

But I don’t find this to be unreasonable: A Microsoft account is free, and while I see your point about documents being available in whatever cloud storage system you prefer, OneNote doesn’t create documents. It’s a service, really. No one complains that you can’t use Google Docs with OneDrive, for example.

Regardless, it’s unlikely that many OneNote users are working outside the Microsoft ecosystem. And the “ability” to store notes locally (on a PC or device) is more of a liability, in my opinion. It’s 2018, this is the modern and correct way to do this.

Intel NUC

Chris_Kez asks:

What ever happened with your Intel NUC? I’m seriously considering the Kaby Lake based NUC 7 i5.

This is interesting timing, as I was just researching the new Intel NUCs.

But I still use my NUC. It’s not my primary PC anymore, though I guess it could be. Instead, I’m using it for the Windows 10 Field Guide. It’s running Windows 10 Pro in S mode (Redstone 4), and it’s the PC I use for virtually all of the screenshots in the book. You can’t really see it in my podcasts, but if I reached out with my right hand, I could touch it.

Windows 10 without crapware

ChristopherCollins asks:

Do you ever see a Windows 10 Core SKU? By Core, I mean just Windows 10 and no Candy Crush, fluff, etc…

I had to move my radio automation system to Windows 10 Pro and it took me forever to uninstall all the junk. I’d love a basic Windows 10, where you could pick the components at setup. It could have made my operation a lot leaner.

I mean, I dream about this. I have vague hopes, probably unfounded, that Windows’ new masters at Microsoft will see the folly of the previous monetization strategy and stop doing it. In fact, that was the point of my recent article What Led to this Mess (Premium).

The thing is, when it comes to crapware, whether it comes from PC makers or Microsoft, the thing that we want—a cleaner version of Windows—is the more expensive thing. That is, the reason crapware exists isn’t to make our lives worse (though it does). It’s to make the thing we’re using make financial sense. So if Microsoft just removed all that crap, it would take a financial hit. In other words, the Windows 10 Core you’re suggesting would cost more, not less.

Would I pay Microsoft some amount of money for a clean version of Windows? Maybe. But Dell tried this strategy years ago, remember? And I believe that ended in failure.

Like you, I spend time after every Windows install removing crap. It’s not super-hard to do, but the various Settings changes I want to make around “suggestions”/etc. is a bit more tedious. We could make some kind of a system backup, of course, and restore from that. But with Windows 10 changing so quickly, it’s hard to not just use PC Reset. What we need, maybe, is a way to edit that restore partition to prevent the crap from ever installing. Surely this is a thing. It should be.

Anyway. I hope things change. I’m not super-positive that they will.