Ask Paul: August 9 (Premium)

I’m back from The Netherlands, a little bleary-eyed and ready for a weekend of rest. But first, here’s Ask Paul.

Proprietary parts in PCs

karlinhigh asks:

I am seeing a trend of desktop computer manufacturers moving away from industry-standard components. Proprietary power connectors, for example, where replacing a desktop’s power supply can mean scouring eBay for the exact part number match, because the manufacturer doesn’t keep their special-design parts in stock. In one case, I started stocking adapter cables, only to find that the next generation of machines had a DIFFERENT proprietary power connector … Does anyone know of manufacturers or product lines that stay with industry-standard components, so failed parts can be replaced with off-the-shelf items and upgrades don’t have nasty compatibility surprises?

I assume you’re referring to desktop computers specifically? It seems like most laptops these days use standard parts; power cables are now mostly USB-C based, except on very high-end/gaming PCs that require more power. This is something I’ve not really thought about in a while, but given the relatively low volume of desktop-class PCs, it seems like moving to standardized parts would be even more common in that part of the market.

Merging Microsoft accounts

Sarge Alpha and ommoran ask:

Has Microsoft made any progress in the ability to merge Microsoft accounts?

Not that I’ve ever heard. I will ask about this again. I need to talk to someone about Microsoft accounts more generally anyway.

Phone trade-ins

vernonlvincent asks:

Can you elaborate on your process for phone trade ins for credit. I regularly hear about how you get, for example, $300 credit to buy a new Pixel 3A, which you then turn around and trade in for $500 credit on the new Galaxy Note 10. I’ve heard you also talk similarly about having Apple credit so you can get phones from them. If you could talk a bit about your .. process on that (for lack of a better phrase), it would be great. I’d love to be able to do something similar so I could effectively subsidize my phones but don’t really know where to start.

The Galaxy Note 10 deal is unique for a few reasons.

Generally, I generally trade-in a previous phone for a new model, but in the case of the Pixel, I ended up not keeping the original Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL had bought last fall. So I still had my Pixel 2 XL kicking around, which by that point was getting less and less valuable on trade. But in the first half of 2019, two Pixel-related events happened. First, Google had a one-day half-off sale for the Pixel 3 tied to the Google Fi anniversary, so I only spent $480 on what would normally be a nearly $1000 Pixel 3 XL. I figured that would be a nice hedge against whatever reliability issues my old Pixel 2 XL might have (I’d had to return two previous units), and that it would be worth more on trade-in when the Pixel 4s arrive. Second, Google released the Pixel 3a XL. So I traded in my Pixel 2 XL for that phone, lowering its effective price (and getting that phone off my hands; I felt better returning it to Google than selling it to someone else).

But when Samsung announced the Note 10 trade-in offer, it was clear that I would get more from that than would be possible elsewhere. Indeed, the trade-in value was $600, which is not bad for a device I had paid $480 for. I never intended to keep the Pixel 3 XL long-term anyway, and there are things about it I really don’t like. So that seemed nearly ideal. Plus, I’m only paying $350 for a Note 10. Even if it doesn’t work out, I can resell it, or give it to my wife, or whatever.

Of course, I won’t have a good trade-in for the Pixel 4 whatever. I guess I’ll see what the Pixel 3a XL is worth at that time. And I’ll see whether trading in my iPhone XR makes sense when we know the new iPhones are all about.

Speaking of which, the Apple example you’re thinking of was a similar good timing thing. Apple began offering higher than usually trade-ins because of declining phone sales, and I had purchased a refurbished iPhone 7 just to have something on which to test iOS, and the trade-in value was very close to what I had paid. So I got the iPhone XR at a nice discount too. But I can’t claim to normally see such deals, it’s just been a good year for it. I use Gazelle, Amazon Trade-in, and other similar services from time to time as well. (And buying refurbished, especially directly from the phone maker, seems like a good strategy for saving money. I’ve bought a lot of Apple devices that way.)

UWP is dead, part 127

longhorn asks:

Do you still believe UWP is dead?

I want to be very clear about this. I don’t “believe” that UWP was dead, like I might believe that UFOs or Sasquatch are real. The person at Microsoft who killed UWP said point blank that he/she had done so and that it was dead. This is a fact, not a belief.

WoA is essentially a bet on UWP, because I don’t think it’s that easy to recompile Win32 for ARM. Paint.NET in the Store is not compatible with ARM for example. Is WoA a pointless exercise since it’s much less successful than Windows Phone?

Windows on ARM is only a bet on Windows running on ARM. Developers can create native ARM desktop applications, just as they can UWP apps; they can likewise create drivers and peripheral utilities. I don’t think that WoA is pointless. But it is certainly possible that all it may accomplish is to get Intel to improve the mobility/battery life and connectivity of its own chipsets. Ultimately, the broader platform will improve thanks to this.

