Ask Paul: February 8 (Premium)

Happy Friday! This week’s questions run the gamut from PWAs to hardware to support life cycles to home swapping and more.

Why aren’t PWAs more widespread?

davidD asks:

If Apple start to (publicly) take PWA seriously, which it seems maybe they are starting to, will this be the catalyst that gets PWA off the ground? If so, why is the world still so reliant on Apple to do something before embracing it seriously. If not, what will it take?

I had expected a Progressive Web Apps (PWA) explosion last year, and I still feel that this is the right programming model for most mainstream apps that need to run on both the desktop and on mobile. (Increasingly, I feel like Flutter is the right approach for mobile-only, though I understand that Flutter is moving to the desktop too, which will be interesting.) The key to PWA’s success, I feel, is that its been embraced by the top platform makers on both the desktop (Microsoft, with Windows) and mobile (Google, with Android), and of course Google is pushing PWAs on Chrome OS as well.

So now Apple is jumping on board, belatedly as always: We should hear its formal plans at WWDC in June. But given how things have turned out so far, I’m not sure that Apple’s participation will make much of a difference. The issue is that PWA, like anything else that is new, is only rarely going to be used to transform existing apps, as it was with Twitter. Instead, it will be mostly used for new apps. And maybe that explains the slow uptick. I don’t know.

PWA is, in many ways, the opposite of Surface Go: It makes tons of sense and yet has only seen slow uptick. That doesn’t change my assessment of it, just as Go’s seemingly popularity doesn’t change my opinion that the device is garbage. But it is interesting.

Batteries

millerkl61 asks:

The laptops pictured in your recent ‘Love Story’ article (excellent post btw) reminded me of some of the battery issues I experienced with a few older era laptops. For example, some laptop batteries lost their ability to hold a charge sooner than I expected or wouldn’t hold as long of a charge if I frequently charged them well before they were depleted. Years ago, I used a laptop at my desk that I ALWAYS kept plugged in to AC power, which seemed to shorten its battery’s lifespan. How do today’s laptop batteries compare? Should we still avoid partial or over-charging? What do you think will be the next big breakthrough in laptop (and mobile) battery technology?

I’m not an expert here, but my understanding of battery technology is that it hasn’t really changed fundamentally from the time when those photos were taken. What has changed is that most laptop batteries are not user-changeable anymore, making them hard or even impossible to service. And that plays into a planned obsolescence strategy that Apple and various PC makers are very well aware of. These newer sealed portable computers are also much thinner and lighter as a result, so that’s the trade-off. But something that loses power and efficiency over time should be easily replaceable, and we just don’t see that very often these days.

And yet, I do feel like today’s portable PCs do, for the most part, get much better battery life than their predecessors, though I didn’t chart this as carefully years ago as I do now. I suspect that is mostly due to improvements to processors and other mobile chipsets, and to the operating systems that run on them. And PC makers have learned to more efficiently fill empty spaces in portable PCs with layers of battery rather than using a single brick. But the basic battery technology? I don’t believe it’s changed much at all.

Based only on what I’ve read, I’ve stopped leaving mobile PCs and devices plugged in overnight unless the battery power is very lower (or perhaps if I’m traveling the next morning). Batteries do have an effective life cycle, and do get less efficient over time, and constantly powering them does help to speed up both.

Switching to iPhone?

yoshi asks:

Seems like you’re really enjoying the iPhone Xr. Do you think this will be your main phone now?

I don’t think so. I will keep using it for a little while. But I go to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, I’ll almost certainly switch back to the Huawei Mate 20 Pro for its incredible photo-taking capabilities.

But this does raise an interesting point. I made a big deal out of switching from the iPhone to Android (and to what is now called Google Fi) back in late 2017, and while I do prefer Android overall still—and love Google Fi, of course—there is something special about iPhone, and about the iPhone XR in particular. Heading into last fall, I was sort of wondering about doing an every other year thing, where I’d use whatever the latest iPhone was for a year, then whatever Android handset for a year, and so on. But that’s impractical.

So I think it’s more likely that I’ll simply move from phone to phone as needed/wanted. I do feel that it’s important to stay up-to-date on both platforms, and any opinions I have about the relative benefits and deficiencies of each are only as valid as they are current. Maybe that is the right way forward.

