Ask Paul: August 17 (Premium)

After a jet-lagged and rain-soaked week at home, here’s another set of reader questions to usher in the weekend.

OnePlus 6 update

craigsn asks:

Any updates you can give us on the oneplus 6? You say it is your 2nd phone, so how is it working out?

I love this phone. If the camera were better, I’d replace the Pixel 2 XL with it in a heartbeat.

The issues I have are minor: In addition to the camera, OnePlus uses its own “feed” and I prefer the Google feed. I wish it had the stock Android launcher, but I’ve been experimenting with other launchers, and there’s probably some real benefits (especially around performance) to sticking with the OnePlus version.

The other thing, of course, is Project Fi compatibility. But I’ve ordered a SIM from Consumer Cellular, and it looks like that service offers the same low (~$25 per month) and transparent pricing model as Project Fi, so maybe it’s an option. (I could just enable Project Fi when I travel internationally perhaps.)

It’s so close for me. I feel like this would be an ideal phone for almost anyone else (sans the need to use Verizon or other CDMA services).

Publishing

christian.hvid asks:

I subscribe to a handful of prominent publications like the Guardian, Washington Post and Thurrott.com. But like most people in the Internet age, I don’t rely on two or three sources for my news, but rather 20 or 30. I couldn’t possibly afford subscribing to them all, and even if I did, it wouldn’t want to manage 20-30 subscriptions. But I also don’t want to be subjected to annoying ads or having to sneak behind paywalls.

The obvious middle ground here would be an all-access pass, where you pay a flat monthly fee to a broker, which is then distributed proportionally among affiliated news outlets depending on time spent on the site, articles read or videos watched. But 25 years into online publishing, and with thousands of publications having gone belly-up due to non-paying customers, there is still no sign of anything like this coming. (Or is there? The closest thing I can find is Flattr, but that hasn’t really caught on.) Is this just plain old inertia, or is fighting ad-blockers and erecting paywalls simply a better business model, even if it means sacrificing a large portion of the potential readership?

This is a topic I think about a lot, both as a consumer of information and as a publisher. I have subscribed to so many periodicals of all kinds and other content sources over the years. But it’s changed a lot, too. One thing I noticed was a big drop in quality at the local level (like the Boston Globe, when we were living there) as news just became too expensive to produce. The Internet has given us a great ability to aggregate content. But it’s made it harder for content producers to monetize as well.

I still subscribe to The New York Times, but I killed my Wall Street Journal subscription last year after (I think) 18 years as a subscriber. The reason? The paper’s tech stories were ridiculously bad, especially the insipid video features. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I talk about killing my NYT subscription too, for similar reasons: Their “State of the Art” columnist is worthless. But I’ve seen two signs of life there recently: They have an excellent “Smarter Living” section/newsletter, which everyone should subscribe to. And their Wirecutter service has emerged as a sort of Consumer Reports for (mostly) tech. I find them to be quite credible.

But with regards to paying for content and getting content from many sources, I feel like the future there isn’t so much us having a direct involvement with publishers/content creators, but rather with us using some content aggregation service/app that does that for us. For example, the recently-relaunched Microsoft News mobile app is actually pretty good (compared to, say Google News, which fell off a quality cliff this year, or other similar apps like SmartNews). You can read NYT and WSJ articles in this app, for example, without paying for a subscription.

There’s a lot tied to this. Trust in the source you’re reading. And attention span: We’re being conditioned to read short, nonsense stories (or, worse, slideshows) and this is making us non-critical thinkers. I really worry about these issues.

Office vs. Office 365

Craig P asks:

Retired guy here, still use Word and Excel occasionally on my PC. It is the 2007 version of Home and Student. I’m thinking of upgrading, since I believe the 2007 version no longer gets security patches. Undecided between getting the 2016 version of Home and Student, which would be $149 one time cost, or the single user Office 365, which is $69/year.

There are a lot of questions in there, but what this boils down to, really, is whether you should pay for a new version of an office productivity suite, subscribe to Office 365, or go with a free online solution.