Does a Win32 developer that doesn’t receive money from Microsoft – like certain Windows Phone developers did – even care about ARM? Right now it’s a non-existent platform.

There is no good reason for a developer to invest in ARM right now, no. It’s easier to do so on UWP because you can pretty much just check a box. But a bet on ARM is a bet on some future that may or may not happen. If this 8cx generation of Snapdragon chipsets doesn’t pan out from performance and compatibility perspectives, it could be over.

Finishing the icon job

jimchamplin asks:

With Microsoft moving toward a tileless future in Windows, do you think this will be a chance to finally update the icons? As in… all of the icons? We’ve got icons that date back to Vista – the last time they bothered to update all the icons – in places and probably ones that are older than that.  It’s more “finishing the job” type stuff.

I hate being this cynical, but it’s certainly the result of years of experience: No, I don’t believe they will ever really “fix” the icon issue in Windows 10, where we have multiple generations of icons sitting side by side. (I always point out the Vista-era glass Notepad icon as a great example, but I will now point out, too, that this is one application that Microsoft is for some reason actively updating right now. The icon is so out of place.) Just watching them slowly apply Fluent design element haphazardly to little parts of Windows in each release is a painful reminder that no one there has the power, ability, or desire to the do the right thing consistently across the board.

Short takes

ggolcher asks:

Why do you post Short Takes on Petri and not on Thurrott? It’s mildly inconvenient having to go to Petri to check them out.

This is a historical byproduct of how I did things when I was at Penton: I published most of my content to the SuperSite, but Short Takes was always part of WinInfo, which got subsumed into Windows IT Pro. So we did the same when I came to BWW Media, and when I asked about maybe moving Short Takes to Thurrott.com, the owner felt that me having some connection to Petri was the better idea. I actually kind of agree. I feel like I could be doing more over there.

(As for not putting it on Thurrott.com as well, I believe that’s tied to worries, perhaps now outdated, that Google was punishing sites that republished content in multiple places. I should look into this.)

Google’s Android strategy

christian.hvid asks:

After having been outcompeted by Google in both the browser and mobile OS spaces, Microsoft is now successfully leveraging Google’s own technology to insert itself between Google and its customers. Products like the new Edge, Your Phone, Microsoft Launcher and SwiftKey are all examples of this. This would not have been possible if Google had been more like Apple, i.e. with proprietary code and tight control over the platform. Do you think Google ultimately made a mistake in opening up so much of their core technology?

Google had to know all along that this was going to happen, but they opened up Android specifically to make it appealing to everyone: Device makers, developers, and customers. That’s the double-edged sword: You can have complete control or you can just be dominant. Apple’s outsized influence and, in the United States, popularity are unusual, and I don’t think they can be repeated by other companies. So it’s not like Google could have simply copied Apple and been just as successful.

And really, in the scope of the entire Android ecosystem, how disruptive have Edge, Your Phone, Microsoft Launcher, and SwiftKey really been? It seems like what Google did was create an open platform that’s worked well for them and for the other companies that bet on it.

What Google did screw up was making Android monolithic so that updates could only arrive once a year (or less) with new Android versions. It’s been working to fix that so that the system is more modular and more of Android can be updated via the Play Store, bypassing carriers and handset makers. It’s too bad it didn’t see that one coming, but it’s understandable.

Windows fan uses Chromebook for a month

JustMe asks

Have you given any further consideration to doing a “Month living with…” series of articles where you try to use an alternate OS for a month or so as your daily driver (I am thinking specifically of Chrome OS and Linux here, though MacOS would fit too) With all the speculation around LiteOS (or whatever it will be called), Windows future, Microsoft’s Chromebook conundrum, etc, it might be a good way for you to highlight what Windows does well and perhaps what Windows could improve on when compared to other options out there.

I do think about this a lot. And I certainly do spend time with alternate platforms, including Mac, iPad, and Chromebook, very regularly. I did just get back from a three-week trip, and I would have never experimented with that then. But now that I’m home again, and should be for a while, I will look into it again.

I will say that completely dropping Windows to just use Chromebook (or whatever) is impossible. I write about technology for a living, sure, and I do think that a Chromebook would offer a perfectly acceptable writing environment. But I write about a lot of Microsoft technologies specifically, especially Windows. And not living in Windows would be problematic. So the best I could do, I think, would be to structure things so that I was using Chromebook (or whatever) more than I do now, or as much as possible each day.

I’m still getting back up and running here. But I’ll see what I can do. I definitely have a couple of great Chromebook choices here.