For whatever it’s worth, the iPhone XR really is a great phone. That it’s reasonably-priced for a flagship-class handset makes it all the more interesting.

Support timelines

christian.hvid asks:

One of the more appealing things about Microsoft, particularly from an enterprise point of view, is that all products come with a guaranteed lifetime – typically 5 + 5 years. However, as Microsoft is transitioning from a product company to a service company, this no longer seems to apply. It’s not uncommon that Azure services are discontinued or materially changed almost overnight, making it pretty risky to rely on the continued existence of any cloud services except the most basic (I’ve been burned by this more than once). This state of constant flux applies equally to Office 365, but possibly with less severe consequences. Do you believe that Microsoft is setting itself up for another trust crisis in the enterprise by not guaranteeing that the cloud services they promote today won’t be shut down tomorrow?

Yes. And I think that Microsoft needs to figure that out quickly, especially as the old support model starts fading away as those legacy products—Windows 7, Office, etc.—exit their support life cycles. I’m not really up on how Microsoft supports Azure per se, but when I look at Windows 10, I see a constantly-evolving mess. And while one might applaud Microsoft for regularly extending support to meet the needs of its customers, doing so just engenders confusion. Those needs are not a surprise, and there are no enterprises that want to upgrade Windows every two years or whatever. They prefer to leave things alone for a decade when possible.

As more and more of Microsoft’s product portfolio is serviced as an online service, Microsoft will need to formalize a support plan just as it did for its previous-generation on-premises products. I feel like this is happening on a case by case basis right now, and is evolving because of pushback from customers. Figuring this out is overdue.

Home swap logistics

ggolcher asks:

With your experience, I wanted to ask you about Home Swap logistics (even ask if you’d consider writing a guide). We are currently exploring something like that for the summer and would love to pick your brain.

Coincidentally, my wife is starting a home swap blog and it’s just about ready to launch. I’ll be writing short stories about our swaps there, but she’s handling the hard work, just as she does with the actual swaps. We will be doing our 15th home swap this summer (near Amsterdam), so we have a lot of experience to fall back on.

That said, her blog isn’t quite ready yet. If you have specific questions, please email me. And I can get you an early peek at what we’ve written for the blog so far. I’ll let everyone know here when it does launch. Should be soon.

Ambient messaging

karlinhigh asks:

I keep thinking about ambient computing and messaging apps. Is there a trend of people wanting real-time voice communication for devices, and text or asynchronous communication for other people? If so, what’s going on with this?

That’s an interesting question. Real-time voice is absolutely a thing, but asynchronous voice communications … hm. Not sure. Having just fumbled around with my voice mail (because I’m currently using an iPhone with Google Fi, and the latter doesn’t support visual voicemail), I’m kind of imagining asynchronous voice as a sort of voicemail-type system and …ugh. 🙂

But me not being a fan of something doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense, and there are certainly situations where this makes sense, and not just for those that need accessibility. But I’m just not aware of this being a big deal on any of the communications platforms or the assistant ecosystems. I will look into this.

Inside baseball

sabertooth920 asks:

Where do you think Bryce Harper and Manny Machado end up?

As a Red Sox fan, I am much more concerned about what that team is going to do about the pitching situation. Joe Kelley is heading to LA, Craig Kimbrel is unsigned, etc. And then we could lose most of our best (non-pitching) veterans at the end of 2019, and Mookie Betts at the end of 2020.

I can tell you where they’re not going, which is Boston. Which is a shame in both cases. Boston has been weirdly quiet in the off-season.

New Office features

wright_is asks:

Thurrott.com reported new icons for Office towards the end of last year. Any news on when they will actually make an appearance?

I thought that they had appeared, actually, but I think it was only in Office 365 Commercial for those customers that enrolled in the Insider Program. This is very much like the new Simplified Ribbon, which is likewise only available to those same customers right now. I’ll ask: I’m going to be speaking to these folks soon.

Cortana on mobile vs. Cortana on PC

wright_is also asks:

Why doesn’t Cortana for Android/iOS use the same infrastructure as Cortana for Windows? Cortana for Windows has been available for years in German/Germany, yet Cortana for Android/iOS is still not available, with the excuse that Microsoft doesn’t have the cloud server infrastructure in place to support it – given that their big new business model is cloud servers, that seems like a poor excuse.

