Ask Paul: September 21 (Premium)

Later than usual, but here's another round of questions and answers before I head off to Florida for Microsoft Ignite.
Azure Sphere hardware
matsan asks:
Have you looked at any Azure-based MCUs (like MT3620 development board) and what do you think?
I have not, but that will change. I'm pretty fascinated by what Microsoft is doing here, and I don't have a good excuse for not looking at this already.
OneDrive questions
Daekar asks:
Have you ever been able to find a full-function OneDrive sync client for Linux? I found a proper one for Android called OneSync, but have failed spectacularly to find anything I can use except the web client on Ubuntu.
Wow, 0-for-2 off the bat sorry. No, I've never really looked for such a thing. Perhaps someone else reading this is aware of a solution?
Also, have you heard any whispers about adding differential sync to OneDrive?
OneDrive does have differential sync capabilities for Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) files only, and I believe it's to support the application's auto-save feature. But yes, Microsoft has discussed expanding this to other types of files. Not sure if this is still on the roadmap, but I will almost certainly see the guy from Microsoft who is responsible for this product (Stephen Rose) next week at Ignite, so I will ask.
Microsoft v. consumer
jchampeau asks:
There seems to be a growing divide between what Microsoft produces and what its customers want them to produce. As you've pointed out many times, nobody wants a new version of Windows every six months. And nobody wants advertising mucking up their start menu. And nobody wants Paint 3D. And nobody wants to have features and options moved one-by-one from the old control panel to the new Settings area. And NOBODY ever wanted to lose control of when and how their machines reboot (I realize they've walked this one back a bit). I'm asking you to wildly speculate here, but what do you think is the root cause of this divide? Is it Steve Jobs-like "They'll know what they want when I show it to them" hubris-ey thinking? Is their telemetry not actually telling them what they're reading from it? Are they just out of touch with their customers? Is it something else I'm not even considering? Perhaps it isn't fair to characterize the divide as "growing" since, as you've noted, they've shown signs in recent releases of spending less time on useless crap and more time on things that are helpful, but years of decline into what I consider a state of terribleness and then slowing the decline doesn't make the current state not terrible. Sorry this is kind of a downer question. ;)
You've kind of encapsulated my current worries neatly here. What I appreciate most about this argument is that it encompasses both businesses and consumers. There are good examples of customer-averse decisions on both sides.

That said, Microsoft isn't really ignoring customer requests per se. It's prioritizing for the future and is cherry-picking the ...