There are benefits to each approach. But since testing whether Office Online or Google Docs will work for you is literally free, I strongly recommend doing that first. I suspect you will find that free wins out, and that these offerings will meet your needs. In fact, I’ve been sitting on a post called “You Should Never Pay for an Office Suite” for months. That’s pretty much where I’m at right now.

How does Thurrott.com make money?

paulkbiba asks:

I apologize if this is an impertinent question, but how does this site make money? I don’t see any advertising. I’m a premium member, but I find it hard to picture that there are enough premium members to give the two of you a good income. I find your model very puzzling.

We have several thousand Premium subscribers who pay monthly or annually and do not see ads, but the site is funded otherwise with advertising, like any other website. We do have occasional other sources of income, such as sponsorships as well. The way I’d put it is, we scrape by, but things have improved each year so far. I won’t be retiring anytime soon, for sure.

I am not a celebrity

drjohnnyray asks:

Just curious, do you get recognized when you travel? How do you usually handle that???

When I’m at a Microsoft event or trade show, it’s a bit different. But no, not usually. I’m not a celebrity or anything.

The handful of times I’ve been recognized out in the world when I’m with my wife, family, or friends is usually pretty embarrassing.

Pennsylvania

hrlngrv asks:

Not tech related: have you and your family seen all the sites to see in Philadelphia and Gettysburg? What parts of eastern Pennsylvania do you like best?

We’ve not explored the area as much as I’d like or expected. We’ve only been to Philadelphia once since the move, and we would like to visit more often. (We almost died trying to get there during one of the big March snowstorms.) We’ve visited and like local places like Bethlehem and Easton, and will do more of that kind of thing. We’ve been to Amish country once and are probably done with that. Gettysburg is on the list: I’ve never been. There are some train museums I’d like to visit. And we have vague plans to see the New Jersey coast and visit nearby cities like Baltimore. We’ve been to New York several times, of course.

In some ways, the Swedish family we home-swapped with probably saw more of the area in three weeks than we have in a year. But I am surprised at how well we’ve adapted to the local Emmaus/Allentown/Lehigh Valley area. We know our way around, and that happened more quickly than I’d imagined.

As important, it feels like home. When I return from a road trip to Boston, say, or a flight from wherever, it feels like coming home, and not like some temporary way-station. I wasn’t sure this would be the case.

Tech cooperation

ChristopherCollins asks:

How do you feel about the sad state of tech company cooperation.

There are signs of life. But the underlying promise of technology—that it will make our lives better—has never been fully realized. And it can’t be when companies act in their own best interests instead of on behalf of their customers’ best interests.

There are many examples, and I’m sure anyone reading this can come up with many from their own lives. I’m not a fan of one-way dead-end streets, like so much of the Apple ecosystem is. Sonos speakers, currently, just aren’t compatible enough with the products and services I use to justify their lock-in and high prices. Windows 10 S/S mode, which is furthering some corporate aim, and has zero to do with what makes sense for users right now. Etc.

Some of what you experienced this week (I left that out here) is just technology being technology. Things fail. We don’t know why. But I think the broader issue is that technology is often designed specifically to push you down a path. We need to reject those things. We need to vote with our buying and usage.

Microsoft and privacy

matsan asks:

Why is Microsoft not respecting my privacy settings?

Just one more annoyance with the current state of Microsoft. In the locally installed Office I have disabled “Help Us Improve”. Why do I still have to see annoying “We love your feedback” messages popping up? Is this something I have to live with? Am I too thin skinned?

I’m not sure if I expressed this properly in Replacing Windows? (Premium) but this behavior is really souring my relationship with Windows. It counteracts all the feel-goods around the lack of new nonsense features in the two most recent Windows 10 versions.

And it has to be deliberate. For all the rah-rah nonsense around Windows, what Microsoft really wants is for its customers to move along to other platforms so it can focus on its real future. It’s a weird dynamic.

If it’s not deliberate, than the decision makers behind Windows are the stupidest people on earth. I have a hard time imagining any alternative. This thing is specifically designed to be annoying. And it’s just getting worse over time.

That recent location thing with Google? Microsoft does exactly the same thing in Windows 10: It hides controls in different parts of Settings specifically so you will not find them all. It’s unbelievable.