I sort of assume that Cortana is Cortana is Cortana, and wonder if it’s not something else. Perhaps there is a localization issue that is unique to mobile? Or perhaps Cortana on Windows 10 can lean on the localization work that the Windows team did/does, where that’s not possible on mobile?

I agree that Microsoft’s effort with Cortana, even in locales/languages where it is fully-supported, has been half-hearted. This has been the problem all along.

Thurrott.com highs and lows

Shane asks:

Since launching Thurrott.com what is your proudest part of the site and what is one feature you would like to have on the site.

The thing I’m happiest about isn’t really a site feature, but rather that we have a great team of people, each of whom really steps up in ways that readers don’t often see. Obviously, there are content creators, like Brad and Mehedi, and I interact with them each day. And then there are people who are kind of behind the scenes, some of whom, like Tim, may be familiar to many, but some of whom are not. To a one, they’re all great.

If I had to pick one thing I’m literally proud of, it’s Brad. It was my idea to bring him here, and he has exceeded everyone’s expectations, not just as a writer but in the many other ways he contributes to the company. I enjoy the partnership and friendship, and I know from my many years in the industry how rare this is, and that these kinds of things can’t be forced. I have no idea how or why he puts up with me.

I know, you asked about the site. I was impressed with how quickly we got it up and running, and by “we” I mean mostly Tim. And on an ongoing basis, I’m happy with how responsive everyone is anytime I raise an issue. We were really hamstrung at Penton before when it came to infrastructure and change came slowly or not at all. That’s been a nice change.

The thing I’m least excited about right now is the site’s visual design. Mehedi, in particular, has been pushing to get that fixed, and I have my own ideas as well. That’s not progressing as quickly as I’d like at the moment, but that’s mostly because we have/had bigger issues elsewhere (Petri, mostly). I hope that that changes this year. I bet it does.

Surface volume and revenues

Usman asks:

You mentioned on WW that the Holiday sale pricing for Surface Pro 6 and Laptop 2 helped increase revenues by 30%. I found it surprising to see a new product offered at £300 lower the original launch price a few weeks prior. The current £1030 price is untenable for most people but at £700 (type cover included) for what you get compared to other laptops and iPad Pro is a no brainier.

Totally agree.

Was this used as an opportunity to experiment with their pricing structure or was it a strategy to push unit sales for quarterly earnings? How much margin do they have that allowed them to take that £300 hit per unit?

Microsoft discusses revenues, not unit sales. And revenues grew substantially in the most recent quarter, not because they sold more units at the old pricing tier, but because they sold many, many more units at lower prices. The question here, of course, is whether this is sustainable.

Microsoft has described its Surface business as “low margin,” which is typical for hardware. (Apple may be the sole exception.) But hardware benefits from reduced component costs over time, and you can see how Microsoft lowers prices on hardware like the Xbox One S and X, and assume that much of that is related to costs going down. (Apple even got caught up in this over the holiday season and beyond: Virtually all of its hardware has been on sale, on and off again, since last November.)

Microsoft also magnified these savings with Surface by reusing designs. Their latest products are in many cases virtually identical to those they replace—like Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, and Surface Studio 2—or, in the case of Surface Go reutilize a familiar design in a slightly smaller size. That must ease costs related to manufacturing.

Does that mean that Surface (or Xbox) is “profitable”? No. In fact, I’m sure both lose money. But minimizing costs—and losses—is key, because both businesses are highly visible and reflect well on Microsoft and its brands. They’re “sustainable” in the sense that Microsoft feels it’s worth absorbing the costs. It’s not clear either could exist as standalone businesses.

Has it set a precedent to wait for holiday pricing whenever Microsoft releases a hardware product within the October time-frame? Normally, the previous generation models are reduced at that level, not the version that is recently released.

I don’t think it’s tied specifically to the holidays, though there are obviously lots of sales at that time. As with Apple, I see Surface hardware on sale all the time, including a recent sale at Best Buy. I think that is the new normal, a kind of period of rolling sales over time. Unless it’s new or you really need it right now, you’d be crazy to pay full price for a Surface PC or Xbox.